11/10/2022 0 Comments Harlequin romance novels of the 90s![]() Harlequin regularly repackages Nora Roberts novels, as it has recently done with two books it published in 1988, ''The Last Honest Woman'' and ''Dance to the Piper,'' published this year under the new title of ''Born O'Hurley.'' Her novels regularly make their debuts at the top of the fiction best-seller lists, and she is so popular that even her recycled novels sell well. Roberts, a former Harlequin writer who is by far the biggest-selling writer in women's fiction. If an author can earn really big money, she usually can be wooed away by a big publishing house. One reason Harlequin is so profitable is that it pays advances that are much smaller than the industry average, often only a few thousand dollars for books in its romances series. 25 on the extended best-seller list published by The Times online at Too often, however, the bigger an author becomes, the harder it is for Harlequin to keep her - and it is her in almost all cases. 13 on the New York Times best-seller list for the week ended July 31. Her latest book, ''Renegade,'' published last month by HQN, a new Harlequin imprint, made its debut at No. Harlequin does have some longtime authors with a big following, like Diana Palmer. When she chooses an author, she said, it is often a former Harlequin author, like Janet Dailey or Nora Roberts. ''Sometimes it can be a mystery, others a straight romance,'' she said, but the story is always more important than the publisher. Anne Curtis, a Manhattan resident who said she had been reading romance fiction for more than 20 years, looks for a new book not on the Harlequin racks but throughout the romance shelves. 1 spot 10 times.Many readers say they are seldom wed to a single genre or publisher. In the same period in 2001, it held the No. In the first seven months of this year, Harlequin placed just three books in the No. Because they are not part of a series, sales of single titles depend more on the author's name than on the publisher's.Īnd it is there that Harlequin has been losing much of its luster, at least according to one of the industry's most closely watched measures, the weekly Waldenbooks list of single-title paperback best sellers. Those books typically sell heavily in hardcover as well as paperback. The real growth in romance is in a sector in which Harlequin is less strong, referred to as the single-title business. ![]() ''We expect to have some big titles in the second half of the year, and we have a strong publishing program next year,'' Donna Hayes, Harlequin's chief executive, said in an interview last week. ![]() True to their art, however, Harlequin executives say they look forward to a happy ending. The weakness, the company said last month, is expected to last through at least the end of the year. The success of those more expensive books has lessened demand for the smaller, cheaper mass-market paperbacks that make up roughly 90 percent of Harlequin's offerings. They say their difficulties have been caused mainly by the public's surprisingly strong appetite for hardcover best sellers, both novels, like ''The Da Vinci Code,'' and a host of nonfiction books, mainly political. Harlequin executives portray the slowdown as no more than a brief lull on the way to better times. ![]() Three straight quarters of declining sales and profits led Harlequin last month to begin overhauling its business, shaking up its editorial ranks, halting the retail sale of three lines of romance books in the United States and cutting back on two others. ![]() That is bad news for Harlequin Enterprises, the largest North American publisher of romantic fiction. Romance is not dead, but it may be suffering a slow death.Įxplosive growth in the market for women's fiction, particularly in newer genres like chick lit and women's thrillers, has been drawing readers away from traditional romance novels, those formulaic bodice-rippers stocked with hunky heroes and love-conquers-all endings. ![]()
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