With a melodramatic title like that, readers are probably anticipating a post about the passionate love-hate relationships that some heroines and heroes have. But that’s not the love-hate that I’ve been thinking about lately. Instead, my relationship (hah!) with Harlequin Enterprises is the focus of the love-hate tension. Any entity who has such a huge role in an industry is bound to provoke reactions along the entire spectrum of emotion, right? Good and bad. There will be fans and detractors. And I’m both a fan and a critic.

I bought an ebook directly from Harlequin last week. I’ve bought their ebooks before, but always through Fictionwise, because I usually prefer to use a single distribution source rather than have a dozen accounts established at a dozen different epublisher sites. This time, though, my purchase was from the eHarlequin site because the book I wanted is a November release, and is not yet available elsewhere. Having immediate gratification issues, I couldn’t wait two more weeks and had to have it. Now! Or then, rather. The purchase was a bit of a hassle, frankly. Although I already had a Harlequin account, having purchased print books from the site before, that account was not recognized for the purpose of purchasing an ebook. So I had to establish a second account. The ebook and the print book divisions are likely just that — separate divisions. But to have two separate accounts (separate logons, separate passwords) in order to buy different formats from the same publisher? Irritating.

Which got me thinking about what it is that I like about Harlequin on a larger scale, and what I think could use improvement. On the pro side of the page: the variety of genres and subgenres published, and the company’s history as an outlet for genre romance dating back decades before genre romance was published by anyone else. On the con side: the never-ending stream of virgins, mistresses, secret babies, billionaires, sheikhs, cowboys and special forces heroes. The ridiculous titles and the misleading back blurbs.

Some very big name authors honed their craft while writing for Harlequin — Nora Roberts being the biggest name of all within the genre. Other authors found their niche when they sold to Harlequin, and continue to sell exclusively to a particular line. Though I complain about the predictability of many of the storylines that are offered, I do think the company does a pretty good job of covering all the possible genre romance bases. [Some better than others, to be honest.] Certainly it has shown an ability to grow and change — it missed some big trends and changes in the industry, like the explosion of ebooks and erotic romance, but got up to speed when it saw where the market was going, with varying degrees of success.

I’m less familiar with other publishing houses, primarily because I don’t pay a huge amount of attention. [Hqn is the exception for me, because it is a monolith in the industry.] Are there other publishers (print and e) that are doing good things for romance readers? For readers generally?

Do you read any Hqn lines? Mira? Luna? Silhouette? Red Dress Ink? NeXT? If you do, what is it that you like about those series? Are there things you would change? Things that you both love and hate?

This entry was posted by JMC on Monday, October 20th, 2008 at 6:00 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.