Now that the majority of the flames seem to have mellowed out, I’ve been thinking about what exactly went wrong with Harlequin’s launch of Harlequin Horizons.
Apart from the questions of self publishing vs. vanity publishing and profit and loss, I have been pondering why this was such a huge splashing fail.
My answer: brand inconsistency.
Note: I know there are some folks who think of branding as a negative thing. A false front or artificial construct designed purely to sell you things. Not necessarily. Branding is how you communicate who or what you are.
I think the biggest flaw of the entire launch was the increasingly close linking of the publishing wing and the vanity arm of Harlequin, especially the ads all over the eHarlequin site and the Harlequin community pages that read “Be an author!” With the addition of rejection letters directing writers to the Horizons line, the Horizons launch came across as predatory, greedy, and heartlessly tuned solely to profit and bottom line.
That said, corporations have one responsibility and one responsibility alone—namely: to make money for shareholders. So Harlequin’s effort to increase profits is not out of order at all. However, everything about the Horizons launch contrasted severely with the branding of Harlequin up to that point, and the volume of the outcry reflected that disconnect. In effect, that inconsistency created a major loss of goodwill.
Harlequin has gone beyond the reach of any other publisher in romance in the past few years to reveal the process behind the book production. They have entire blogs run by Harlequin staff which are devoted to their individual fiction lines, and employees serve as community managers that revealed the people behind the books to an unheard-of degree. Their digital efforts to reach a new generation of romance readers is part of their evolving success. Harlequin isn’t a “what.” It’s a “who,” and you knew a lot about the various whos who were running the show than you did about any other romance publisher. Harlequin was the first to openly emphasize the reader, the aspiring writer, and the author as a priority, and their efforts to create communities reflect that. I don’t agree with the idea that any romance reader is an aspiring romance writer, but I do see how Harlequin successfully formed communities based on that concept.
They’ve cultivated writers through contests and offer pages upon pages of instruction and tips for those who aspire to be Harlequin authors – for free! There’s no charge to access those instructional pages, nor to join the Harlequin community discussions, nor to post on the bulletin boards or hang out at the blogs. All that cultivation and generosity of time and effort creates… authors. New ones. Who write new books to sell. Whose books may be successful because the writer-turned-author has already invested herself in that community, and that community may have a more attentive interest in that writer’s career.
Of course Harlequin is all about profits. They should be without question. But until Horizons, they’d successfully emphasized the community of readers, writers, and authors to such a degree that their reputation was more than merely corporate.
Harlequin until now has been amazingly attuned to the readers and writers of romance – one of the earliest of the massive publishing corporations that listened and solicited opinions from readers. But Horizons and the ads and the links and the redirection in rejection letters demonstrated such a huge degree of tone deafness, it was jarring. It was wrenching and inconsistent with the brand they’ve established. Add to that the revulsion directed at self publication, the confusion as to what constitutes vanity and self-publication, and the miasma of contradiction found in the path to publishing, then contrast that with the value and meaning of the brand Harlequin cultivated on the part of its readers and authors, and it was a big ol’ mess.
If another publisher did something like this, one who wasn’t so reportedly in touch with readers, one, perchance, who wasn’t as profitable as Harlequin, I don’t think the outcry and fury would have been so enormous.
Harlequin has been more transparent about the publishing process and the types of books they are looking for within their lines, and actively engaging readers and aspiring writers for far longer than any other romance publisher. Thus the avaricious tone of the Horizon’s launch, coupled with the manner in which the Horizons line was connected with the established Harlequin publications, undermined their previous efforts at branding.
But as I said, Harlequin does listen to readers, writers, and authors. I don’t think this is finished, and I think there are lessons inherent in the last few days that apply to everyone who is invested in the romance community. Therefore, I’m listening, too.
I agree that the anger over this has everything to do with branding, and how people respond to it.
Self publishing is a reality and a healthy one…and yes in many cases an increasingly conservative and limited publishing world has caused real and viable authors to turn to self publishing. Many of the firms, such as iUniverse have become very slick, professional operations. They are no longer the sort of endeavors that only produce cheesy “My Bar Mitzvah” memory books. That isn’t to say everything they produce is a literary gem, but often times they do publish hidden treasures that might have been overlooked by commercial presses.
That said, Harlequin stepped outside what it’s loyal readers consider appropriate actions for a “legitimate publisher”. Romance often readers have to deal with a lot of ignorance and arrogance from people who feel that what they read are not “real” books…the equivalent of 300 page copies of the Weekly World News, or worse, just porn in fancy bodices. Harlequin making this sort of move felt to many people like they were further delegitimizeing their own books, opening themselves up to “pay for play” authors.
Harlequin, for their part, made the mistake of trying to make themselves into a “lifestyle” brand. Consider the rash of Online Games based on things like Marvel Comics or Star Trek or Harry Potter…they give devoted fans a chance to “live the experience”. In some ways they must have imagined that this would be a great way to raise money at the same time as allowing faithful readers a chance to “live the experience”. I mean after all, short of sending readers a love starved, darkly brooding vampiric hero named Phillipe Dylan Pendragon in a box with a nice card or a dehydrated Dr. Davenport St. John, passionate about his patients in the Rwanda Bush Hospital yet haunted by a mysterious past, just add water, how else could they try to commoditize the experiences found in their books? Easy…letting their readers try their hand at being “Romance Writers”. How many romances are about just that? Romance writer finding a romance of her own? Live the dream.
Unfortunetly Harlequin forgot that their fans don’t WANT to artificially live the experience of being a Harlequin author, their own imaginations put them in the action just fine…what they need from Harlequin is stability and legitimization….which this plan disputed a bit. Not the end of the world, but troubling.
Zealot wrote:
I agree that the anger over this has everything to do with branding, and how people respond to it.
There are a number of people in this thread (myself included) who have clearly explained that our anger has to do with issues other than branding, or how we respond to it. Among other things, it has to do with the distinction between self-publishing and vanity publishing, which (despite many reiterations) continues to be blurred in this discussion. The issue is not the cheesiness of the books produced, nor even whether commercial publishing is overlooking hidden treasures; the issue is exploitative pricing for exploitative results. Paying a minimum of six hundred dollars up front in exchange for fifty percent of net profits and the delusion that this will help you get in the door at Harlequin or elsewhere is a scam. And it’s an even bigger scam when a major publisher actively deploys its reputation as the shiny lure on the hook.
There are honest self-publishing setups out there. This is not one of them.
Exactly…and the operative part of why that has pissed everyone off so badly is their view of Harlequin as a BRAND. There are a billion scams run on the internet every day, this one is a fairly benign one. What hurts is that it is wearing a brand name that you hold in esteem. Without branding, this situation goes away in a day.
Harlequin’s brand means nothing to me; I don’t read their fiction, and have no emotional investment in the company one way or another. The brand only matters inasmuch as it amplifies the thing I’m actually upset about, which is the scam nature of the whole thing.
And as far as the scam’s concerned, no—this situation doesn’t go away in a day. Preditors & Editors has been around for twelve years, and one of its missions is to publicly identify this kind of operation, so as to warn people away from it. Ditto Writer Beware. The Internet’s volume dial might have been set lower had this enterprise been launched by a publisher with a less powerful brand, but the situation would still be there, and people would still be having more or less the exact same debate.
Thanks for the calm, thoughtful analysis, Sarah.
I agree that the Harlequin brand, and the way it was used in this business = huge mistake for all the reasons you listed.
The other vital element in this is trying to put a self-pubishing face on a vanity press body. That’s deceptive, and especially disturbing when it’s done by a company with a respected, trusted brand such as Harlequin.
Excellent analysis, Sarah. Thank you.
Edie—yes, that’s me. I’ve been on a rather unintended writing hiatus, but I’ve just about got Real Life whipped back into shape after a bunch of craptastic drama. Hopefully I’ll have something coming out in 2010. Thanks for asking!
Agreeing with everyone else on why it sucked, and hoping the Harl PTB see JenTurner’s idea and give it a serious think.
> There’s no charge to access those instructional pages, nor
> to join the Harlequin community discussions, nor to post on
> the bulletin boards or hang out at the blogs.
And it sells the hell out of books. A benefit to them.
> All that cultivation and generosity of
> time and effort creates… authors.
No, authors create authors. It’s not Harlequin at my keyboard this morning, it’s me.
> That said, corporations have one responsibility and one
> responsibility alone—namely: to make money for shareholders.
> So Harlequin’s effort to increase profits is not out of order at all.
The tone of your post sounds like you’re excusing them.
I can’t help but recall the whole Cassie Edwards controversy here. When an author does something bad, you’re all over her. But when Harlequin behaves in a predatory way, you defend them?
If they hadn’t closely associated with the Harlequin brand, they’d have been just another subsidy publisher. The brand is what, I’m sure, was intended to make it attractive. Can’t have it both ways, eh?
@JenTurner
I couldn’t agree more. They could have set up a rival company to Lightening Source – Harlequin Print on Demand. It is a really a shame they were so short sighted in their pursuit of money that they didn’t think about the bigger picture, the long term. You set up a vanity press/assisted self publishing you get very little repeat business, you constantly have to be searching for new customers because everyone gets wise to your little enterprise. A company like Lightening Source is where the real money is, everyone from epublishing houses to self publishers to micro-presses and vanity presses use them.
You can see why Torstar is in financial difficulty.
~The tone of your post sounds like you’re excusing them. ~
It didn’t strike me that way, but as an objective analysis, clearly listing the problems with the whole business, and commenting with an opinion on why Harlequin might have started it.
I’m a multi-pubbed, bestselling author who does not, nor ever has, written for HQ. I haven’t read all the comments here today, nor have I commented on this HQ clusterfuck yet, but I want to offer one thing from an insider’s perspective:
Much of what I’m reading on blogs and boards from a “reader-only,” and even a “gosh, someday I might like to try to write a book” point of view is something more like a “troubled feeling” about all this. Lots of people from the “outside” (sorry for all the “quotes”) don’t exactly understand the great big fuss, or they try to see it from HQ’s perspective as a money-bottom-line issue, which is absolutely is, or they’re angry and shocked because this money making venture is attached so blatantly to HQ’s respectable submission arm, but they simply don’t get why authors are so thoroughly, fucking appalled by this move. Here’s my take as someone who has friends who write for HQ, and friends who are desperately working their butts off to become respected, published authors.
Usually, after a writer begins to write seriously with an eye toward publication, it takes years to get published. Just trying to find an agent is a bitch, and that’s only the beginning. Submitting is so, so hard. Getting rejection letter after rejection letter is painful, and there are so many letters you can usually wallpaper the average kitchen with them. I have friends in RWA who have been writing as long as I have, have been finalists in the Golden Heart contest more than once, with very good manuscripts, and are still unpublished. And so the romance writer, after years and years of trying, working, submitting and getting rejected, attending workshops to better her craft, anguishing over each and every scene, each and every five minute interview with an agent or, even better(!), an editor at a national conference, where—I’m not joking—she worries if the color of her lipstick is distracting from her “pitch” or if she’s talking to fast to get it all in—she’s finally told to send her “partial” to HQ for a read. OMG! OMG! OMG!! Jane Doe, Major Editor at HQ asked for a partial!
The truth is, most editors and agents will go ahead and just ask to see the partial, whether they’re interested or not, as long as the manuscript fits their line. And honestly, these romance writers are so astute, because most of them have been working so hard for years trying to get published, they know exactly which editor buys which line. (I have a friend who writes for HQ Blaze, who worked, and worked, and worked with an editor for nine years—got to know her personally, probably would have picked up her dry cleaning if she lived in Toronto—until she finally honed her craft well enough to to be published. She’s a great writer, but she had to work for it.) The editors ask for partials, most are rejected, but some, sometimes, are read, sent back for “work,” read again, maybe sent back for more work, maybe rejected, maybe not. If not, sometimes they might go to a different line with a different editor if it’s a better fit, and the process starts all over again. Then, if the manuscript fits the line, if the editor had room in her schedule, if she asks for and then accepts revisions and more work is done, the editor might then go ahead and decide to gather with the team and discuss an offer. And then, if all goes well, OMG, holy hell, the author, two years later finally gets her dream, and after fifteen years of writing and working her ass off, gets The Call!!
Here’s my point in all this drivel: When HQ came out last week and offered up HQ Horizons, every single writer who has been working her ass off for years and years and years to get an editor to buy her manuscript had to feel not only shocked, but sick to her stomach. Just think: now Sally Smith, romance writer wannabe (and this is not a bad thing, she’s just new!), who is just now deciding, “Gee, I love to read those Silhouette Desire books, I think I’ll write one!” is going to submit, get rejected because it’s awful (trust me, it will be), get an offer on her rejection letter to buy her name in print, and be an HQ author in no time at all! And she, too, can tell everyone in the office she writes for HQ. Just like my friend who worked for nine years (or ten, or fifteen). And to add insult to injury, now that HQ has a vanity press arm attached, it’s no longer a recognized publisher so my friend worked all those years and any future books by her that she writes for HQ no longer qualify for the highest award a romance author can achieve, the RITA.
In essence, HQ fucked the author for the bottom line. That’s rape.
Anon Author, I was with you and pondering your perspective right up until the last line.
“Rape?” Come on, now. Hyperbole and unfit comparisons do not help your argument. You might as well have thrown Nazis, Wal-Mart, and the Holocaust in there as well. It’s a business decision that many people got upset about. It’s not sexual assault.
Well, this has nothing to do with Wal-Mart, Nazis, the Holocaust, or sexual assault. That’s, um, a little extreme. But this is rape of another kind.
Again, if you’re on the inside like I am, you’ve seen grown women break down before in interview with an editor, just from nerves. Imagine trying for years and years to just get an editor to read your manuscript, and then after competing with hundreds of other women to get one of the few available opportunities to speak with a HQ editor at the National conference for five whole minutes (!) to pitch your Blaze concept you’ve been working on forever, and the editor seems really interested and wants to see a partial and loves your blue suit and you have so much in common!—- you get rejected with a form letter. This goes on year after year to various degrees, but you keep trying. Now HQ offers brand new wannabes the opportunity to buy into this new “business venture” on their rejection letters! You can understand how this might feel like you’ve been violated by the ONE group of people, the one entity who you’ve been working with and trusted to better your skills as a romance author and help you get published for for ages.
My point is: from an insider’s perspective, this is so, so much more than a mere business decision. The trust the romance writers and HQ authors have put in to this company over the years is enormous and what they’ve done has felt like a violation. And the point of my first post is that unless you’ve been on the inside and have seen the hard work, the tears of anguish and joy, you (not you personally, but in general) may not understand why authors are so appalled by this.
Anecdote alert!
I threw up ten minutes before my very first editor appointment at my very first conference. Blew serious chunks all over the bathroom of our (Barb Ferrer’s and mine) room at the Westin. Barb had to go to the appointment with Kate Duffy in my place. I took her appointment a few minutes later, undoubtedly reeking of toothpaste and vomit. Kate—may she be forever remembered as a goddess among women—was very kind and understanding.
My point, and I do have one, is that while I was a romance-writing newbie at the time, I was not and never have been a shrinking violet/Nervous Nellie/under-confident babe-in-the-woods. Anon Author tells it true in terms of what’s at stake for the average writer—newbie or no—during the submission process. It’s virtually impossible not to take it all very personally, however much we may know better. Hence, the very personal way so many writers have taken Harlequin’s new venture, which seeks to capitalize on exactly how little the average newbie knows about the publishing business. We empathize. Women—MOST women, I should say—are pretty skilled at that. Some may think it’s to our detriment as a gender. I tend to disagree.
And, Sarah, while I understand and appreciate your dislike of the term “rape” in this context, I imagine that if I were a Harlequin author, I’d be feeling a little bit violated right now, in an “Enthusiastic buttsecks is one thing, dude, but did you have to skip the lube entirely?” sort of way.
Gotta go with Sarah on this. I think they hyperbole detracts from the argument. And as someone who 1) writes for H/S and 2) been sexually assualt—the assualt was a worse. So. Much. Worse.
Otherwise, I agree with what you hvae to say. WHat H/S did left me reeling and wondering WTF!
Yikes! Sorry about the typoes and grammer—am at work and trying to type under the radar (as it were)
I apologize for the term “rape.” I wasn’t trying to be insensitive or dramatic, but rather to express the utter violation this move by HQ has felt like to many authors. This has nothing to do with sexual assault, or anything so abhorrent.
No worries! I just thoght your arguement was SPLENDID with the term. 🙂
Coorection—Without theterm…okay,…I really got to get back to work since I can’t type today. I am a writer..really…I swear….
Protect your brand is a mantra in marketing. As a marketing/media professional this is part of every decision and venture I make in my day job. Harlequin not only didn’t protect their brand, they exploited it while trying to give credibility to their foray into vanity press. They sold it out by telling authors that the titles published by Horizon could be chosen to become part of one of the established Harlequin lines and by referring rejected writers to Horizons.
As far as the comment wondering whether we think that aspiring authors are stupid, the answer is no. However, some have less knowledge than others which can make them more vulnerable. This is one of the main reasons that RWA and other writers organizations work so hard to provide information and educate members about the business of publishing.
Years and years ago, my original dream was just to get published. I wanted to write a book one day. It’s a fine dream. I joined RWA and my local chapter, learned more and more about the business of publishing and knew that my dream needed refinement. I wanted to write a book one day, sell it and earn money. That’s an important dividing line for me.
In the 15 years since I joined RWA, I’ve seen many fellow writers with the same dream. Unfortunately, I’ve seen some who wanted their book published so badly that they ended up selling their work in really bad deals, or paying out the nose to have their books published by a vanity press. For some, it didn’t matter as long as they could hold a book in their hands with their name on the cover. Others were crushed when the shiny success marketed to them by the vanity press didn’t come true.
This doesn’t make them stupid. They were motivated by a deep, strong desire to publish and believed the hype. Smart people get conned all of the time.
From the harlequinhorizons.com front page just now. I see it on other pages too, mixed with Harlequin Horizons….talk about even more confused branding!
Is DellArte Press the new name?
Looks like it’s DellArte everywhere but on the graphics and the forms and web address, presumably those trickier elements will change shortly…. Would love to know if the text around promises / services / costs / benefits has changed too, or if it’s just a name search/replace jobbie. I presume someone saved the original pages days ago?
I agree. And maybe this is a silver lining in this very slimey Harl Ho cloud. Harlequin is a business and folks were really slapped hard by that fact because of all this. As someone who’s subbed to Harl for the last four years and followed their forums closely, I’ve been amazed by the pathos and personal sacrifice involved in trying to get pubbed. But you have to be smart about how personal you let it get. Harlequin is not your mother, not your best friend, not your CP, not even the chatty dude at the Dunkin Donuts.
Even before the HarlHo debacle they targeted aspiring writers as a major way to make moola. If you listen to their editor podcasts, read their articles, pitch to an editor, etc. one of the first things they emphasize is: BUY THE BOOKS. At the National RWA conference they give away tons of freebies—a truly excellent way to hook thousands of attendees on their product. They offer contests—constantly claiming they’re looking for that next new voice—and yet these same series for which they’re soliciting entries currently have folks who’ve been waiting for one or two YEARS to hear back on a submission. Contests are a great way to drum up interest in the line and acquire more readership, a great way to draw romance buyers to their site. Aspiring authors are a huge market and Harl/Sil have always known it. Just because someone has gone through a sisyphean subbing process doesn’t mean Harl sees you as anything other than a marketing target and the Harl Ho debacle proves that.
SB Sarah,
Before I read through all the comments, I’d just like to thank you for capturing the reason for some of the angst.
I posted this a few minutes ago on the Huge first loop, and will now post here. Why? Dunno. Perhaps because every new blog topic about the issue leaves a trail for someone trying to make a decision on what publishing path to follow step back and take a breath before jumping right into a deal. (Long sentence, you betcha. LOL)
*****
I doubt anyone can change HQ’s endeavour in this. Though I wish if they’d wanted to try something new, they’d have not only put their name on it, but their personnel.
Because while I will not switch my position and tell new writers this type of model is the way to go, I will have to tell them, if you insist on going with it, don’t use Harlequin Horizons.
Something along the lines of:
In this list of names, which would you consider a self-publishing model versus a vanity- sorry- assisted self-publishing model? Word Clay, Trafford, Author House, Xlibris, IUniverse, Westbow or Harlequin Horizons?
I ask, because they are all the same, except the pricing. Pricing for the EXACT same services. Why do I question the difference in pricing? Because you get the services from the EXACT same parent company, AUTHOR SOLUTIONS. That guy making your cover for IUniverse could be the same guy working on your Harlequin Horizons cover, only for a different price charged to you.
Legal, sure. But don’t expect to get better quality just because of the moniker. Auto mechanics have known this little trick for years. The same replacement part will fit two different models, but one car has a sticker price of 15K while the other a sticker price of 30K. The smart mechanic always names the lower value car when requesting the item. Why? Because it’s half the cost doing it that way. For the SAME darn part.
Looks like the page has changed back to the old version … aaaand of course I didn’t actually save the DellArte version I was seeing. Oops, because it looked like they’d really updated and fleshed out their FAQs. Intriguing, though.
Loved Liz’s line about “Harlequin’s dark passenger.” So true. Too many romance writers have built a completely false idea of who and what Harlequin is. This move has shaken them, because it has forced them to see the man behind the curtain. And he is not your jolly uncle.
I disagree that “corporations have one responsibility and one responsibility alone—namely: to make money for shareholders.” No. Corporations are supposed to stay in business, which is a different thing. The corporate hotshots who have made quick cash for some company with outrageous maneuvers that then resulted in savage flows of red ink were not fulfilling their true corporate mandate. Nor is it defensible for Harlequin to decide that making money for their shareholders should include, say, buying into a bordello in Nevada. It would be legal, but it is not consonant with the primary mission of the corporation. As people are pointing out, it would be messing with the corporation’s most valuable asset, its brand.
And by the way, when Thomas Nelson decided to do this very thing (not the chicken ranch, the vanity press), I did raise an eyebrow about it. But then, Nelson is a religious publisher and nothing they do that is hypocritical surprises me or interests me, either. My opinion. Apparently shared by all the other people who made no outcry.
Yes, this is all about the brand.
Okay, I know this isn’t an exact analogy because you do have to pay to attend Harvard, but imagine if Harvard decided to start a subsidiary enterprise, called Harvard Horizons. When kids get rejection letters from Harvard, it mentions that they can still achieve their dreams of becoming a Harvard grad—just call this number and sign up for Harvard Horizons! A *new* exciting way of getting a degree, and it’ll only cost you $500,000 upfront (and even better, you won’t have to actually attend classes—they’ll simply mail you the degree right away)! You, too, you can have your very own Harvard degree to hang on your wall!
And even better, they’ll provide your resume to 100,000 hiring employers (who opt-in for their mailing list), and you, too, might get hired by some of the highest paying, most prestigious employers in the world! In fact, if you do really well marketing yourself and end up with a really good position somewhere, Harvard might decide to take you on as a *regular* student!!!
**And then all these poor snookered ‘grads’ will be shaking their heads, completely confused when employers laugh at their supposed ‘Harvard Degree’ and refuse to hire them (much as the Harlequin Horizons authors will be confused when bookstores won’t carry their books).
Thank. You.
Before I entered the high-stakes world of publishing (all homage to the brilliant Jennifer Crusie for the quote,) I held political office. I still can’t go into a meeting with an editor or agent without an almost-terminal case of butterflies, and in most other areas of my life, I’m just fine. It also doesn’t help to know that most people sell as the result of a great query letter, not the face-to-face meeting. I’m wondering if they’re even effective.
I’m entering Year Five now. I have four finished manuscripts. I’m looking for an agent, and I’m still working. Those around me are starting to ask questions—“Don’t you want to give up?” “What if you never get published?” “Isn’t this a waste of time?” If they’re doing it to someone as motivated and serious as I am, they’re working on others who will do just about anything to see their books in print, including paying a vanity press because they just want to see their dream come true.
As others have mentioned, we’ve seen the man behind Harlequin’s curtain, and it’s not pretty. They not only betrayed those currently under contract with them (all the work, the classes, writing, rewriting and submissions, but someone with $1000 can claim they’re a “Harlequin author”,) it’s one more publisher those of us who’d like to have some professional recognition of their work might wonder if we should avoid.
We’ve already seen it, but I have to mention it one more time: The blowback will be legendary, and it’s not just the authors. Will Harlequin pull their sponsorship of RWA National as a result?
-S
It seems probable that Harlequin were sold the idea as a risk-free way of making money; presumably the people buying the idea have spent the last couple of years on another planet since otherwise it would have occurred to them that there are no risk-free ways of making money.
It looks as if Harlequin are in too deep to get out, which in turn suggests that their need for money now is so great that it overrides the ongoing destruction of their brand. On the positive side, however, Gerald Ratner must be looking forward to having competitors in the “I ruined my business overnight” stakes…
I think the parent company, Torstar or whoever it is, is looking at “monetizing the user base” in order to solve it’s own financial problems.
They see selling a “service” to the hopefuls as just another business … but haven;t caught on to the problem of degrading the brand name by pimping it on the street corners.
Excellent analogy, Kristina. And the cherry on top is this: The person paying for the degree from “Harvard Horizons” thinks she’s getting the same thing as the person who went to class for four long, torturous years, and she’s no dummy! She just ignorant and only has the Harvard Horizon’s really professional and polished website to tell her she’s a grad now, PLUS the name that backs it up—Harvard.
And… all those real Harvard grads… well, it’s too bad they had to work so hard now that their once distinguished and top-rated school is no longer held in such high prestige any longer. If you can buy your degree… ::shrugs::
Yes, DellArte Press is the name change now up on the website.
While I’m glad to see such a fast response to the many voices, it’s only a start. I think what most authors want to know is that there isn’t going to be an automatic referall to this vanity press (no matter what it’s name) in rejection letters.
Of course neither of those is going to help with the statement put out today by Horror Writers Association which says despite the name change that they want Harlequin to drop the venture altogether or Harlequin authors won’t be eligible for the Bram Stoker Award nor for membership in the association.
DellArte? DELLArte. Surely Dell is still in business as a publisher. Do you think they will get their knickers in twist with the association of their name on this venture?
Ah, to be a fly on the wall when the lawyers have lunch. Is this, or is this not, similar enough to cause confusion?
Gwynnyd—I don’t know whether this holds legal weight should there be any kind of protest, but the name has a strong justification; the Harlequin is one of the stock figures in commedia dell’arte.
It’s actually not a bad name. Pity it’s being put to this use.
Comedy of the Arts… yep, that about sums it up.
If I were Dell I’d send a cease-and-desist letter immediately. It causes brand confusion.
Why not Pierrot Press? The fact that you would be acting in a vulgar comedy might not hit you until after your bank account is empty.
This change to DellArte is a wise move to distance Hh from the Harlequin brand. I’m glad HQN is choosing to act on the situation instead of pretending nothing is wrong.
I notice all the pictures of aspiring writers on the site are women. No males are shown, with or without a shirt. Perhaps they’ve not had time to update their stock images.
DellArte calls it “assisted self-publishing” thus avoiding the nasty ol’ “v” word and its negative connotations, but it is very clear they are a vanity operation, which is fine.
However, HQ does have to make sure that no rejection mail to any prospective writer contains any mention of DellArte. That conflict of interest truly cost them tons of cred in the industry. You nailed it, Sarah.
Until they announced this Hh mess, I had no hesitation sending aspiring writers to the HQN website to check out the many helpful articles on writing.
Now I’ll be sending them elsewhere until and unless HQN loses all the vanity links.
And if the unconfirmed story IS true—the rumor about Hh claiming on the phone to a prospective customer that King and Rowling started out self-publishing—then someone there needs a kick in the slats followed by a pink slip.
No so. Writer beware noticed back in October:
http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2009/10/thomas-nelson-adds-self-publishing.html
So did Absolute Write:
http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=158608
It should be pointed out that he is hardly in the same league as HQN.
Writer James D. Macdonald comments:
“First, there wasn’t even a thread about this publisher until October of this year—and this on a board where one-man-band micro publishers routinely turn up. That means that these guys are well off the mainstream reader/writer radar. Christian Publishing is its own thing; complete with its own bookstores.”
“Second, what brought Thomas Nelson to this board’s attention was their new vanity imprint.”
“Third, from the very beginning the commentary here was negative. Condemning this kind of scheme wasn’t a new thing that started when Harlequin did their thing.”
http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showpost.php?p=4296012&postcount=576
Big fan of Uncle Jim here. His bullsh*t detector is very finely tuned.
I checked out both HQ and the new Dellarte and can’f find a speck of cross-branding remaining. Man, did they move fast (and seriously, I feel bad for the programmers who have likely been working major hours making all the changes!) I’ve never seen a corporation move this quickly on anything before. Ever. Don’t know if they still are planning on that nasty rejection redirect, but wow, what a change. Go to the Harlequin Horizons and you are redirected to the new site: http://www.harlequinhorizons.com/