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.
Shiloh said:
THIS. Yes. Totally.
OT – Again, Sorry!
Just coming back to thank Amelia Elias for responding to my off topic rudeness!
*happychairdancingallovertheplace*
It’s not simply that there is “brand confusion,” or that they have misled people into thinking that their book could become a bestseller, or that they are not calling a spade a spade and a vanity press a vanity press. They are being SCAM ARTISTS. They are trying to make money off the gullible by tricking aspiring authors into paying for things that no author should ever pay for. Have you read their damn “service details?”
They will “edit” your book. For a price.
They will write you a one-page “press release.” For another price.
They will e-mail…. someone, about the fact your book exists. For yet another price.
And those prices are ASTRONOMICAL.
They will charge you three hundred here, another three hundred here, three-THOUSAND there. For things that a publisher should be doing for free. Editing. Marketing. And not even REALLY doing it. $342 for “editorial review?” Gets you a “sample edit” of a PORTION of the work (“Typically the first chapter.”) This comes after two weeks, and when it does, “you will receive recommendations for additional editorial services.”
Additional editorial services comes with additional costs. $0.035 cents a word to check your fucking grammar and spelling. $0.045 for them to actually read the thing and point out continuity errors. $0.077 cents to actually say anything about the plot.
And after that? After ALL that? THEY KEEP 50% OF THE NET. There is no fucking way that the “profits” on these books, published this way, could ever match up to the costs you’ll pay on the “services” they’re offering. But they are keeping HALF OF THEM.
This isn’t brand confusion. This is MONSTROUS. Think about this. A young author sends her book to Harlequin. Harlequin turns her down but encourages her to buy in to their vanity print scam. She does, and they encourage her to buy in to their “editorial review.” She does, and the “editorial review” encourages her to buy “additional editorial services.” When all this is added up? People can and have gone bankrupt, for the amounts we’re talking about here.
And okay, this is where the brand comes in. This is HARLEQUIN telling her to do this. Powerful, respected Harlequin. Telling her this is right. That this is a good idea.
This would be disgusting and wrong no matter who did it. The fact that Harlequin did it wasn’t what made it disgusting. But it was what made it especially dangerous. Because the power of their name makes it look okay. The brand is BAIT.
You say “the Horizons launch came across as predatory, greedy, and heartlessly tuned solely to profit and bottom line.” Come across, my ass. It IS predatory and greedy. It’s WRONG. It’s a con and a swindle and there is no way anyone should ever throw a single dollar into this sucking black hole.
Vanity publishers making books to give to their circle of friends and relatives don’t pay $4,000 dollars to get their book edited. (Approximate cost of getting a 50,000 word NaNoWriMo submission edited at 7.7 cents a word as recommended by the preliminary $342 “editorial review”)
Self-publishers keep ALL their profits, not half of them.
Horizons is nothing. It’s neither. It’s a scam, pure and simple, and fuck them.
Okay, my math sucks, and I think I misplaced a decimal point. Colour me embarrassed. If I’ve got it right now, it’s $727 for review and editing of a 50,000 word manuscript, assuming you go straight for the deluxe editorial services and don’t start with the cheaper versions then get talked up. That is still a service that is supposed to be free. And it is only one of many should-be-free services they offer, which all add up.
Wow, they’ve added a FAQ page with tons of stuff on it.
I’ll give HQ credit in that the verbiage used on this site is nothing like the other one.
The royalty rate has gotten worse
Vuir,
Yep, that’s the type of up front information that probably has ASI execs spinning on their heads right about now.
And in the FAQ about marketing your books (I think) it kinda makes it clear that it’s better to target your local bricks and mortar, rather than those in say, Florida. Puts it out there that the distribution isn’t as easy as others would like to make you think.
BUT, Vuir,
They do say that your royalty rate depends on what you set your book price at.
IMHO, using the term royalty kinda muddies the issue. I would say that, instead, it’s the monies you would receive after printing costs. However, these are based on net sales, so I have no clue if the printing is taken off the top to achieve that “net” number, And an ebook wouldn’t fall into that category anyhoo, so…
Exactly. And what makes this so, so egregious, terrible, horrible, dishonest, scummy, I-need-a-shower worthy, is that it’s Harlequin backing it up. It’s not Brittney’s Book-O-Rama! where—for just a *wee* bit of your hard earned money—you, too, can see your dream come true!—This is HARLEQUIN. That’s where the biggest scam of all comes in. The ignorant will be taken in, and the worst part is, Torstar probably knows it.
I will add that I know a lot of the HQ editors personally, and I find it hard to believe they’d go along with this with smiling faces and positive attitudes. They were probably all taken aback by the whole thing as well. This reeks of “men in suits” at the very top of the “it’s just those stupid little romance books that bored housewives read anyway” chain, who know NOTHING, who made this decision and then dropped a stinking bomb in the lap of the people who actually care.
Dani – you were right the first time. 7.7 cents x 50,000 = 358000 cents = $3850. And while that is undoubtedly a horrifying rip-off, somehow is doesn’t seem as bad to me as $1750 for a service which really guarantees no more than someone running the thing through a spellchecker.
Poison Ivy – apparently, the romance community demands higher ethical standards from their publishers than the Christian book community 🙂
Forgive me if this has been posted already, but I just saw mention of it in the Dec RWR online this morning. Its old news but the first I’ve seen it.
http://news.sel.sony.com/en/press_room/consumer/computer_peripheral/e_book/release/42042.html
They have made some signinificant changes to the wording of the new DellArte site.
It’s far more transparent than the old site was.
Seems like Harlequin is highly responsive to feedback.
I’m quite happy to see that RWA was at least consistent with their policies and responded to this strange turn by Harlequin.
After all the recent drama in the Romance Industry over e-pubs, small presses, etc and establishing/changing the rules about the coveted “Accepted Publisher” and Published Author status from RWA, it would have been difficult for them to respond in any other way, regardless of the amount of “support” Harlequin has given them over the years.
I found this link interesting. This individual decided to contact Dellarte and recieved an automated response that included a piece of information that is no longer listed on the site (unless I missed it somewhere.)
http://colleenanderson.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/harlequin-begins-vanity-press/
It seems the carrot is still be dangled, but in a slightly different way.
Quoted from the computer generated response:
“Publishing with DellArte Press offers several advantages:
Discovery Opportunities – Titles published through DellArte Press will be monitored for possible pickup by DellArte’s traditional imprints”