Harlequin Horizons: A New Subsidy Press, and a Bad Idea (Part I)

Harlequin Enterprises, one of the ten largest international publishers in the world, a subsidiary of Torstar, has launched a new subsidy publisher under the name Harlequin Horizons. This is horrible news for current Harlequin authors, since it devalues the publisher's brand, and worse news for the naive writers who will be taken in by the association of the Harlequin name with a business that exists to exploit naive authors. In case you're not sure what a subsidy publisher is, here's a definition:

A subsidy publisher also takes payment from the author to print and bind a book, but contributes a portion of the cost and/or provides adjunct services such as editing, distribution, warehousing, and marketing. Theoretically, subsidy publishers are selective. A subsidy publisher claims at least some rights, though the claim may be limited and non-exclusive. The completed books are the property of the publisher, which owns the ISBN, and remain in the publisher’s possession until sold. Income to the writer comes in the form of a royalty.

Harlequin Horizons is bundling several services togther in "packages." The author pays for an ISBN (owned by Harlequin, unless you pay an additional fee), printing, and various other additional services. Editing, by the way, will cost extra. Here's the breakdown of the basic package. An author sends a ms. to Harlequin Horizon, with a check for $599.00. The author gets five printed copies of their book, and Harlequin associates it with with an ISBN number they own, makes it available for online ordering. They also produce an ebook. The cover is a standard template cover using stock images, unless you provide an image (and have the rights to use it). The book is not edited, or proofread, or copyedited, or even typeset; it's a dump from a word processor file to a digital printer.

For $799.00, Harlequin Horizons will submit the digital files that support Amazon and Google's "inside this book" search, and provide "enhanced" cover options, which basically means someone with some PhotoShop skills will slap an image on one of their fill-in-the-blank templates. The Aspirations package will cost you $999.00, but it includes the "Editorial Review," a sample edit of a portion of your ms. You also get everything in the $799.00 package. For "marketing" etc. there are additional fees, and packages. There's a lot of similarity between these additional services and your local printer or Kinkos service bureau.

And, after you pay all those up-front costs, Harlequin—who's really acting as a printer's agent, not a publisher—gets a chunk of royalties (50% of net) from any copies you're lucky enough to sell (I say "lucky," because typically fiction from vanity press and subsidy presses and "self-published" books sell less than a hundred copies ever. They're not going to be available in stores, remember. Also, given the nature of the process, based on templates, no typesetting, no editing, stock covers, no designers, and POD printing from a digital press, the books will look odd. They're not going to look like the Harlequin novels in stores (nor will you ever see them there); they'll look a lot like the POD reprints Harlequin sells, only not as professionally finished.

You can find Part II of this post here.