One day after romance publishing giant, Harlequin Enterprises, announced their new business venture, Harlequin Horizons, a pay-to-publish division, the Romance Writers of America (RWA) responded. RWA, an organization made up of more than 8,000 published and aspiring romance novelists, announced that they were banning Harlequin from their eligible publishers list. RWA stated that according to current policies, Harlequin now falls under the category of subsidy/vanity publisher and can no longer participate in their conference. Under the current policy, Harlequin novels would be ineligible in the future for RWA's prestigious annual RITA competition recognizing the best romance novels.
RWA has maintained publishers guidelines for its members since 1994 in an effort to help its members distinguish between subsidy/vanity publishers and publishers who pay writers for their work.
Some observers believe the venture is the brain-child of Harlequin's parent company Torstar to leverage Harlequin's success to help bail the rest of the company out of their financial woes. Harlequin's profits increased this past year in spite of the economy (see column on Harlequin success).
Comments
Very well written article on a complicated subject, Stephanie!
Ash
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