My aunt emailed me about the piece and then the very lovely Margaret Moore had a link to the video. ABC's Nightline (the US equivalent of the BBC's Newsnight) did a piece on Harlequin.
The CEO, Donna Hayes, was brilliant but then having met her, I wouldn't expect anything less. If you want a role model for a highly successful woman, look no further.
Harlequin is doing very well out of the recession and the US media is just starting to realise (the deadpan readings of the various book not withstanding)
I think the presenter was surprised when Ms Hayes dismissed the need for men as a target audience. Harlequin Enterprise is focussed on women's fiction. It sees no need to change.
I was pleased to see historical mentioned.
Go Harlequin! Escapist Reading is great fun!
5 comments:
I thought it was GREAT that they had professional celebrities and actors to read extracts - the Nascar Driver was SO funny. And seeing the cover model having the chest oil rubbed in, almost made me splurt my tea over the keyboard!
LOL
Long may the success continue.
Loved the Martin Bashir read, but he's done piss-take reads on quiz shows before so that didn't surprise me. I'll forgive Paul Rudd because his '50s book was a hoot and deserved a little camp. Everyone else needs to loosen up! I'll be happy when everyone stops being shocked by how successful romance is right now and starts admitting that people read it because of quality writing, not just a cheap, desperate means of escaping bad times. We read them for great stories during good times as well!!
Oh I think the choice of the sections needs to get better. It is sort of like reading a thriller when they come on a gory corpse or a literary novel that goes off in some flight of methaphor.
I have no problem with the media realising that the romance genre sells in bad times as well as good. The last significant recession in the 1970s, the romance genre exploded but the media did not pay much attention. I suspect it had to do more with the state of play of feminism. Hopefully this time they will realise what a significant force/barometer the romance genre is.
And with series romance, it is true that it does behave inversely to a certain extent with people trading down from the more costly trade paperbacks during hard times. And had analysts paid attention to romance reading habits, they might have predicted the recession with greater accuracy. The upturn in series happens about the time you first start hearing about the credit crunch.
Hi Michelle! I linked with you from Margaret's blog. I wanted to stop by and say hi. (I was once on Struggling Writers, but not so much lately.)
I'm glad Romance got a plug, but I agree- why do they have to choose the scenes out of context? Romance is here to stay and it does have quality writing.
BTW -- I just picked up your latest book and boy, do I love it!
There was also a piece on National Public Radio, the most listened to radio news program in the US. I keep meaning to send you the link, but you can find it at npr.com. Interestingly, the Harlequin Presents, Love Inspired (aka Christian), and Blaze lines are the ones I find most often at CVS Pharmacy and Barnes and Noble. What does this say about us as a nation?
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