Harlequin Romances
Marketing Pulp Fiction Sizzle

Romance sells ... and pays millions! At least it does for Harlequin Enterprises, the world’s largest publisher of series romance fiction. From its headquarters in Don Mills, a suburb of Toronto, Ontario, Harlequin directs its publishing empire to produce approximately 180 million paperbacks a year in 23 languages. Marketed to more than 100 countries, this pulp fiction sizzle provides its parent company, Torstar, publisher of Canada’s largest newspaper, The Toronto Star, with more than 80 per cent of its operating profits annually.

Harlequin executives, however, don’t feel they have exhausted their growth potential by any means! They are now extending their successful editorial and sales techniques to Eastern Europe, Russia, China, India, South East Asia, and Central and South America because, as Brian Hickey, president and CEO of Harlequin said in a 1993 Canadian Business article, “We have yet to come across a culture that has rejected us.”

Worldwide sales indicate that Hickey’s claim is justified. Countries with more than a million Harlequin readers who are over 15 years of age include the United States with 23 million; Poland, 6.6; Germany, 5.9; Great Britain, 3.2; Italy, 2.5. Even Austria, the former Czechoslovakia, Holland, Hungary, Japan, and Spain all have a million or more readers.
 

After the fall of the communist regime in Poland which, prior to 1990, had made the palace of Culture and Science building in Warsaw their national headquarters, Harlequin enthusiasts successfully unfurled a huge flag near the building's top, as viewed here. This "banner with a heart," a universal symbol of love and passion, in an unprecededented coup, was prominently displayed on Valentine's day, 1990. [Photo, courtesy Harlequin Enterprises] 

 It’s a giant leap from the original private company incorporated as Harlequin Books in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1949, to publish pocketbook reprints. Originally interested in mysteries, westerns, romances, thrillers, and cookbooks, Harlequin listed such popular authors as Agatha Christie, Somerset Maugham, and Jean Plaidy, who also writes as Virginia Holt. The company was still struggling in 1958 when Richard and Mary Bonnycastle, also of Winnipeg, bought it. Over the next ten years they changed the name to Harlequin Enterprises, went public and moved to Toronto. The most significant decision, however, was Mary’s determination, as editor, to print more “romance fiction in good taste,” most of it purchased from the British publishing house of Mills and Boon.

In 1971 the Bonnycastles bought their British supplier and turned the company over to their son, Richard, who hired a management team headed by W. Lawrence Heisey, a Toronto graduate of Harvard’s Business School with thirteen years’ experience at Procter & Gamble. Heisey applied packaged goods marketing techniques to publishing, launching a research program to find out what typical readers wanted in terms of settings, characters, and plots. He also arranged for the sale of books in supermarkets and drug stores, created a subscriber division, participated in giveaway promotions with feminine products, and provided coupons in women’s magazines that could be exchanged for a free book. Television advertising aimed at soap opera listeners also dramatically increased market awareness and sales, giving Harlequin almost total dominance in the romance publishing business by the mid-1970s.

Such success, however, prompted others to enter the field. Publishing giant Simon & Schuster, having lost its contract with Harlequin as its U.S. distributor, launched its own Silhouette romance series and soon gained 30 per cent of the market. Dell Books and Bantam also entered the field to further reduce Harlequin’s share of the market and cause profits to plummet dramatically in the first few years of Torstar’s total ownership which took place in 1981.

While some believed the decline was due to the changing life-styles and interests of women, Torstar felt another type of marketing expert was needed and hired Brian Hickey, director of strategic planning of S.C.Johnson and Son in Racine, Wisconsin. “I was shocked by the offer,” he told Gina Mallet in a Canadian Business article but said that, on reading a Harlequin, “I found it to be one of the most relaxing things I could have done,” and decided that selling Harlequins was not all that different than selling Johnson’s wax. “It’s marketing nice things to women,” he told Ms. Mallet.
 

Brian Hickey, president and chief executive officer of Harlequin Enterprises, oversees a publishing empire meeting the needs of a worldwide reading audience revolutionized by sexual attitues and changing mores. [Photo, courtesy Harlequin Enterprises]

 Under Hickey’s stewardship, Harlequin downsized its staff nearly 20 per cent but kept its author base of roughly 1,000 writers, each of whom is guided by additional market research findings conducted to determine what readers want. As women’s sexual attitudes changed in the 1980s, Harlequin introduced more sophisticated stories in different series. The traditional Harlequin Romance was retained, but new series were added and described in such terms as: Harlequin Presents – “Intense passionate romances that take readers around the world” ; Harlequin Historicals – “Love and passion bring the past to life” ; Harlequin Superromance – “Provocative, passionate, contemporary stories that celebrate life and love” ; Harlequin Intrigue – “The perfect combination of danger and desire”; and Harlequin Temptation – “The sensual passionate face of romantic fantasy about men and women living and loving in the 1990s.”
 
The Godfather of pulp fiction sizzle is William Lawrence Heisey who turned Harlequin Enterprises into a global publishing house. [Photo, courtesy Harlequin Enterprises]

 The resurgence of Harlequin in the 1980s as a more competitive publisher enabled Harlequin to purchase Silhoutte in 1984 and to keep its editorial division separate from its own brand of romantic novel. Harlequin also re-established Simon & Schuster as its distrib uting agent in the U.S., while its worldwide expansion included the establishment of direct mail-order houses in Great Britain, Scandinavia, France, the Netherlands, and Australia and it is at present adding Germany and Italy to that list.

The 23 languages presently in use include Arabic and Turkish. Other languages will be added as the company succeeds in such countries as China, where revenue could far exceed the 1994 operating profit level of $70.7 million and vastly increase the present annual sales of approximately 180 million books that equate to the sale of 5.7 Harlequin paperbacks every second of the day.

Mel James