Happy New Year! I apologize for not answering sooner but I promised that I’d take the holidays off.

For me the issue is: HQ is now a publisher with a vanity division. What’s the cost benefit analysis of the situation?

Until the initial cost benefit analysis is done, hypothetical have no bearing on the scenario and any decision making.

No matter how you slice it I’m left with: what will RWA do?

What’s their long-term vision of the scenario? How will their decision affect other writers organizations? Which major publishers will follow in Harlequin’s footsteps? What does that mean for authors as a class?

RWA will set a precedent with their dealings with HQ and they will have to live with the long-term implications of their decision because they have the most to lose as it pertains to romance genre marketplace.

I hope that they do a cost benefit analysis rather than concentrating on hypotheticals because hypotethicals tend to concentrate on the short-term rather than the long term.

But the underlying logic — that Harlequin distance itself, as it has already done, from DellArte enough for RWA to treat DellArte as substantially different from HQN’s other lines — is sound.

Sorry, could you explain this one please?

Would either of those steps be enough to satisfy RWA? Or will RWA be satisfied with the steps HQN has already taken?

According to the press, the Harlequin division is outsourced to Author Solutions so it will be Author Solutions employees/contractors who make the “publishing” decisions. There won’t be any picking or choosing of “titles” or absorption of additional duties by Harlequin employees unless Harlequin’s publicly stated business practices as it pertains to DellArte change.

If I’m even close to being right, any money realized from Dellarte would be pure profits on HQN’s spreadsheet. So if the basis for your objection to RWA establishing a proportional cap on vanity-published titles is that it’s financially unworkable from HQN’s viewpoint

If the purpose of the venture is to monetize your slush pile and that slush pile receives ten of thousands of submissions (Kristin from Pub Rants reported 38,000 queries in 2009 for her agency – does Harlequin get more or less?), why would one business (Harlequin) let alone two (Author Solutions) agree to limit releases to only 400 annually? And how would RWA police something like that? Books released through DellArte aren’t required to have an ISBN so using a third party like Bowker would not be available here.

Given Harlequin’s US marketplace expansion (they doubled their releases earlier this decade), their branding deal with NASCAR, creation of a online retail store and aggressive entry into the digital marketspace compared to other traditional publishers, my default position is to view this as a corporate business strategy created with the potential to generate revenue that adds at least 1-5 percentage points to gross profits.

Courtney’s original idea was to provide RWA with a way to rehabilitate HQN imprints to “eligible” status

There are currently 41 “imprints” listed under 8 “divisions” on the eHarlequin website. Or you could say there are 41 “lines” under 8 “imprints”. I’m not sure of the official corporate terminology Harlequin uses and I’m assuming we’re only concerned with the North American marketspace, not the UK or France, etc.

If RWA does breakdown for Harlequin, every publisher that they “approve” would need to “approved” under the same criteria unless Harlequin is granted “special” status.

It would be a nightmare to manage. Not impossible but difficult and a resource hog especially to get a system up and running: defining the criteria, researching corporate structure, testing the data and creating the database to house the information. Then maintaining it.

Re: Avon Books and the rest. I asked Courtney this:

Were they separate entities when they initially applied for eligibility, is this a matter of quick division/imprint recognition for the ease of RWA’s membership and/or a paperwork error by corporate staff?

Regardless of the answer, if Harlequin is parsed with new criteria then all publishers would have to be evaluated and parsed with the new criteria.

But the underlying logic — that Harlequin distance itself, as it has already done, from Dellarte enough for RWA to treat Dellarte as substantially different from HQN’s other lines — is sound.

Sorry, could you explain this one please?

You and I will get to see how RWA handles the situation, and later on, how HQN handles the situation.

The only thing I’m interested in is how RWA conducts itself. That will tell us a lot about their long-term vision of the publishing world and whether or not they are prepared to assist their membership with the changes/challenges that authors will face in the coming years.

What Harlequin does or doesn’t do is of no concern to me because there will always be that next great thing or experiment. Even if Harlequin were to fully divest itself of the DellArte division (not something I believe they’ll do), you can be sure that the issue would come up again. Corporations are like that. They have the resources to keep hammering away at issues year after year.

RWA’s board is not in an easy position. They’re being forced to react. It comes down to principles vs. economic realities vs. the pros and cons. With Harlequin controlling 50% of the romance marketplace, the decision made become huge.

I hope membership moves itself out of reactionary mode and fully considers the long-term implications and the best of the options available to it. This isn’t a right or wrong, either or situation given the scope. But it is an issue which needs indepth analysis, debate and legal council. Perhaps even input from other writers organizations. RWA has the most at stake here but they might be establishing some precedents that reach beyond their membership.

Obviously only a few people know what was actually going through the HQN executives’ heads when they agreed to a joint venture with Author Solutions. My guess is that it seemed like free money: they were providing a massive brand name, a large pool of likely-to-be-motivated customers, and genre-specific expertise. No capital outlay, the joint venture would monetize the slush pile, and any additional work required of HQN staff would be absorbed by existing personnel.

If I’m even close to being right, any money realized from Dellarte would be pure profits on HQN’s spreadsheet. So if the basis for your objection to RWA establishing a proportional cap on vanity-published titles is that it’s financially unworkable from HQN’s viewpoint (i.e, they “need” to get more profit from the venture than that) I’d disagree. With virtually no explicit outlay, any money HQN gets from Dellarte is more profit to an already profitable company. (Obviously, Author Solutions will have overhead and expenses, etc., although that will be spread out over its many vanity press operations, so the proportion attributable to Dellarte will be small.)

I still think my idea might work, and here’s why: If RWA said HQN is an eligible publisher provided Dellarte titles are no more than 25% of HQNs total annual titles, then there’s a cap on Dellarte titles.

Obviously, if fewer than 400 authors want to use Dellarte, no harm no foul. But if more than 400 authors want to use Dellarte, and if HQN wants to make more money from Dellarte, that really does tell us (RWA-members and non-members alike) something about HQN, doesn’t it?

If HQN wanted to retain its eligible publisher status, and was willing to abide by the 400 titles cap, then Dellarte might actually pick & choose among the “applicants” for their services. Which is hardly the imprimatur of quality, but it’s a start. And overflow candidates might get rejection letters from Dellarte that refer them to one of Author Solutions’ other vanity presses!

I have to admit, that last part cracks me up — Can you imagine how annoying it would be to get “rejected” by a vanity press you were referred to? And then referred again to another vanity press? Maybe that’s really the problem: If Dellarte turns down customers, is it screwing up its own business model?

But that’s HQN’s problem. And I don’t have a lot of sympathy with their problems.

Courtney’s original idea was to provide RWA with a way to rehabilitate HQN imprints to “eligible” status, and maybe that’s the way RWA will go. I have an objection to that plan based on the brand-name issue: Not all of HQN’s lines are sufficiently distinct to satisfy conventional notions of an imprint’s identity.

By contrast, Avon is an imprint of Harper Collins, but it has its own independent name recognition: a different house could acquire Avon Books and we’d still expect Avon Books to be Avon Books in quality and style.

Silhouette still has independent name recognition (as does Mills & Boon), but most of the other imprints are branded as Harlequins. “Blaze” is a descriptor more than a stand-alone brand; it tells the reader how racy the romance will be. I think it’s another case of form over substance to treat “Harlequin Historicals” as an imprint equivalent to Avon.

But the underlying logic — that Harlequin distance itself, as it has already done, from Dellarte enough for RWA to treat Dellarte as substantially different from HQN’s other lines — is sound. How RWA implements that will tell us a lot about RWA!

So, everyone’s going to get something out of this: Courtney’s governance-junkie soul will (eventually) get minutes and new by-laws (or something) to pore over. You and I will get to see how RWA handles the situation, and later on, how HQN handles the situation.

It may not be a “happy” new year, but it sure will be interesting!

Not an RWA member. Jane promoted your idea as a win win so I came to read and then had questions. Since you spent 25% of your post advocating for the e-publishers, I thought I’d ask some questions to get more insight into the issue because my outsider perspective says that it’s a very complicated issue.

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That’s why I said that “publisher” was not defined under its bylaws or policies and procedures.

You mention the Policies & Procedure Manual twice. Once when asking what constitutes a “publisher”. You say that the bylaws are silent on the question of what constitutes a publisher but you don’t address what the Policies & Procedure Manual says. The second time you’re calling for the policies & procedures to be amended. From those two paragraph references, I couldn’t make a determination one way or the other so I asked.

As for the eligibility requirements themselves, my understanding is that in their current form (e.g., a form that requires a minimum advance) they are of recent inception. Again, if you are an RWA member, the Eligible Publisher definition was changed to require an advance in the July 8, 2007 board meeting–check the minutes.

I’m not a member. The reason I asked is because I remember the publicity from that time surrounding an RWA “eligible” digital publisher and reaction it garnered from the general online romance community.

My suspicion was that the eligibility change was made on a reactionary basis due to extraordinary circumstances caused by a digital publisher.

You’ve hammered on the $1,000 minimum advance as a potential anti-trust issue so I think it’s important to understand how that change to the publisher eligibility came about and why?

Once we know that, there might be other solutions available that eliminate the need for the advance criteria while meeting the objective of a viable career option for the many (the author group) as opposed to the few (individual authors).

As this issue seems very important to you, I hope you will research the background information further. Perhaps you will be able to propose and advocate solutions that the Board has not thought.

Harlequin’s decision-making process…

Boneheadedness. I think I’ll steal that from you.

For me that “boneheadedness” might translate into:

1. Risk assessment did not look at the writers organizations situation;
2. Risk assessment did not think the writers organizations were a significant concern;
3. Risk assessment didn’t perform due diligence if you’re comment about nominative fair use is any indication;
4. PR wasn’t prepared to do their jobs despite the fact that contract negotiations, new division creation, business practices for the editorial staff, website redesign, logo creation, etc. Pulling all of these individual business components require more than two weeks. The Westbow Press announcement did happen two weeks before the Harlequin announcement but the creation of this publishing venture took much longer than that.
5. And so on.

So why should RWA adjust their “standards” for a “boneheaded” publisher and what happens the next time there’s some new boneheaded business plan from the same publisher or a different one?

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Here’s what I said on Dear Author about your proposals:

1. This would require that every publisher’s divisions and/or imprints be certified, not just Harlequin’s.

2. There would need to be two lists: eligible and ineligible because of potential for name confusion / blurring.

3. Imprints/Divisions come and go so the list would need to be constantly updated.

4. How would RWA certify that Harlequin wasn’t sending slush pile rejections a referral to the vanity division? How would RWA certify that Harlequin editors only discussed eligible imprints?

5. What happens if Harlequin or any publisher imprint failed to live up to criteria? Is RWA wiling to declare the entire enterprise ineligible? a division? Is there an appeal process? Is there a X number of strikes and out policy?

6. Right now the issue is Harlequin & DellArte but we can’t assume the issue starts and ends here. Is RWA willing to monitor all publishers in this fashion down to a division/imprint level once this door gets opened?

7. What happens when the next publisher “experiment” comes along which fails to meet the P.E. List’s criteria, will RWA adjust the criteria then as well so a major publisher can remain eligible?

8. What happens if a vanity publisher decides to open a “non-vanity” division?

Or perhaps the publisher eligibility list just gets scrapped.

Whatever is decided is a major precedent so the decision needs to reflect a long-term view of the issue.

solid e-publishers to become RWA Eligible, with only minor alterations to their practices.

The e-publisher issue is a separate part of the publisher eligibility discussion. Rushing to find a two for one solution in January does neither the digital publishers or RWA’s membership justice. In my view, the solution requires a lot more thought from the Board as well as input from membership and digital publishers.

ETA: If RWA maintained a completely hands-off approach, authors might not have control over their pennames. That is the issue that RWA advocated for, isn’t it?

So what do you think — if RWA told HQN: as long as Dellarte publishes fewer than 400 titles annually (using my arbitrary 25% figure), HQN is still an eligible publisher — would that work? Would the proportional approach work with a different percentage?

Unworkable is the first word that pops into my head. On DearAuthor I ran a few numbers for fun.

1,113 X $600 = $667,800 in total sales (NOT PROFIT) from BASIC service packages in the first year

Assuming that most of the money is in the package and not any subsequent book sales. Now my just-for-fun numbers didn’t include any ala carte purchases. Still for the risk to the brand, one would assume that HQ & AS’s business plan would call for much larger numbers. Using my DA example only because I have the numbers handy, HQ’s 2003 gross profits were $124 million. If the point of this venture is to bring an additional revenue stream in, how many packages would they have to sell in order for it to increase Harlequin’s bottomline enough to be considered worthwhile.

doesn’t that list get broken out to various types of membership depending on whether a member is actively pursuing a writing career, is already published, or just wants to support the industry

The categories can be found in the bylaws.

Re: the 1,600 number I provide that’s the number of “professional” author websites, not the total for those actively engaged in becoming published or the total published authors. Since I’m not a member perhaps Courtney can provide more accurate numbers or percentages for the membership category breakdowns.

One thing of note is that the way RWA handles membership is different than say MWA or SFWA. I believe that RWA is only writers organization that active courts and counts non-”professional” authors as part of it’s membership. Maybe Courtney can qualify that as well.

On this, we are in complete agreement!

What I really want to know is, why are the minutes for that all-important November meeting not on the RWA website yet? It has been 30 days. Has the Board still not approved them? Wah. Governance junkies want to know!

As for the eligibility requirements themselves, my understanding is that in their current form (e.g., a form that requires a minimum advance) they are of recent inception. Again, if you are an RWA member, the Eligible Publisher definition was changed to require an advance in the July 8, 2007 board meeting–check the minutes.

That means that everyone who is an eligible publisher now probably had to recertify in 2007 (my “probably” indicates that I don’t have direct evidence, and this is conjecture) and so any worries about people becoming eligible and just staying on the list without comment or question are probably fruitless. I’m unable to answer some of the other historical questions as the minutes for the decisions are not on the website.

Finally, as to Harlequin’s decision-making process: There were a handful of things that Harlequin has said that makes me think that this decision was, on multiple levels, bone-headed. Not least was the assertion, which I think Harlequin believed, that the “Harlequin Horizons” brand would be author-facing only–something that any halfway decent trademark lawyer should have looked at and said, “AHEM. Nominative fair use, anyone?” Given evidence of boneheadedness in the decision-making process, I am not going to come to any conclusions about what they thought RWA/MWA etc. would do–maybe they made that evaluation and shrugged off the consequences. Or maybe they didn’t think about the implications. Or maybe they assumed after Westbow Press went live without a word from the major writers’ associations that it wouldn’t be a big deal.

No way for us to tell which one it is, but there’s honest boneheadedness going on, so I’m not going to assume that everything here was the result of an honest-to-God profit/loss calculation on their part.

So what do you think — if RWA told HQN: as long as Dellarte publishes fewer than 400 titles annually (using my arbitrary 25% figure), HQN is still an eligible publisher — would that work? Would the proportional approach work with a different percentage?

What I like about it is, smaller publishers with both a fee-based service and a commercial imprint might not be eligible because the number of vanity-published titles would be too large. But a large company like HQN gets the benefit of their proportionally larger numbers.

I guess RWA might restrict it to romance titles, so that Random House can’t drag in every title they publish (and that assumes that they are deemed to have a vanity press, which is not a clear cut thing).

With respect to RWA’s members, doesn’t that list get broken out to various types of membership depending on whether a member is actively pursuing a writing career, is already published, or just wants to support the industry? So then we’re only talking about those members who are actively pursuing a writing career but don’t yet have a contract. Still, as we know, a lot of members aren’t currently writing (gave up or life circumstances or whatever) despite their status.

All I can say, is 1) I hope RWA has great legal counsel, and 2) I’m looking forward to seeing what the National Board comes up with after meeting in Houston next month!