Feathers Ruffled in Romance Land

You may have heard that Harlequin has inked a deal to steer authors they reject to a press to which they had subcontracted the name Harlequin Horizons. It all blew up a short while ago. Such was the outrage in the romance community, Harlequin quickly realized the harm this move does to its well-known brand. It has since renamed the proposed press DellArte. (Which might cause the Bantam Dell Publishing Group to demand they change the name yet again, but that’s another story.)

Why did Harlequin move so fast? There were hundreds of negative comments all over the media, and especially on influential romance blogs like SmartBitches and Dear Author. And the Romance Writers of America promptly tossed Harlequin off its list of recognized publishers, declaring this supposed self-publishing venture was nothing more than a vanity press. Meanwhile, several other influential writers’ organizations said they viewed the situation with alarm and might consider similar moves. Additionally, Harlequin’s own authors publicly expressed their fury that writers whose work was not considered good enough to be published by Harlequin could soon claim that they were Harlequin authors anyway. Many people concluded that the Harlequin brand was tarnished. Now, Harlequin is distancing itself from its deal, though it has not renounced its plans.

Huge amounts of money are at stake here. Large established publishers feel very much under attack by the new technologies that are changing the way reading material is sold and delivered. Rather than resist all knowledge of Kindles, Sony Readers, and the Nook, of CreateSpace and Lulu and iUniverse, of Samhain and Wild Rose Press, publishers are frantically seeking revenue streams that make use of new technology. Harlequin has already stuck a toe in epublishing, and now is committed to a separate epublishing press, Carina. Harlequin is by no means the first publisher to link itself with some sort of vanity press or self-publishing venture. Thomas Nelson previously announced similar plans.

As to quality, although there are plenty of badly written romance manuscripts that get rejected, the truth is that there are plenty of quite good enough ones (that could use some editing) that for various reasons are not published by Harlequin. They all get submitted to Harlequin, because it’s the largest publisher of romance novels in the world. These rejected stories may not fit the Harlequin image, or they don't follow the latest angle, or they have known sales killers such as pets and sports teams, etc. But people might read them in modest numbers. Anyway, whether readers will or not won't matter to Harlequin, since the authors will pay to be in print and Harlequin will not be responsible for selling these books.

The reason Harlequin can do this at all is that the younger generation of would-be authors expects to pay to publish, not finding it unethical, and is comfortable with the idea of self-publishing, plus expects to self-market. Paying to get published may be the wave of the future. Authors already are expected to pay for their own publicity by the major publishing houses. That has only happened in the last five to ten years; it went from voluntary to mandatory. Will paying for their own editing and printing be the new paradigm? Perhaps.

I guess it all depends on the hopes of the author. Who's to say that if you can self-publish your book and sell 150 copies that it's a failure? In the bad old days, rascally printers charged a fortune and conned you into huge print runs of thousands of copies. Then you were stuck with thousands of unsold copies in your garage. Now your risk is much lower because your initial buy-in is a much smaller dollar figure, and your publicity on the Internet is free. So you arrange to print on demand, or you order a small print run because these are quite economical now, and then you promote it yourself. Thus entirely cutting out the publisher as the middleman.

You will not sell nearly as many copies of your vanity press or self-published book as a conventional publisher can. Authors who imagine that they can outdo the sales of a mass market paperback printing--even a very small one--are in la-la-land. The statistics are against them, as this excellent breakdown of probable costs and sales from the L’esprit d’escalier blog proves.

But even so, what if in the future, all authors self-published? Then conventional publishers would have no authors. This is another reason why publishers are in a panic. They know they can sell more copies of your book than you can, but only if you are willing to come to them. Publishers don’t write books. They edit, produce, and market them to stores, or sell them directly. So it is not surprising that Harlequin and Thomas Nelson and other publishers will continue to investigate offering new versions of the services that as conventional publishers they already do. They have to stay in the game. If the action shifts, they have to go after it.

Many feathers have been ruffled, even though not everyone is free to speak out publicly about Harlequin’s current move. Perhaps ten years from now no one will raise an eyebrow at any of this because publishing will be very different. But today, while the publishing industry is in flux, the prevailing standards and the new standards are rubbing against each other uncomfortably.

Romance or Soap Opera?

Quick, explain the difference between a romance and a soap opera.

Can’t figure it out? Try a concept from college or high school English. What is the underlying view of the world in a romance, versus a soap opera? (Or a real opera, for that matter?) The world view in a romance is optimistic. Sure, bad stuff happens, but the really awful things usually happen before the story starts, not during it. During the present action of the romance, the heroine is on an upward curve even when she might think she’s hit bottom. Once she meets the hero, no matter how hairy things get, her life is on the path of improvement. And most of the time nothing really bad happens to her during the romance. Or will ever happen to her again, because there is always a happy ending.

Contrast that sunny attitude with a soap opera (or a real opera), in which the world view is much more negative and realistic. In English teacher terms, it is naturalistic. Think about what happens in a soap opera: everything. The kitchen sink and then some. Missing brides, twins who steal each other’s identities, abortions, birth defects, job loss, alcoholism and drug addiction, crimes of all sorts, fatal car accidents, fatal diseases, miracle cures of fatal diseases, and more. The soap opera world is the real world with all of its flaws. There are no holds barred. And it never ends. New plot threads begin as others are being resolved, and there never is a happy ending.

Why is the term soap opera named for opera? (We know it’s named for soap because the original radio sponsors were soap manufacturers.) The answer is because they’re both highly dramatic story types that can turn tragic. Additionally, just as all of the adventures in a soap opera might be taking place in a mythical town like Port Charles in “General Hospital,” most operas, because they were written during periods of heavy censorship, tend also to be transposed from the real world to someplace less identifiable. That can make an opera very romantic, because real world events are softened, or very tragic, because real world events are happening to a symbolic figure. And once we have symbolism, we usually have big tragedy.

Despite all the drama and misery of the soap opera (and the opera), romances today are more optimistic than ever. Why? Because romance heroines no longer are passive. In olden days, a romance heroine had to be modest, chaste, and willing to wait. Her role was to remain pure and hold on until chance informed the hero that any blot on her reputation was an error, or fate brought the hero back to her because he’d finished his daring mission, or the hero finally decided he’d prefer to marry a nice girl instead of an obvious tramp. Or whatever. There always were some feisty heroines who pushed along the course of events to make their own happiness. But mostly, it was up to the hero. Today the heroine of a romance is not passive at all. She acts to improve her situation, or even to save the hero and the world. And she always wins. A romance still ends with a happily ever after.

But surprise, romances used to be much more soapy. I’ve read a lot of romances—mostly antique, but not always—that poured on the suffering in soap opera style. The heroine has lost her money, and must choose between the poor-but-honest man she loves and a rich man whom she doesn’t want to touch her. Or the hero has lost his money and there are many scenes of farewell before circumstances improve by sheer chance. There’s a lot of talking about going to work, but not a lot of working in these stories. But then, the heyday of such soap opera romances seems to have been between the world wars. So maybe they’re terribly out of date and not worth discussing. That must have been a rather depressing time to live. The old order was changing, financial insecurity abounded, and men and women found themselves seeking different lives from those of their parents—wait, it’s just like today.

Well, then. I guess those old soap opera romances are a little more relevant than I had thought. Many were based on rigid social standards that were then in the process of crumbling. For instance, a number of them were about the usually taboo subject of the heroine being in love with a married man. He of course hates his wife, but honor keeps him trapped in the loveless marriage. At the end, some force of nature gets rid of the wife in a manner that keeps both hero and heroine pure. Fatal car accidents abound.

The poverty theme was popular. I can remember a heroine who’d lost her fortune repining about how she could no longer wear silk. She hated how rough cheap clothing felt against her very upper class, refined, sensitive body. As someone who has always hated the feel of silk, I found this amusing. But also kind of sad. As if this heroine, raised on such fine things, had had her feet bound. There was no hope that she could adjust to such common garments because she had super-delicate skin. And her only choices seemed to be rich man’s wife or shopgirl. Naturally, there was a nice-but-dull rich man available to sell herself to. But she really loved the young man who could not support her in the style to which she was accustomed, or who was busy being engaged to some perfectly practical and rather bumptious middle-class girl. One who wasn’t so refined and naturally sensitive as our heroine. And so on.

Was it a lot of hooey? Probably. Authors like Ruby M. Ayres, Denise Robins, Maysie Greig, and Olive Higgins Prouty could ring the changes on this kind of story and drag out the suffering for many chapters. The romantic leads did not merely suffer; they suffered at length. That also seems to be a hallmark of the soap opera. Of course the soap opera romance novel is different from a soap opera because it ends happily. Unlike, say, famous soap opera novels that aren’t romances at all, like Stella Dallas, Madame X, or Back Street. Talk about depressing. Let’s just say that these women do not find a happily ever after.

So now you know what the difference is, and you can impress all your friends.

Give Me Back My Enthusiasm

There was a time when I enthusiastically bought every contemporary romance I saw in the bookstores. Then, so many publishers decided to cash in on the popularity of these romances that they started publishing huge numbers of them. At one point there were 150 contemporary romances being published a month. More than I could afford to buy. More than I could read comfortably in a month and still have a life. I had to start thinking about the authors. Did I know who they were? Could I trust the new names to have written halfway decent books, or were they just writing limp copycat tales? I got burned many times, which soon made me resist new names and stick with the tried-and-true originators of the genre. And that’s how a genre loses momentum and trails off. The readers lose their enthusiasm and their trust. Eventually, they start looking for something new and different.

Every time a new subgenre of romance builds, we have that enthusiasm, that secret zest when checking out the bookstores. Will there be another book like the one I read last month? Has anybody else figured out that this is what I’m excited about reading? (For that matter, have I?) What’s available? What’s coming? For the paranormal and erotica subgenres, the last several years have been one excitement after another. Vampires. Werewolves. Three-ways! Demons! Men/men & women/women. Succubi. Is it getting hot in here, or is it just Satan showing up as an antagonist? Or have I checked into a bordello? Shapeshifting, here I come. And lately there has been some notice taken of the Amish romances that even Amish women are reading. That’s a different trend because it’s not about more and more sex, or more and more outlandish fantasy worlds. It’s about a safer and cozier world that we’d like to think already exists right here in America.

But neither is quite right for suburban, sometimes urban, sometimes country me. I’m still looking. My major enthusiasm right now seems to be historical novels of the renaissance told from a female point of view. These are the types of stories I read as a teenager, that caused me to fall in love with the Tudor era. They are (usually) historically accurate and about real people. Although sometimes the authors invent twists (Philippa Gregory being the main perpetrator of questionable historical revisions), even these twists tend to be extrapolations of real historical events. Or plausible additions to what is, after all, a very sketchy record of what happened 500 years ago.

Contemporary romance, though, is my first love. These are the stories of today’s women that can be so empowering because they speak directly to situations we might encounter. I keep looking for something new. The Billionaire’s Bought Bride and that ilk are not it. I no longer find the fantasy of the overpowering male—even if the heroine brings him to his knees—much fun. I admire heroines with the strength to fight the good fight, and all. If you want some escapist fantasy, fending off the attentions of a billionaire certainly qualifies. So go for it. But I’m still looking for contemporary romances that offer insights into women’s lives that aren’t so filled with the battle of the sexes. If that’s possible. Chick lit at its best often conveys such possibilities. But when chick lit hit, the same thing happened to it that has happened to so many genres: overkill by the under-interesting writers. The bloom is also off the rose with paranormal. What little enthusiasm I could dredge up about that subgenre has been bludgeoned to death by lengthy battles between nonhumans. Who are these people and why should I care if the half-demons win against the shapeshifters? Or vice versa? Maybe such battles are metaphors for our country’s confused battles against terrorists and worldwide haters. But I am not feeling the romance in the paranormal genre.

I feel as if I am wandering in a very crowded place—the romance shelves of bookstores are spacious and crammed with new releases—without seeing what I want. Enthusiasm. That’s why most of the art I’ve used today doesn’t feature people. Instead, it suggests possibilities. Come on, romance writers and publishers. Try something new.