A History of Harlequin

Show Notes

We spoke about Mills & Boon last week and now we're onto Harlequin. While we go through the history of Harlequin, we continue with the lens of how gatekeepers influence the romance genre. While writing this script, I was influenced by John Markert’s book Publishing Romance where he argues that gatekeepers often use their own tastes as a barometer for what readers want. Markert argues another driver for gatekeepers is what they perceive market conditions to be. This often results in gatekeepers acting conservatively as they try and find a product that is similar to yet slightly different from what’s on the market. We talk about a few editors again and how they influenced their authors, Vivian Stephens and her time at Harlequin, how heroines having jobs has been editorial policy since the 80s, and how mass market paperbacks will be dramatically scaled down in the upcoming year.

Bibliography

1921 - The Craft of Fiction by Percy Lubbock

1965 - Stranger Than Fiction by Denise Robins

1981 - “The Ever-Changing Faces of Romance” by Marlouise Oates. Los Angeles Times https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1981/07/05/the-ever-changing-faces-of-romance/ad2cc935-80ae-438a-b664-68188e3f096d/

1983 - Love Lines by Rosemary Guiley

1984 - Love’s $weet Return by Margaret Ann Jensen

1984 - “The Romance Wars: the Harlequin-Silhouete Deal Ended Years of Increasingly Costly Struggle as Expenses Rose and Tastes Changed.” Publishers Weekly. 

1987 - The Romance Revolution by Carol Thurston

1990 - ““No More Virgins”: Writing Romance - an Interview with Emma Darcy” by Albert Moran. The Media of Publishing. https://freotopia.org/readingroom/4.1/Darcy.html

1992 - “Romance Slaves of Harlequin” by Richard Pollak. The Nation

1992 - “Love makes the world go round (?): The romantic novel as a publishing phenomenon” by Frances Whitehead. Logos

1994 - “Media : New Owners Rescue Mills & Boon From Strong Heroes, Pliant Heroines : Venerable British publisher updates its romance novels with materialism, more sex and a bold seductress or two” by William Tuohy. LA Times. https://web.archive.org/web/20210730022717/https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-03-22-wr-37238-story.html

1994 - “A little of the romance goes out of Mills & Boon” by Sally Weale. The Guardian

1996 - The Merchants of Venus by Paul Grescoe

1996 - “Obituary: John Boon” by Jack Adrian, David Waddington. The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-john-boon-5607633.html

1998 - “Category Romances” by George Paizis. The Translator, 4:1, 1-24, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13556509.1998.10799004

1999 - The Romantic Fiction of Mills & Boon 1909 — 1990s by jay Dixon

1999 - Passion’s Fortune: The Story of Mills & Boon by Joseph McAleer

2000 - “Romancing the World: Harlequin Romances, the Capitalist Dream, and the Conquest of Europe and Asia” by Peter Derbyshire - https://www.jstor.org/stable/23414563

2004 - “'Sorry, Harlequin,' She Sighed Tenderly, 'I'm Reading Something Else.’” By Edward Hyatt. The New York Times. https://web.archive.org/web/20210126000409/https://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/17/books/sorry-harlequin-she-sighed-tenderly-i-m-reading-something-else.html

2004 - “Harlequin Reorganizes Editorial Team” by Jim Milliot. Publishers Weekly. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/print/20040816/25866-harlequin-reorganizes-editorial-team.html

2007 - “The Black Romance” by Belinda Edmondson. Women’s Studies Quarterly. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27649661

2007 - On Writing Romance: How to Craft a Novel That Sells by Leigh Michaels

2008 - “And I deliver’: An interview with Emma Darcy by Glen Thomas. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies

2008 - The Art of Romance Mills & Boon and Harlequin Cover Designs by Joanna Bowring

2009 - “Digital Romance: When it comes to format, romance readers are promiscuous” by Rose Fox. Publishers Weekly. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/print/20091116/26153-digital-romance.html

2010 - “An insider's guide to writing for Mills & Boon” by Alison Flood. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/feb/15/insider-guide-writing-mills-boon

2010 - Fabulous at Fifty Recollections of the Romantic Novelists’ Association 1960–2010 edited by Jenny Haddon & Diane Pearson

2011 - “At Harlequin, Toye Retires, Moggy Rises.” Publishers Weekly. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/people/article/45894-at-harlequin-toye-retires-moggy-rises.html

2011 - “Harlequin Announces Stoeker’s Retirement, Personnel Changes.” Publishers Weekly. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/people/article/46271-harlequin-announces-stoecker-s-retirement-personnel-changes.html

2014 - “Torstar Sells Harlequin to News Corp.” CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/torstar-sells-harlequin-to-news-corp-for-455m-1.2629450

2014 - “Harlequin Mills & Boon's First Black Romance?” by Laura Vivanco. https://vivanco.me.uk/blog/post/harlequin-mills-boons-first-black-romance

2014 - “Patterns and Trends in Harlequin Category Romances” by Jack Elliot. Advancing Digital Humanities

2014 - “Love Affair With Digital Over For Romance Publisher Harlequin?” by Jeremy Greenfield. Forbes https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremygreenfield/2014/03/06/love-affair-with-digital-over-for-romance-publisher-harlequin/

2014 - “Three Reasons News Corp Bought Harlequin, World’s Biggest Romance Book Publisher” by Jeremy Greenfield. Forbes https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremygreenfield/2014/05/02/news-corp-buys-harlequin-worlds-biggest-romance-book-publisher-three-reasons/

2014 - “Romance and Innovation in Twenty-First Century Publishing” by Olivia Tapper. Publishing Research Quarterly

2017 - “jay Dixon: Write the best novel you can!” https://romanticnovelistsassociationblog.blogspot.com/2017/07/jay-dixon-write-best-novel-you-can.html

2017 - “Romance Was His Metier” by Steven Heller. PRINT. https://www.printmag.com/daily-heller/harlequin/

2019 - “How Capitalism Changed American Literature” by Dan Sinykin. Public Books https://www.publicbooks.org/how-capitalism-changed-american-literature/

2021 - “Marketing Love: Romance Publishers Mills & Boon and Harlequin Enterprises, 1930–1990” by Denise Hardesty Sutton

2022 - “‘Dance between Raindrops’: A Conversation with Vivian Stephens” with Julie E. Moody-Freeman. Journal of Popular Romance Studies - chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.jprstudies.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/DBRACWVS.05.22.pdf

2022 - “Harlequin and LGBTQ+ Romance: A Chat with Dianne Moggy.” https://www.writeforharlequin.com/23048-2/

2024 - “Passion, Profit and Prejudice: The Women Behind the Rise of Mills & Boon 1936-1976” by Vic Pickup. Women’s History Today

2024 - “Words of Wisdom from Harlequin’s Vice President of Editorial” by Marcia King-Gamble. https://romancingthegenres.blogspot.com/2024/11/words-of-wisdom-from-harelquins-vice.html

2025 - “Readerlink Will Stop Distributing Mass Market Paperbacks at the End of 2025” by Jim Milliot. Publishers Weekly https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/industry-deals/article/97161-readerlink-will-stop-distributing-mass-market-paperbacks-at-the-end-of-2025.html

2025 - “Publishers Plan for a New Mass Market Paperback Winnowing” by Jim Milliot. Publishers Weekly https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/97179-book-publishers-plan-for-a-reduced-mass-market-paperback-footprint.html

Transcript

Beth

Welcome to Reformed Rakes, a historical romance podcast that still reads mass market paperbacks. My name is Beth, and I write at the Substack Ministrations.

Chels

My name is Chels. I'm the writer of the romance newsletter The Loose Cravat.

Emma

And I'm Emma, a law librarian writing about justice and romance at the Substack Restorative Romance.

Beth

Last episode we spoke about the history of category romance publisher Mills & Boon, along with some of the decisions made by the Boon brothers and editors there that have influenced the romance genre. This time we’re heading over to Winnipeg, Canada to examine the other big category romance publisher, Harlequin. Starting in 1949 as a paperback distributor, Harlequin has reached international heights and branding with books published across 110 countries in 34 languages. While I will discuss the history of Harlequin, I will continue with the lens of how gatekeepers influence the romance genre.

While writing this script, I was influenced by John Markert's book Publishing Romance, where he argues that gatekeepers often use their own tastes as a barometer for what readers want. He also argues another driver for gatekeepers is what they perceive market conditions to be. This often results in gatekeepers acting conservatively as they try and find a product that is similar to, yet slightly different from what's on the market.

Harlequin bought Mills & Boon in 1971. Harlequin needed the editorial and product that Mills & Boon had, while Mills & Boon needed a cash infusion. Harlequin was seen as the marketers and Mills & Boon as the real publishers. This episode, we'll talk about Harlequin's Gatekeepers, its business decisions, and how both those things have contributed to how we define a romance novel.

Okay, so my primary sources for this script are The Merchants of Venus by Paul Gresco and Romance Publishing by John Markert. Gresco's book draws on some unpublished research and interviews. He is a journalist writing for a general audience, and his chapters sometimes you're into making characters out of the players in Harlequin. Gresco has a few asides at times where he talks about growing up in Winnipeg and knowing of the Bonnycastle family. So I think that's of his interest in this book because he is a business journalist, and his company came from there. It's like a flyover province. Sorry, Manitoba.

Emma

I love this Canadian local angle we're getting.

Beth

It's like if a big company came out of North Dakota. I don't know, just a random state. I understand the feeling because when I read a romance book and it's set in Toronto or something, I'm like, Hey.

I like Paul Gresco's book. That made it sound like I didn't. I I think it's good. I like the research he pulls together. I think it just that journalist tendency to make it more of a narrative, so the reader can follow along better. And he published that book in 1996. And then Romance Publishing by John Markert, that came out in 2016. We have a bit of a gap. Markert's approach tracks the gatekeepers in romance publishing and line developments across publishers. You can tell he's a teacher because he summarizes the point of each chapter at the end of it. He'll have a whole chapter and then a little conclusion, which I'm a huge fan of.

He worked as an associate professor of sociology at Cumberland University, and he founded a group, the Markert Group, which provides market research for companies. I think this background is useful to know when you're reading this book because Markert focuses a lot on how romance publishers fail to listen to readers. So he's coming at this from someone who's advised businesses. Although I don't think he entirely approaches this as a business venture, if that makes sense. You can tell he has respect for the genre and its readers, and he can clearly point to when publishers are screwing over their workers. I really like both these books. And then if I am referencing other books, when we're doing the episode, I'll shout out those books. I think we'll just get into it because we talked about categories last time.

Okay. In 1949, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Richard Bonnycastle, Jack Palmer, and Doug Weld founded Harlequin, a publishing firm that specialized in mass market reprints. Doug Weld initially hired Bonnycastle as managing director at his family printing firm, Advocate Printers. With Harlequin, Bonnycastle handled the printing and Jack Palmer, the title selection. The first several years, they lost money. Bonnycastle had other businesses, and his attention wasn't wholly on Harlequin. Gresco quotes Richard's son, who has the same name, but who I will refer to by the nickname he got at school, Bones, as saying his father—

Chels

Bones? Bones? Bones. Bones. Bones, Harlequin?

Beth

Bones, Bonnycastle

Chels

Bones, Bonnycastle.

Beth

I have to add, no one called him by this name. Absolutely no one. It was like a little aside that Gresco has, and I'm like, I'm absolutely calling him that.

Chels

We're going to call him Bones.

Beth

I should just call him Junior, but we're sticking to it. So Gresco says that Bones said that his father initially mismanaged Harlequin. In 1952, Jack Palmer died, leaving Bonnycastle without someone to choose books, arrange reprint rights and send those selections to the printers in Winnipeg. Richard Bonnycastle didn't shut down the publishing house so he wouldn't have to contend with returns and lost profit. His disinterest allowed for his secretary, Ruth Palmour, to be effectively Harlequin's manager. Ruth is one of the early players in Harlequin credited with the move to romance.

Gresco says, "Almost from the beginning, she had noticed that the more romantic sounding the book, the better it sold." Gresco gives credit to Ruth's work, although he frames her this way:

Chels

“Never to marry, she was the archetypical employee who was wed to her work, if not to her employer. “How could she not have been madly in love with him?” wonders her boss’s younger daughter, Judy, who would one day collaborate with her. “Ruth was extraordinary, the quintessential organizer of the century. She was like stepping into a cool lake, wonderfully calm. It wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for Ruth.” Wait, so hold on. I need to pause, pause, pause. Time out. So she's in love with Bones?

Emma

Or she's in love with Bones' dad.

Beth

But I don't think she's actually in love with him. I think this is just Judy's assessment of the situation. And I don't like the assessment of the situation. Imagine you're really good at your job and your boss's daughter is like, she's got to be in love with him, right? Yeah.

Chels

To be fair, I didn't see them on a daily. She was stepping into a cool lake.

Beth

Maybe she was for all I know. But there's something about this characterization that rubs me the wrong way.

Emma

Yeah, it also sounds like Ruth's awesome. Maybe he's in love with Ruth. Wait, who knows?

Chels

No. Judy is in love with Ruth. Right. She's in love. She says that she was stepping into a cool lake. So Judy is projecting these feelings onto Ruth, who's unfortunately not in love with Bones. I just want to keep saying Bones. She's in love with...

Emma

Bones' dad.

She's in love with Daddy Bonny—Bones' dad. Daddy Bonnycastle.

Beth

So we're mostly talking about Richard. I just... Because they both have the same names. I had to distinguish.

Chels

Richard. Okay.

Beth

So Bones.

Chels

Okay. I'll stop saying Bones. I'll stop asking it for talking about Bones. I'll assume that you'll tell me. You'll just say, It's Bones time, Chels, and then I will know.

Beth

Good. Excellent. Okay. So, Jack Palmer’s 25 percent of the company went to Richard Bonnycastle, who wasn’t a shareholder at the company’s founding. The third founder Doug Weld returned his stock to Richard because the future of Harlequin seemed “bleak.”

Chels

RIP

Beth

Richard Bonnycastle enlisted his wife Mary Bonnycastle as an editor since Harlequin was struggling. Grescoe recounts this conversation between Richard and Mary, where she asked him, why was the business struggling, and he responded, the only books selling well were the nurse romances. To that, Mary Bonnycastle said, “You see! What women want is a nice story with a happy ending.”

Chels

And the H-E-A was born.

Emma

Thank you, Mary Bonnycastle. I guess.

Beth

Richard asked Mary if she would read and recommend titles to reprint, part of Jack Palmer's job. She responded, “I’ll have nothing to do with those sex books. . . . And I don’t know anything about the business part.” To which Richard said, he'd take care of it. And by it, I mean the business part.

Chels

There's going to be no sex books.

Beth

Ruth coordinated with publishers to ask for books that might be reprinted. So we have Ruth Palmour as the not in a manager and married Bonnycastle, who edited novels, quote, “while knitting, relaxing in the sunroom, even propped up in bed." I added that because I have worked from home and I've done work out of bed, and I don't think my work is less work just because I was sitting in my bed and I was cozy instead of in my office.

Chels

It's like, well, she... And also, she's not actually knitting while she's editing the book. I think Gresco is taking some license—I've noticed this... Okay, so I have read this book, and he has this thing where he characterizes women in weird ways. I think at the very beginning, Katherine Falk.

Beth

Oh, he was very rude about her.

Chels

Yeah. He was like, oh, she's gaining weight. I'm like, Was that really necessary?

Beth

Did we need to know that?

Chels

Yeah. Or he was also the one who was saying that he was framing Janet Daily and Bill, this one quote from the Janet Daily companion. He took it and made it seem... He was like, Well, that's not very feminist, is it? Yeah. He was like, You're a supreme feminist, Paul Gresco.

Beth

Because Janet would bring Bill coffee in the morning.

Chels

Coffee and juice in bed every morning. Yeah. So in the Janet Daily companion, it's an actual quote from Janet Daily, and she's Oh, yeah. We do nice things for each other. I bring him coffee and juice. I wake up at like 4: 00 AM and I start working and then I bring him juice, and then he gets up and he starts working. And then when Paul Gresco tells that version, he's like, what is happening here? This is very sinister and controlling. So he just has this, I feel like sometimes when he talks about women, which is you're talking about romance, a lot of women characters come in here. Sometimes he's a little weird.

Beth

Yeah, that's what I meant in the beginning. He makes people into characters or, like you said, characterizing people in a way that is not, it's not my favorite.

Emma

He's connecting dots that probably a lot of bad faith readers would connect. And so maybe if you're reading this in bad faith, you don't notice that he's doing that for you. But as someone who is ostensibly trying to write something that is a history or has some objective lens, he doesn't need to be doing all that. Yeah.

Beth

And to be fair to Gresco, there's an editor we'll talk about Fred Kerner, and I think he clocks Fred Kerner pretty well, what he's about. And I appreciated how he would in text call Fred Kerner on some of the stories he would tell and how they were a bit self-serving. And I was like, That feels accurate.

Chels

Yeah. For all the criticisms of the book, it is very compelling. I feel like writing for... It's funny at times, too. I don't know.

Beth

It's a good thing. I feel people want something to be entirely bad or like, this is... I'm like, This is just... We can talk—there's multiple angles here.

Okay. So Gresco says several times in Chapter Two, which is all about the Bonnycastles, that Richard, Mary, and Ruth Palmour all note how well the medical romances sold. Mills & Boon wasn't the only publisher doing nurse romance novels. Gresco has a picture of Girls in White by Rona Randall in his book, which was initially published by Arcadia Publishing in 1952. Ruth was the one to bring Mills & Boon books to Richard, saying that they should reprint them. He agreed. She wrote a letter to Mills & Boon on May 8th, 1957.

Emma

Dear sirs, We are looking for light romances dealing with doctors and nurses for publication in our Harlequin line of paper-covered pocket-type books, and wonder if the Canadian reprint rights for any of your books of this type might be available to us.Our royalty rates are 1.4C per copy sold in a 35C edition, with an advance against royalty of $200. payable on publication which would be within a year of completion of agreement. Our initial printings of nurse and doctor titles are presently 25,000 copies.If you are interested in submitting books to us, we would be glad to receive copies of some of your doctor and nurse titles. Mary Burchell’s “Hospital Corridors” might be particularly suited to Canadian readers if, as I understand, it has a Montreal setting.

We shall look forward to hearing from you. Yours very truly, Harlequin Books Limited, Ms, in parentheses, Ruth Palmour, Secretary. I love her.

Beth

She's great. They responded.

Chels

Dear Ms. Palmer, Thank you very much for your letter. We note your interest in the Canadian reprint rights of doctor and nurse titles. As you request, we have today forwarded you a copy of Mary Burchell’s HOSPITAL CORRIDORS, and, as you suggest, in the next day or so we will also be forwarding you some other titles we have published which have hospital/doctor etc. backgrounds. Yours sincerely, Mills & Boon, Limited. Alan W. Boon. My man. Just kidding. He's bad, right? I'm forget.

Yeah, he's not great. But I'm Alan.

Beth

Yeah, you're reprising your role.

I had to put these letters in full, because it was just this one little letter that has grown into this huge corporation. It's just a little crazy to me.

Chels

Yeah, it just sounds so casual. It's like, Hey, do you have any knock doctor and nurse books? Yeah, sure. Yeah, here you go. We've got some. And then a dynasty was born.

Beth

Seriously, though. Yeah. Okay, so now we're reprinting Mills & Boon books, and we're going to talk a bit about how Mary Bonnycastle edited. Bones, our man Bones—Bones said of his father, Richard, that he never read the Mills & Boon reprints. Ruth read them first and then sent them home with Richard to be edited by Mary.

Emma

Maybe Ruth's in love with Mary.

Chels

I'm just like...we need to get to the bottom of this.

Beth

I feel like we just have lots of love triangles happening here.

Chels

I'm like Charlie in Always Sunny—

Emma

I don't want to assume that anyone is in love with Richard Bonnycastle. I doubt his sexual charms. For no reason.

Beth

That's fair. Yeah. Okay. He returned them the next day with Mary's notes. So Richard returned them the next day with Mary's notes. I did cover Mary's editing style in our previous episode on Mills & Boon. But as a refresher, she removed all swearing, If a villain was French-Canadian, she would change that. Which I think it's hilarious as an Albertan, Keep the villain French-Canadian.

Chels

How many French-Canadian villains were she?

Beth

I don't know, right? That was an example that Gresco used, though. So I'm like, Obviously, I have to keep that.

Emma

Was she French-Canadian? Or was she just was instead of that?

Beth

I think it's just, if it's Canadian, you just Canadians can't be villains, maybe. I don't know. That's insane, though.

Oh, just Canadians in general.

Okay. Yeah. I think that's what it is. Or that's just like, it maybe doesn't have to make sense, which is also a theme of this episode. It's just editors decide things based on their own taste. She just thinks that Canadians shouldn't be villains. She kept Britishisms because they charmed her. She turned down books that, quote, “that were not well enough written in the way of good English.” Her "pecking away" annoyed Alan Boon in part because he felt they were more true to life when it came to integrating sex. He said"

Chels

"Our books were pretty prim [...] We felt they had to be more realistic, which really means a bit more sexy. Mrs. Bonnycastle felt they shouldn't bring a blush to the cheek."

Beth

Grescoe relates this story where the Anglican Archbishop of Rupertsland summoned Richard Bonnycastle to his office and then chastised him for one of the slightly “steamy” Harlequins another parishioner had brought to him. Mary didn’t even let the word damn in a Harlequin after that. Mary and Richard’s daughter Judy Burgess joined as an editor in the mid-1960s and her editing style matched her mother’s.

In 1963, Richard Bonnycastle hired three sales reps and sent them to the Western and Midwest States. This move into America was prompted by Bones. The books did well enough that four years after Richard Bonnycastle had originally approached Simon & Schuster's Pocket Books division, they agreed to distribute to the rest of the States, not covered by those first three sales reps. And this is important to remember, Pocket Books is their American distributor. This will come up again. Bones suggested to his father that they should buy Mills & Boon, but Richard Bonnycastle never got around to it. He kept his attention on public life and his hobbies.

In 1968, Richard Bonnycastle died from heart failure. After the death of his father, Bones could finally go after buying Mills & Boon. This is his significant contribution as his attention with Harlequin faltered as he, like his father, cared more about his hobbies in Western Canada. Bones said, “I found that as businesses get big [...] I lost interest in them.”

Emma

There. There we go.

Beth

In 1969, Bones moved Harlequin's headquarters from Winnipeg to downtown Toronto as part of a strategy to take the company public. Ruth stayed in Winnipeg as Secretary Treasurer. They bought a learning supplies company to increase their capital and value to attract an underwriter which worked.

Something I would like to draw attention to, but not talk about much, is how Harlequin expanded into the international market. Mills & Boon did this as well, but Harlequin negotiated more favorable deals for themselves and expanded into many, many countries. Before merging with Harlequin, Mills & Boon, like other publishers in Britain, had colonial editions. This was using smaller publishers in Commonwealth countries to print their books, mostly selling in English-speaking countries with foreign translation rights sold to Norway, Germany, and Holland. Harlequin's international presence is important because that's what attracts HarperCollins in buying them later in 2014. They had really cultivated an international presence. For example, in 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, Harlequin instituted practice known as product sampling, giving away 700,000 Harlequin romance novels for free, thus making a market for themselves. Harlequin was selling romance novels in newsstands just four months later. We're going to circle back to this point, so we'll put a pin in it when we talk about Vivian Stephens' time as editor at Harlequin. And the pin is the international market.

In 1970, Bones hired several VPs, and in 1971, hired Lawrence Heisey as President of Harlequin. Formally at Procter & Gamble, for 13 years, Heisey had managed the departments over “media, market research, copy, and commercial production." Bones purposely wanted someone outside of publishing, saying:

Emma

"I didn’t want someone to sell books - we’re selling product. I had the idea of getting a guy out of a senior U.S. company who’d run a big division. So [a headhunter] came up with two: one ran a $300 million consumer-products division of Borden, and Heisey. I was favoring the guy from Borden. Just because Larry was a little bit. . . effeminate [...] But the other guy turned us down. So I was left with Larry - which was probably a damn good thing, because it turned out he was exactly right.

Beth

Gresco...

Chels

Pause.

Beth

He points out why he says effeminate. And he just is like, Bones is like a... Anyone is effeminate if they're from the city, from the East Coast.

Chels

Okay. Okay.

Emma

Because was he gay or did he just lived in an urban area? Unclear.

Beth

This is what Gresco says, "And here the rough-cut Western rancher is passing judgment on the cultured Eastern urbanite." So I just...

Chels

I don't know. But it's just such a specific... I feel like I don't see effeminate as like, Oh, these city dwellers who don't ranch. I thought that they're doing these, too.

Beth

I don't know. I'm not surprised.

Emma

I feel like dot, dot, dot.

Chels

I feel like Gresco is being deliberately obtuse because I think, honestly, I think that Bones has some deep-seated, bone-deep, if you will, homophobias.

Emma

Gresco did not have to put the ellipsis in there. That's an implied ellipsis. It's like, Gresco, you're giving us the dots to connect here.

Chels

Yeah.

Beth

Okay. The other idea we should take away from this other than effeminate is that Heisey did market his books like products, often using the tactics and target audience he'd cultivated at Proctor & Gamble. I think it's important to note Harlequin's general approach to publishing, but this isn't always a capital "B" bad thing. Heisey approached the books like products, so I don't think he had the same moral obligation that Bonnycastles had. His goal was to sell books.

As I've touched on, Mary Bonnycastle and Judy Burgess often edited what they deemed immoral out of the Mills and Boom novels before reprinting them, books that had already been sold and done well in the UK. This extended to outright not publishing certain authors that violated their moral code. The Boons fared their biggest authors and violators of this code, Janet Winspear and Mather and Hampton, would move publishing houses if they couldn't access the North American market. Lawrence Heisey said of the situation:

Chels

“Mrs. Bonnycastle in the early days, and then Judy Burgess, her daughter, had decided on a sort of decency code for our readers. And they failed to keep up with the readers. And Alan Boon knew, because these books were selling well in England.”

Beth

So, Heisey introduced a new technique to publishing called blind sampling. They sent a copy of a more sensual Mills & Boon novel, along with Harlequin's regular books in plain covers with all identification removed. So like your A/B test. They sent 400 copies to a random selection of North American readers. The rejected Mills & Boon books, so like the higher sensual books, scored higher than the accepted Harlequin books. So Harlequin started publishing the previously rejected books and authors.

Markert points out something which I want to add, and that Harlequin editors Mary Bonnycastle and Judy Burgess were doing well within their existing system. Chasteness did and does appeal to readers. Mary Bonnycastle said in 1969, We get hundreds of letters from women telling us how wonderful it is to read a pleasant, well written book without being subjected to psychological and sexual problems. I had always said that women wanted that kind of book."

So they never solicited feedback, and the feedback they did get reinforced their editing style. This becomes a pattern we will see with editors. So I don't love that they edit it that way, but I don't want to frame them like that they were crazy.

Does that make sense? Like the feedback they were getting, it makes sense why they kept editing that way. And they were cultivating that audience. If you're going to read that book, then you probably like that book. Yeah.

Chels

I don't have to bring it back to Barbara Cartland, but super popular at this point and then also had no sex in her books.

Emma

There's also a little bit of... I think we've identified this on TikTok before, where there's like what people... If you ask somebody what they wanted from a romance. And that might be slightly different than the response they give with A/B testing. You actually give them the romance. I think there also might be a gap there because I feel like a lot of... I think a lot of people who say there's too much sex in romance are reading romance that has sex in it. I think people are often, not bad, it's not quite the word. They struggle to articulate what they like in something. And so it's a skill gap. Not everyone can do that. You just read things. And so I'm not surprised also that there might be a gap with what people are writing letters about versus if they're filling out a survey of actual market. Market testing designed to get accurate results, opposed to the anecdotal Bonnycastle feedback loop.

Beth

Yeah, I think that's true. I think sometimes people just articulate the thing that they're currently reading. You don't know what you don't know. You might really like something, but if it hasn't been presented to you yet, then maybe you wouldn't fill that out as feedback to a company that is soliciting it.

So this conflict of how much sex to have in a book also reflects how each company pictured the other. Mills & Boon as the actual publishers and Harlequin as the marketers. Bones sided with Mills & Boon in their review saying, “I was constantly protecting the Boon brothers from the depredations of the Toronto people who all imagined they were publishers. They weren’t - they were distributors. The Boons were in the book trade." I think there is truth to that. Harlequin hadn't been founded or organized to be a publisher. Its origins were in distributing. When they got in the business, that's what paperbacks were for. Also, the level of sexuality in books conflict resulted in the creation of the more sensual line, Harlequin Presents, which debuted in May 1973. The Harlequin romance line had been created in 1961 to distinguish from the other books Harlequin reprinted.

Although in 1964, they moved to reprint only Mills & Boon romances anyway. Markert says about Presents, “The editors were probably right to assume that Romance readers, used to a certain style, would be put off by the sudden appearance of sensuality in the series. Heisey shared this view, which is why the new books were not incorporated into the existing Romance line. The launching of a new line was a management decision, not an editorial one. The new line was supposedly differentiated to avoid reader confusion and to indicate the more sensual aspects of Presents’ books, but the reader would be challenged to tell this from the covers."

So I have two covers for you guys to look at. If you want to scroll down. Remember, Romance is supposed to be the sweeter one and Presents is the more sensual.

Emma

Oh, she has sluttier eyeliner.

Chels

That was literally the only... I was just like, Oh, she's like, maybe she contoured?

I know, right? So, the Harlequin romance cover, it's called to To Tame a Vixen by Anne Hampson. And it's this blonde woman, and she's just sweetly looking up at this man who has his hand on her shoulder. There's trees in the background. It's this nice setting, just a very neutral. I don't even know what face that is. And then, Chels, do you want to describe the Harlequin presents?

Yes, this is Harlequin presents. It's by Roberta Leigh. It's called beloved Ballerina. So she is the ballerina. She's staring off into the distance. She has a very dramatic eyeliner. Her face is—she's smizing, maybe? She's smizing. So she's got a very sultry expression. And then there's a city behind her, a cityscape behind her. So she's alone on it. And is she a short hair? Or maybe it's pulled back. But her hair is pulled away from her face. So I do see-

Emma

The city is vaguely not American. It looks maybe European in some way, vaguely.

Chels

Yeah, that doesn't seem like American architecture. But she's beloved. So yeah, I guess I would say she-

Beth

One would say a beloved ballerina.

Chels

She's a beloved ballerina. Yeah, I guess I would say that there's a little bit of a doe-eye thing going on in the early one. And then beloved ballerina is like, she seems more mature and maybe more like...

Beth

It just feels like the makeup. Yeah, it's really...

Chels

Makeup can do a lot, though.

Beth

But seriously, though. But I'm like, this is what the art that people are trying it. This is the central difference between these two.

Emma

Yeah, I can't emphasize enough that this is not a clinch cover.

Chels

No. It is...

Emma

They could easily be the same line. They could easily be the same line. I would also believe you.

Beth

Yeah. And these two lines are still going. So I don't know. Anyway. So in Gresco's history, it's Dick Bellringer. It's Dick Bellringer, the VP of Sales, who came up with the Presents line. Gresco quotes how John Boon disagreed with Dick getting the credit:

Emma

"We deserve the credit. Harlequin knew nothing about publishing. They were marketers. They said that books could be sold like soap. But books aren’t soap." This is just like You've Got Mail. The olive oil quote? I keep thinking about it. I've heard Joe Fox give me your books to vats of olive oil.

Beth

I got to watch that movie again. I need to add that this increased level of sex in genre romance is still not at the level of what would come in the '70s and '80s. We will see that Harlequin, again, lags behind how much sex to incorporate into its books. As we touched on in the Mills & Boon episode, increased sexuality and romance novels from the '70s on started with the publication and success of The Flame and the Flower by Kathleen Woodiwiss. Then Vivian Stephens brought on-page sex to a contemporary romance during her time at Dell as she developed the Candlelight Ecstasy Line that influenced romance publishing at large.

Emma

So is this closed-door romance, or would you think it's more like they're having premarital sex? Or what is the level of sex I should be imagining?

Chels

Janet Daily said that they didn't go below the waist in the '70s. So I imagine it's like, if it's just like anything that happens is off page.

Beth

So I think in 1967, the first on-page sex scene with the Mills & Boon book, The Garden of Persephone, it was maybe more metaphorical. They're not doing body parts.

Emma

Okay.You know that the two characters are having sex and that- And that a flowery- And there's like, fireworks are going off in the background.

Beth

Yeah, something like that. So I think it's insinuating or you get that they're having sex, but it's not at the level that I think it's going to happen. Okay, so I said Harlequin weren't editors, really, but they began building that infrastructure. Fred Kerner joined Harlequin in 1975 as a vice President and editor-in-chief. He previously worked as a sports writer, news editor, proofreader, editor, and ghostwriter. I think in hiring Fred Kerner, it signaled the next big step for Harlequin. I don't want to downplay the work of Mary Bonnycastle and Judy Burgess, but they didn't have that infrastructure of a publishing firm. They reprinted books and edited according to their style, and they were inexperienced when hired. Kerner had the go ahead to fire anyone, which resulted in three hirings out of a staff of five. Helen Heller, an editor hired in the early '80s, said of Kerner, "He ran a good and tight ship with the highest editorial standards of any house. He was hyper-careful about editing and proofreading. He would never countenance more than two typos in any book.” These editing standards contrasted with Mills & Boon's. Kerner relays a story about a Mills & Boon author, Roberta Leigh, who said, If her secretary didn't catch an error, then the editors at Mills & Boon wouldn't.

He reiterated that Mills & Boon didn't edit their books. Kerner's hiring shifted "the balance of editing power from London to Toronto," according to Gresco. I agree this was the start of that shift, because as we will see, Kerner still met with roadblocks from the Boons in the early '80s.

Another quick note is that in 1975, the Torstar Corporation bought a good chunk of Harlequin's shares, with Bones selling out the last of his shares in 1979. Heisey and Bones made tens of millions. Gresco, writing in 1996, says that Harlequin continues to keep Torstar afloat financially. In 2014, News Corp bought Harlequin as a division of HarperCollins. With Bones leaving, it was the end of the Bonnycastle era for the company. Ruth Palmour had retired from Harlequin in 1977. Judy Burgess still stayed on as an editor for three years, but this family business had been swallowed up by a media conglomerate.

We've gone extensively into Janet Daily in the past, so the only thing I will touch on here is how she was the first American author allowed through the Mills & Boon gate. Thousands of people had submitted manuscripts to Harlequin, and the good ones were sent on to Mills & Boon.

They never published any of them. Markert frames this as pride on Mills & Boon's part and an attempt to maintain some independence from Harlequin. Eventually, they conceded and allowed one American through. From Markert, “We will never know exactly why Mills & Boon editors selected Dailey’s manuscript from among the thousands of other unsolicited submissions. Luck and timing certainly had something to do with it, since many equally well-written, American-themed romance novels crossed the border into Canada by post and were forwarded on to London. Many of these rejected American authors later would be published by Harlequin’s American-based competitor, Silhouette, when it opened its doors in 1980 to compete head-on with Harlequin.”

Dailey first published with Mills & Boon in 1974. This could have led to more romance novels being set in America, but to John Markert and Fred Kerner's despair, Harlequin didn't, nor did it create a line based on America at that time, based on Dailey's success. So this leads us to our next big defining conflict of the early '80s for Harlequin, which is the rise of Silhouette, which formed after Harlequin dropped Pocket Books as their American distributor. And so, Simon & Schuster, again, Pocket Books is a division of Simon & Schuster, they created Silhouette.

Gresco and Markert see this as a massive misstep on Lawrence Heisey's part. Before this, Harlequin dominated the romance market, and they really dominated, I have to, like 80% of the market. It was like all Harlequin before this. “As I’ve been heard to say,” Heisey told [Grescoe] with a smile, “I believe in free enterprise. I hate competition.”

The CEO of Simon & Schuster, Dick Snyder, thought similarly to Harlequin in that books were products, and it was better to sell a bad book than no book at all. From Gresco, “A former s&s sales rep once said, only half humorously, ‘Simon & Schuster runs a sales contest every year. The winners get to keep their jobs.’” Heisey and the upper management at Harlequin naively thought Pocket Books would simply accept that Harlequin would walk away with a large portion of their profits.

Heisey and two VPs met with Dick Snyder in 1976, intending to only give him the rest of the few months left on their deal. Snyder complained so much. Harlequin extended distribution with Pocket Books for three years. This gave Snyder enough time to create his own romance line. Silhouette did this through another misstep on Harlequin's part, tapping into unpublished American writers.

Apparently, there was a handshake agreement between Bones and the Boons that the Canadians wouldn't interfere with editorial practices. However, Kerner still tried to create an American line. The Boons stopped this development twice. In 1977, Kerner brought in an art director and editorial manager and trained his staff to edit. He connected with agents who sent him manuscripts with $4,000 to $8,000 advance is. I quickly looked up the inflation for this. I think 4,000 from 1977 to today is $22,000. So he's putting up some money. I don't know if that's a good... We're not authors. Don't come for us. But that feels like a lot of money for a first-time author, I'm assuming, because they don't have any.

Emma

Is this a Canadian dollar or American dollar?

Beth

That's a good question. I don't know how that would work because they would be operating in both countries. So I feel like if you're American, they're probably paying you an American dollar. Okay, so the Boons convinced Torstar to not develop the line. A month later, Kerner tried to develop a New World line, which was again blocked. Gresco says, "Harlequin was left with scores more of unusable manuscripts to be returned to authors and agents for resale." Kerner later learned Snyder had more than a year's worth of publishable books, 180 titles to start Silhouette with from the supply of returned American manuscripts.

Karen Solem was the editor-in-chief during the pre-launch of Silhouette. Silhouette wanted to go after the Harlequin market, so to that end, Silhouette ran a focus group. The results of this were to target the 18-35 range, like people, characters. Heroes shouldn't so much older than the heroine's 5-10 years, and readers enjoyed the travel aspects of the books. Lastly, and this is quoting from Markert, "All women in the focus group preferred—even insisted—that the heroes be bold and confident, the heroines virginal.”

Chels

I was just thinking, they're targeting readers in the 18 to 35 range. I think that's just so funny because every... What was it? Harlequin launched, I think, Afterglow a few years ago, and a big part of that announcement was we're marketing towards young people, 18 to 35, young people. And I was like, how is that different from any other-

Beth

This has always been.

Chels

Yeah.

Beth

Always been that way.

Chels

Or like all the Book Talk trend pieces, too, when they're like, oh, they're going for the young readers. And it's like, well, I guess.

Emma

You can find message boards from the early thousands of older readers being like, Man, I really wish there were romance levels that you feel yourself stopped being marketed to when you turn 35. Do you feel like that happened to you all?

I'm almost there. I'm not being marketed to.

Chels

I don't think I... I don't ever feel like I'm being marketed to. So nothing Nothing changed with my birthday.

Beth

Right. So this goes back to what we were talking about earlier when you're soliciting feedback from readers and how readers might not know what they want. So Markert elaborate on this focus group saying the people in this group reflected what they read from Harlequin books. Silhouette hadn't surveyed general romance readers, rather Harlequin readers. Markert argues and shows in his book that readers move beyond wanting only these types of plots.

Silhouette really came out of the gate swinging when they launched They secured Janet Daily as an author as she had been one of Harlequin's best sellers, and they could capitalize on her name to help them launch their line. They put three million in advertising when they launched, matching what Harlequin spent. Karen Solem, again, Editor-in-Chief, she finetuned the books after the launch. She elevated the sensuality above what Harlequin Presents offered, filtered in more books with heroines who had careers, and they based their stories in America.

Harlequin sued Silhouette when their books appeared because of the similarity of their covers. Snyder, the CEO of Simon & Schuster, said he was shocked by the suit, saying it wasn't intentionally done. Markert reasons that this could be true and that advertising seldom gathers audience information, rather looks at what its competition is doing.

However, creating consumer confusion is a common practice. If a generic brand sells their soup with a red and white label, they only stand to benefit from a consumer thinking they are Campbell's soup. A district court ruled in Harlequin's favor and Silhouette had to change up their covers. So I do have pictures here.

Emma

This would be a Trade Dress suit, right? Did you read that phrase at all? Trade Dress—

Beth

Look, I'm so sorry. For our listeners, Emma's a lawyer and I thought about asking. I didn't want to go too deep into this lawsuit. It is interesting, but yeah, I don't know.

Emma

I mean, I think Trade Dress is interesting because I think it's something that people don't... They don't realize it's a separate IP theory other than Trade Mark. Trade Mark is the literal image. So the thing that says Silhouette Romance, Harlequin Presents. Those are certain thoughts.

Beth

I think it was more about them. I think it's what you talked about in the past where it's about the market. I don't know if it-

Emma

Trade Dress, it's a looser version because it basically Silhouette Presents is not going to put the mark of Harlequin Presents or Silhouette Romance is not going to put the mark of Harlequin Presents on their romances because that protects someone making fake Nike shoes. You can't take the swoop, I always call it swoop, I think it's a swoosh, of Nike and put it on your shoe and say, This is a Nike shoe. But you also can't do is open up a restaurant. This is an example from my IP class. You can't open up a restaurant that looks exactly like a Taco Bell and call it a taqueria, because then people are going to think it's a Taco Bell. Consumers are not going to look just at the trademark. So it goes beyond just... You can't also open a restaurant called Taco Bell with that branding, but you also can't just use the branding. And it's a wider... I think it's interesting because I don't think people think about it as a protected thing. We know what trademarks are because we see the image. It's the image and the words put together.

But Trade Dress is a more extensive version. I think that's probably what the suit is because I'm looking at them and I'm like, Oh, yeah, I could see why someone who picks up a silhouette would be like-

Beth

I think you're right. I think the white covers was a big deal, that they were white and the logos and stuff.

Emma

Is it the same scroll?

Beth

Yeah.

Emma

I think that's probably part of it. The fonts are very similar. And it's consumer confusion. If you can show that someone... And they can use survey results. If someone would pick up a Silhouette romance and thinks that it's a Harlequin, that's enough to get a suit where it's helping Silhouette because they're selling books, then it's hurting Harlequin. Because Harlequin might argue, Silhouette sells sexy books. We don't want people to think that we sell sexy books. They're hurting our brand.

Chels

And they're Americans.

Emma

Yes.

Beth

Exactly. So again, just to remind people, we're in the early '80s right now. Other publishers entered the arena and took more of the market share at this point. Carol Thurston in the Romance Revolution points to Fred Kerner and Harlequin's reluctance to, quote, “enter the erotic contemporary romance arena,” with Fred Kerner saying, “We have no overt sex in any of our books…we publish happy stories.”

Thurston says, Harlequin didn't see the social forces and the women's movement as changing, quote, “their bedrock conservative traditional readers.” Harlequin's operating profits dropped 55 % from 1982 to 1983. So to counter this drop in profit, Harlequin launched its American romance line in 1983 and Temptation, in 1984. Silhouette struggled to turn a profit after its initial success because of shrinking sales and increased competition. Simon & Schuster decided to sell Silhouette. Lawrence Heisey, by now, had relinquished his position he was the CEO to David Galloway. So David Galloway's great contribution is buying Silhouette. The DOJ approved the sale in August 1984.

Emma

I was excited by the DOJ, looking into the antitrust aspect of this.

Beth

Ronald Reagan is the President right now, so it's unsurprising that this sale would be.

Emma

It's the DOJ approving this, it's bad for antitrust by approving the sale because essentially what's happening is creating a monopoly. So I'm not surprised that Ronald Reagan is on board.

Beth

Yeah. Like last episode, we talked about individual editors, and I wanted to do that again this episode. Again, not to overemphasize the importance of a particular editor, but just to illustrate how these gatekeepers and these people are influencing the romance genre and what stories we are reading, like what gets published.

Star Helmer, eventual vice President of Romance and Editorial, still only ran the Harlequin editing Department. Even at that, another VP, Richard Lawson, took charge of copy editing. Silhouette, still run by its Editor-in-Chief, Karen Solem, continued as a separate line and retained its editorial in New York for developmental editing, with the final copyedits to be handled in Toronto.

Gresco says, "And management had thought the Silhouette editors might feel uncomfortable if Harlequin’s editorial chief had a chance to second-guess their work.” Helmer felt insulted that management questioned her professional integrity, thinking that she would deliberately tank Silhouette. Helmer said, “In some very subtle ways and not-so-subtle ways [...] the two editorial departments were never allowed to be brought together. We were supposed to be developing an air of friendly competition, but it didn’t work.” Authors could negotiate between both publishers if a manuscript got rejected by one, then an author could submit to the other.

Gresco said these authors would submit quietly to both publishers and that agents could play the offices off each other about the size of advances against royalties.

Emma

Yeah, this seems like a straight up dumb business decision.

Beth

It does seem dumb.

Emma

How did they not know that that would happen? You're like, Oh, yeah, you're in competition with yourself. It's good for the authors. But these people who are like, We're going to... Books are products. Don't see this immediate problem.

Beth

It just feels like a business person thing to immediately be Competition is good in every scenario. And I'm like, Guys,

Emma

Competition between yourself!

Beth

And Gresco frames this as a bad thing, which he's coming at it from a business perspective. But I'm always on the side of the worker. So congrats to those authors for hopefully got bigger advances because of this stupid decision.

Yeah. So Vivian Stephens, we spoke about her last episode, she was a pivotal editor from Dell, set up an office in New York to head the American Romance line at Harlequin, sharing an office with Silhouette. Helmer said of this, “Supposedly Harlequin bought Silhouette [...] but they were acting like they were in charge. A lot of the Harlequin editors in New York definitely felt uncomfortable: nobody wanted to talk to them. They felt that they were being shoved into a corner.”

Before Harlequin, Helmer had been Editor-in-Chief at Richard Galen Books, a book packager, which I had to Google what that is. So a book packager is like a publisher, but I think instead of like, they like front load the work. Instead of you have a manuscript and you go to the publisher, I think they do way more of the like, they edit and it depends on the book and maybe how much they believe in the manuscript. Like maybe even get artwork beforehand before they go to the publisher to sell.

Chels

Okay. I'm glad you said that because my mental image was people taking books and putting it in a box and then shutting the box and then taping it.

Emma

How is she editor in chief at this point?

Chels

Right. She makes sure the books are well-packed, follow-uped if necessary.

Beth

Exactly. So at Richard Gallen Books, quote, “Their contemporary heroines were often independent, sexually knowledgeable women, and the subject matter was mature enough even to allow a homosexual affair between minor characters.”

Chels

Yes. I just think that's so funny. What year is this again? This is 1980.

Beth

1984.

Chels

1984 is the year of the homosexual affair between minor characters.

Beth

Minor characters.

Chels

You've come a long way, baby.

Emma

I know dot, dot, dot of effeminate.

Beth

I know, right?

Emma

Two tertiary characters having sex over there.

Chels

But yeah, but does it fade to black?

Beth

Probably.

Chels

Yeah, it probably isn't actually on page.

Beth

I bet if we read it now, we'd be like, They liked each other?

Chels

We're like, Wait, this is gay? All right, sure.

Emma

I'm imagining the sassy gay friend is revealed to have a boyfriend. It's like the level of.

Beth

It's like a throw away line. And they're like, That's a whole minor subplot.

Candace Camp and LeVyrle Spencer had positive experiences with Star Helmer when she was at Richard Gallen Books. From Carol Thurston's book, Camp relates how Star Helmer wanted a contemporary novel from camp after learning she was a lawyer. Spencer said of Star Helmer about their collaboration on her 1982 book, The Endearment: “It needed some work. I think it sounded like a textbook on frontier life at first, but Star Helmer [...] liked it, and I learned a lot from her. I reworked the whole thing from beginning to end.’”

At Harlequin, Helmer worked with Judith McNaught on her second book, Double Standards. McNaught's experience with Helmer, though, shows someone who seems to lack understanding of story construction. Helmer requested McNaught have the characters be, quote, "doing it by a certain page number," contrary to the emotional and physical progression of the relationship McNaught had plotted out. Additionally, Helmer asked McNaught to move, then this is quoting, to "'move [the setting] out of Detroit because it’s ugly, ugly,’ and [Helmer] said she’d never been there when [McNaught] asked her.” McNaught withdraw the book and submitted it to another line.

If you could please explain to non-Americans about that comment about Detroit.

Chels

I feel like-

Emma

She's being racist.

Chels

Yeah, it's racist. And it's like a working class industrial city. You always be suspicious of people who have been bad things to say about Detroit.

Emma

I will say Detroit, in this period, very well— there's lots of money in Detroit at this period. They're still making cars there. The issue with Detroit now is that all the money has gone away because the cars aren't made there anymore. But in the middle of 1980s, it's still working class. It's still an industrial midwestern city, but it's not... She's being racist against Detroit and probably also just the judgmental of working class. People who make cars, basically. But Detroit, the money hasn't even left Detroit yet. Yes. Thank you for that.

Beth

When I first read That I was like, my mouth dropped. I was like, Okay.

Emma

Star Helmer, you have such a cool name and now we have to—

Beth

I know, right? Back to Harlequin. So eventually, Helmer created a list of editorial taboos and overworked clichés. Emma is going to read the list that Start Helmer has about that's the thing to avoid.

Emma

“Conflicts: buying and renovating old inns; being marooned in the wilderness which leads to S.E.X. Careers: politicians; writers of all kinds. Situations: meddling old matriarchs; hero or heroine jumping into a shower immediately before or after sex.”

Chels

Hey, that's actually good. You need to do that. You're either going to get an STI if you don't do that. You need to wash up. Okay. Yes.

Emma

Okay. We want to avoid UTIs. "Phrases to avoid included “corded sinews, rippling muscles; tiny little fists — often beating against his chest; electrical currents traveling through nerve endings.”

Chels

Excuse me. Electrical currents traveling through nerve endings is timeless.

Beth

Perfect. How else am I supposed to know how they feel?

Chels

If I don't know if the muscle is rippling and the sinews are corded.

Emma

Also, meddling old matriarchs is like old matrix is historical bias, and I'm calling it out now as I see it.

Chels

Okay. Which is buying and renovating old ends. Oh, man. So onward. Alice Coldbreath could never publish here.

Emma

She was like, No more. What is the level that she's like, I will tolerate buying and renovating old ends, but she's like, not a single more.

Chels

She's looking at not another Gosh, Darn, inn.

Beth

Another one of her long term bans was Characters with Amnesia, which I agree with Gresco. It feels like an arbitrary ban. But he says, Harlequin's most recent guidelines, again, this would have been the mid '90s, have them actively looking for Amnesia stories. So again, editors are just... your personal taste is guiding the kinds of stories that you want.

Emma

Yeah. I'm thinking about when you look at agents, there's certain just listening, very, very specific things. But you think about it's that of granularity with taste, except it's not that many people. And they are making the decisions about what is getting published. You can extrapolate very easily to something that you may have more access to. An agent's taste is just on their website now. You just see it. And that taste is what they think they can sell combined with their personal taste. But this is that happening again with an editor-in-chief and all these imprints, and it's just trickled down.

Beth

Yeah, it's gatekeepers at multiple levels. I encourage listeners to just Google a random agent and just scroll through what their asks are or what they don't want. Also, equally interesting.

Chels

Amnesia. I'm pro-amnesia, actually.

Beth

I think it's interesting. I know it's like, goofy, but I like lots of other goofy things. I don't know why I would draw the line at amnesia.

Chels

I feel like if you... We're a historical romance podcast, we have to be pro-amnesia. That's just...

Beth

Also, one of my favorite movies is While You Were Sleeping, so I'm like, very pro amnesia. Why not?

Chels

Yeah, it's so good.

Emma

I'm an Overboard defender, though I do not like the Lisa Kleypas as that is based on Overboard.

Beth

I don't like any histroms on a contemporary rom-com. I'm like, Just stop, please.

Emma

Beth is not soliciting those. But I do like Overboard as far as amnesia movies go. Yeah.

Beth

Okay. In 1988, Harlequin fired Helmer, along with a few other executives. Karen Solem replaced Helmer, although she left shortly afterwards to be an editor elsewhere and then a literary agent. Frances Whitehead, who we spoke about last episode, became Editorial Director at Mills & Boon this year.

Okay, so we're going to do a little Vivian Stephens update. If you're not familiar with Vivian Stephens, she is a black woman, and she was one of the only black editors in the '80s. She had a huge impact on romance publishing, which is why we still talk about her.

Harlequin hired Vivian Stephens specifically to head the American Romance Line. In 1982 to '83, I saw both those dates. The line itself launched in 1983. Stephens had a sterling reputation in the industry with authors and publishers at large. She was one of the founders of Romance Writers of America, and everyone knew of her work at Dell and its impact. I recommend reading Julie Moody-Freeman's interview with Vivian Stephens, or just literally Google Vivian Stephens. There's lots of think pieces and interviews about her. It's outside the scope of this episode to cover everything Stephens did, so we'll just focus mostly on her time at Harlequin, although we will back up to her work at Dell for a paragraph.

One reason I think Stephens could innovate with themes and content is because no one really cared about the line. It had middling success and flew under the radar, allowing Stephens a certain amount of freedom she might not have had otherwise. She also knew how to pitch to the sales department by saying her idea had a competitive edge over Harlequin. That's how she got the increased level of sensuality. She said to the sales department, "I have two books that I think are better than Harlequin Presents. What do you think?" After her success, Stephens created tip sheets on what she wanted. Heroines older than 25, upwardly mobile, a man who is a, quote, winner, compatible with the heroine, sex is allowed before marriage, and it should be set in America.

Emma

All respect to Vivian Stephens. But when has romance ever been interested in the male losers? I'm just saying. I want to read those books. I love the betas. I'm like, I do love that man is a Winner, but I'm like, that is-

Chels

I wonder what winner means here, though. Does winner mean he's a good... Not a misogynist? Is that what- A winner isn't not a dud.

Emma

That would make sense to me. Yeah, maybe not like- That would be different. Yeah. It was winning at life. Yeah, they usually are doing pretty well.

Beth

I have a quote later on where she is obviously pushing for diversity of looks and stuff. And just what people can do. I don't know exactly what that means. Maybe just equal to the heroine.

Emma

Or maybe he's not a dud.

Beth

Or just maybe inherently a good person. I don't know. So according to Stephens, Mills & Boon at times bought the rights to Candlelight books to fill out their inventory. They wanted Morning Rose, Evening Savage by Joan Hall, the higher essential book that gave Stephens the confidence that books like Gentle Pirate by Jayne Castle would sell. And Stephens asked Dell to say no since they were the competition. This put Stephens on Harlequin's radar because if they got her, they figured some of her writers would follow.

When she started with Harlequin, they told her to not buy books that were too American. And this is that pin I put in player about the international markets. We're circling back to that. The example they used was baseball. If a character was a baseball player and used baseball metaphors, then the translation for something like that would be harder. Stephens is speaking here. “So keep in mind that you’re buying books where the plots are more universal, and the hero and the heroine have problems that are more universal because then it’s easier for us to translate.” I want to interject here that if listeners are interested in learning more about Harlequin in translation, then check out George Paizis' article, which I will list in the show notes. He compares one book translated three different ways, like one's in Greek, one's in French, and then the original English, and just compares the different translation choices, and it's really interesting. Harlequin sells internationally, so they consider many cultures and the ease of translation, and this influences the types of books they're buying in the first place.

Another thing Stephens added realism into her line with more contemporary conflicts. And then similar to her time at Dell, Stephens wanted more diverse characters. Stephens signed Sandra Kitt, who is a Black author who had financial success with her book, Adam and Eva, published in 1985. Gresco says of Stephens' time at Harlequin that, quote, “Stephens, self-admittedly not a corporate animal, was eased out only a few months after her American Romances came on stream. However, most of them sold well: as Vivien Lee Jennings reported, it was “one of the few Harlequin brands that was generally believed to be profitable for Harlequin at war’s end.” War's End, referring to the war with Silhouette. Stephens said Harlequin told her to leave, which would be at the end of 1984. She had to clarify that she got fired when she went to draw an unemployment check.

The CEO, David Galloway, wrote her a letter, although Stephens couldn't remember what it said. When people wanted to know why she left, she said, Take it up with Galloway. Stephens said, “They asked me to leave before I was able to edit the first hundred books that I had done because I wanted to know. I was pushing the culture forward because I was buying books where the hero was sometimes suffering from Agent Orange, because I was trying to really keep up with the heroes, and at the time the hero, one hero, I said he doesn’t have to have full hair. He can be bald because bald is still attractive. So I was trying to incorporate everybody.” Stephens does say literally right after this that she insisted characters shouldn't be fat. They should be healthy and have good jobs. So I think she is pushing for diversity, but they're still like this little hang up about certain characters.

Chels

Adam and Eva. Adam and Eva is very... I don't want to point out Adam and Eva for being the only one like that. But like...

Beth

Again, this is the '80s.

Chels

It's the '80s.

Beth

I'm not surprised by that comment.

Chels

It's really intense diet culture. But yeah, it does that thing that a lot of the contemporary books at the time did, where just the heroine is constantly thinking about herself and her slender body, and then the other women who are maybe not as nice are bigger. But that's not limited. As I mentioned, it's not just her. I think everybody was doing that.

Beth

Yeah, this feels like everyone was doing this. Everyone was doing this. Also, I don't know how much has really changed. I don't know if you'd have such outrageous comments anymore, but even sometimes when you have a fat heroine, she's fat in the correct way, not too fat or I don't know.

Emma

I mean, that still happens now. I feel like it's so many plus-size historicals.

Chels

They put them with Highlanders.

Emma

She'll take her dress off and she'll be curvy. It's big boobs, big butt. And there's not a lot of ink spilt over her tummy, even if she's marketed as a plus-size heroine.

Chels

I think somebody pointed out that a lot of the fat heroines and historicals are in Highlander romances where it's, Oh, she's fat, but he's bigger than her. Also, he's really big.

Beth

He's big and strong.

Emma

One of my mutuals on TikTok, and I can't remember her name in the moment, but she's also pointed out that a lot of plus-sized heroines still are redheads because it's this thing that is distinctive and explains why they're striking. It's like, you can't be striking and plus-sized unless you have this thing that can tumble down and you're so unique. I was like, Oh, that's interesting that she's noticed that. She's a plus-sized redhead, and so I think she's tracking it.

Beth

That makes sense. Okay. Another aspect I want to highlight is how Fred Kerner saw Vivian Stephens from Gresco: “To Fred Kerner, however, Vivian Stephens was a disaster — probably because she was soon reporting to Josh Gaspero, the new head of the North American books division, rather than him. [Kerner speaking:] “And he gave her her head. All of a sudden, she was a queen. We were just these hicks in Canada. And she didn’t last very long.” I have to add, it feels like Fred Kerner had a massive chip on his shoulder. There's another part in Gresco's book where he relates to Gresco, how he had this thought about the Boons that they must consider themselves, British sub-royalty, and he, a Canadian, was just a colonist. And I found this very bizarre. And not a lot of support, I feel like, for Vivian Stephens at Harlequin.

Chels

Didn't she have to sue them to get her money?

Beth

Possibly. I just know that she had to clarify something with them, like when she had to draw her unemployment, maybe.

Chels

Yeah. There's a really good Texas Monthly article on her. It also has the same Gresco problem where this person who wrote the Texas Monthly article. I think at one point, she takes a potshot at the feminist Patricia Fraser land, and I was like, Okay, that's actually misogynyistic. I get your point, but that's calm down. But for the most part, it's really good. But I think what she talked about in this is that Stephens got pushed out and then also got this reputation as being difficult, which is when it happens to a woman of color, it's so hard to bounce back from that because everybody just in circles around you and it's not letting you in in anywhere. But I think the split was contentious in that she was fired, but then also they didn't do right by her afterwards either, if I'm remembering correctly. Yeah.

Beth

I feel like I only looked into what she did immediately after, which is she tried to sell a line comprised of all Black writers. And this is Stephen speaking. "I had a tag—" and she's using the word tag, but I think It's like a motto is what she means. “I had a tag that when I left Harlequin, I worked for myself, I incorporated myself. And what I wanted to do was to – and I did have twelve writers, twelve African American writers – I wanted to do an all-Black line that I would sell to Avon, or Harlequin, or Silhouette, any of those. And I had come up with my own tagline. If I could remember I would recite it to you. I never had a chance to really express it. But this is the essence of it: that the American writer offered to the genre a new voice, a new attitude, a new rhythm to a familiar plot, thereby attracting a new audience and generating new money.” Stephens got turned down by every publisher she approached about the line.

So it's like Vivian Stephens is allowed to passively make publishers money, but no one wants to actively invest in her. She has a proven track record. You can tell by the tagline that she's made, she knows how to appeal to publishers. She's talking about money and attracting new audiences and still is getting turned down by all these publishers.

Chels

Yeah. I mean, it makes sense. They've put themselves forward as a conservative body. And I think people are able to break through in little bits and parts and chunks because they're wanting to make money. But ultimately, they would rather continue to stay a conservative body than to give her that support or to have to do more actual radical reshuffling of what Harlequin is.

Emma

Yeah. I mean, it's the implication you see. The first question you ask is, how can you imagine that these people are leaving this money on the table? It's like Vivian Steven has this proven track record. And it's like, you have to go to the next logical step, which is that they think that they are devaluing their brand if they published a line of Black authors, that they would lose themselves. They're thinking that their White readers would look at a publishing house that sells a Black line of romances and loses the money. I think that they're seeing themselves devalued if they publish these books, even though that logic doesn't make any sense and is based in racism and this misogyny against her. They think they're making a business decision by this, and they're just doing this in the worst way possible.

Beth

It does remind me...I might cut this. But on Mad Men, remember when Pete Campbell is working with that TV company—?

Chels

I was literally thinking of that one at the TV.

Beth

Yeah, with the TV company, he discovers that they sell really well with Black Americans. And he tells that to the company. He's like, Hey, if we market to themand— they're like, No, we're not doing that. And Pete, whose master his money, is floored by that. He's like, Why?Why would you do this?

Chels

And Pete is not a progressive person at all.

Beth

No, no, no.

Chels

Pete was only in it—

Emma

He's like, I'm also racist, but let's make some money, guys.

Beth

I know. He's like, I'm racist, but not in that way.

Okay. So we're going to rewind a bit. We're still in the '80s. There's just so much that happened. So this next section, I'll be pulling more from Markert's book. Several publishers scramble to capitalize on the romance novel genre market based on the success of Dell's Candlelight Ecstasy Line. And this pressure from managers, so our higher-ups, meant editors often acted hastily. There are two points Markert makes that I want to bring up. First, he argues that editors are not influenced as much by their education, social background, or previous job about what books they publish, rather by the climate of the publishing house. That how editors perceive the attitudes of their colleagues and managers, “can significantly affect an editor’s decision regarding the types of books selected for publication.”

I mostly agree with this. I do push back that I do think people's social background and who they are does influence the type of books they're buying. But I like his larger point here about the overall climate of a publishing house, really informing what books you're buying.

Second, editors asked for reader feedback and then ignored the feedback they got. Markert said, “Editors also tended to ignore the creative inclinations of seasoned writers, instead telling them what to write, thereby creating a new corps of complacent neophyte writers who provided soporific romances to an increasingly dissatisfied readership.” The climate of the '80s then was a combination of pressure to create new lines and decreased editorial support.

And we're going to get to dive more into this point about reader feedback. It was tricky to act timely. Even when a category book is turned over at a store within 30 days, firm sales figures lag behind 9-12 months. So in that time, new books had to be contracted, edited, and published. "Editors couldn’t wait on sales to trickle in; they needed input immediately so that plot adjustments, if required, could be expeditiously addressed." To get some feedback, Silhouette solicited letters from readers. Here is a note asking for feedback that would have been published at the front of a book"

Chels

"Silhouette Special Editions are an exciting new line [1982] of contemporary romances from Silhouette Books. Special Editions are written specifically for our readers who want a story with heightened romantic tension."

Special editions have all the elements you’ve enjoyed in Silhouette Romances and more. These stories concentrate on romance in a longer, more realistic and sophisticated way, and they feature greater sensual detail. I hope you enjoy this book and all the wonderful romances from Silhouette. We welcome any suggestions or comments and invite you to write us at the address below.”

Beth

Markert cites a study by Herbert Gans of letters sent to the network or magazine and found they were often critical and reactionary, conservatives complaining about perceived liberal bias in a certain story.

The opposite happened with romance readers, where generally readers praised new, liberated heroines in sex outside of marriage. If you look at the request for letters, though, the language primes the reader to react that way, how romance is more realistic and sensual; however, editors ignored negative feedback and held a positive feedback as representative of romance readers at large.

From a public domain survey conducted a 500 subscribers to the Romantic Times in 1983, 78.8% of respondents said “amount of sex depicted in romance novels was ‘about right.’” Largely, the about right readers were younger. Many editors at that time would have been 30 or younger. Critical letters about how much sex a book had were thought to be from older women or out-of-touch young women. Markert says, “It was only logical, therefore, that if a line with sexuality was selling well, then a competitive line should sell even better if the sexual bar was raised.”

Markert says, The mid '80s emphasize the sexual over the plot. "The editors were not assessing reader comments critically, they were simply hearing what they wanted to hear. They soon discovered, however, that sex simply for the sake of titillation did not sell; at least it didn’t sell when it was presented in poorly written books without plots.” I don't agree with Markert's conclusion entirely. I still think this is a symptom of books rushed to market to capitalize on a newly identified market, so probably poorly edited on multiple fronts. Writing sex scenes takes skill. I find sex scenes are like action scenes where it feels gratuitous or too much when it's done poorly.

Chels

Yeah, I feel like, also, this is another of the, we never stopped talking about this ever.

Beth

This is a conversation I was hoping would happen.

Chels

Yeah, it was literally like... It was something like someone posted on Substack a few weeks ago, and it was maybe a month or two ago. It was why I stopped reading romance. It was troubling in a few ways, but a lot of her point was basically romance is getting bad because they're only focusing on sex. There's no character development. And I think, first of all, dear listener, if somebody tells you this, you need to be like, what books are you reading? You have to give examples. I hate it. I absolutely hate it when people make these giant sweeping genre statements, and they can't even be asked to pick out two books that they think. I'm just like, I'm trying to guess for you. I'm like, did you read Colleen Hoover? Did you read a Judith McNaught? I mean, they didn't. But it was just... But anyways, her points are basically like that. We no longer care about the story, the emotion. And it feels... It's just like an old a shitty dog whistle thing, where you're saying that you don't have a problem with sex in books, but you have a problem with sex in books if it's not done correctly.

But you're also not giving any examples. So that leads me to believe that you have a problem with sex in books, and that you also don't understand the history of this conversation, because it's a very conservative viewpoint. And it's no matter how you dress it up in art criticism or criticism of how there's not enough good editing anymore or anything like that. When you say things like that, you're really putting forth an anti-porn, anti-sexuality argument that is really just like... It's one of the shittiest times in the world to do this is we're having this huge amount of censorship that we're trying to deal with. But also it's just like, you sound like the ladies from the '80s. You sound like Barbara Cartland. It's just like, just shut up.

Emma

When you were saying, give us examples of books, I thought... At first I was like, oh, probably what they're reading is like, Colleen Hoover. I was like, what I think is actually happening oftentimes when people make those arguments, they're not reading books. They're watching TikTok. They're watching people talk about books that have sex into them. And they're like, there's so much sex in books. And it's like, you're on—you're seeking out algorithmic fed content where you are continually watching and getting riled up over people talking about sex in books, and you think that is indicative of every romance novel out there. That's the thing. I've read some of the books. I read Icebreaker when people... That's the one I always hold up as an example because it's frequently held up as an example about this as too much sex in romance. And there's not that much sex in that book. I think there's too much sex in the book in that it causes a pacing issue because the book is too long. But it's not so extreme. But I think what happens is that people who have not read a lot of romance, read this book or something like ACOTAR, and then they make content online about the sex scenes.

So then it feels like if you've not read those books, you watch that content, you're like, The entire book is sex, and now I have a problem with it. So they're punching air. They're arguing with something that isn't real, but also they want to get their reactionary hot take off because they're anti-porn and anti-sex. And they're not hiding it very well, but they're hiding it well enough that people get wrapped up in responding to it without realizing that they are operating absolutely in bad faith. And as reactionaries, you don't have to engage with reactionaries. That's what they're trying to get you to do. What instead you should do is come out in support of romance and sex in books and porn and sex workers. Spend your energy making it very clear that that's the position you are holding rather than tut-tutting about, Oh, maybe there is too much sex in a hockey romance that I've never read. Right.

Beth

I would like to Yes to both your points. And then I'm just going to add another point, like adjacent to your point. What you were saying with... What's the book you just referenced, Emma?

Emma

Oh, Icebreaker.

Beth

Where you were like, I don't think there's too much sex or I think that because they didn't pace it well. I think there is a lot of... I think Markert is just not identifying the correct thing. I'm like, Are these people writing sex scenes well? Or are they getting editorial support this way? I don't care how many sex scenes are in the book. I think this is a skill, and I think a lot of people look down on it, and they don't think it's a skill to do this well, if that makes sense.

Chels

Since we started this podcast, I've written a book, and I can tell you that the sex scenes are so hard. It's really hard to do. And so when people are like, oh, it's just sex scenes. And I mean, first of all, you're lying. Always, you're lying. But it's like, first of all, whose feet go where? It's so hard. It's so hard to do, guys.

Beth

I think, to me, sex scene is like an action scene. You're really tracking movements and what is going on. It's so difficult, I think. I know everyone loves witty dialogue. I'm like, Can you do a good action scene? Can you write a good sex scene?

Chels

And then also where, where you place it. Is it the emotional? I think it should be. I don't want to be prescriptive, but if I were going to do it- Well, for the book you were writing, it's the emotional journey they're going on as well.

Beth

It's not just-

Chels

Right. It's like, Why does this happen now? What does this mean? How does this level up? How does it move us backwards? It can do a lot of really awesome. I guess, I don't know. Best sex scene writer, I think, Judy Cuevas.

Emma

The structure aspect of it, and I think to see how difficult it is, it's like you're talking about If there's the two characters in your book that you have to decide when they have sex, but also you were... What Star Helmer's comment says, but I think Judith and I was the one who was upset about Star Hamlet saying, They have to have sex by this point in the book. I think that is a reductive take. However, you are also writing a genre fiction book that is a product. That's the theme of this episode is that you are participating in a genre, and these readers, especially when they're reading these category lines, do expect something. So threading that needle of, Is the reader going to get bored because I'm writing in communication with all the books that came before me, either in the genre or specifically this line, and does it make sense for the characters to have sex? That's part of the reason why it's hard. And I think also Judith McNaught leaves categories and writes-

Chels

She was not, I was literally thinking, I was like, she was not meant to write category.

Emma

And yeah, when I'm reading a category, I expect a very specific pacing thing. Once I read one Signet, I'm like, Okay, I know every time I read a Signet, I want to be able to pick it up. It's a different reading experience. So that speaks to why it's difficult. And yeah, it's not for the faint of heart. So Chels, more power to you.

Beth

Okay, we're going to jump back in. We're again talking about the '80s and more the general state of romance. So unsurprisingly, romance books declined in quality and even simple copy-editing mistakes, attorney general instead of surgeon general made their way into print.

Emma

That's a very funny thing.

Beth

I pulled that direct from his book. Markert says authors who wrote only for financial gain could get published, although I contend that's not a marker for if an author is good or not, but I get what he's trying to say. Although, quote, "many editors admitted taking bad manuscripts simply to fill the monthly quota that management had arbitrarily set." With increased quotas, "two to four to six and even eight books a month with no increase in editorial staff, editors couldn't support authors as well." By 1984, readers lamented the state of romance.

So lots of publishers tapped out of romance in 1984, and after Harlequin purchased Silhouette, they dominated romance publishing once again. I don't mean to say that all romance publishers dropped out, only that it wasn't the frenzy of the late '70s, early '80s. Harlequin expanded its lines during this time. Markert characterizes this time as Harlequin switching from a "fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants upstart" to a "corporate giant." So we're going to do a little detour in 1985 with some commentary from Carol Thurston, who is an author who wrote The Romance Revolution, which I think came out in 1987. And I'm going to have Chels read this quote.

Chels

“During the 1970s readers began to demand characters who were more realistic, who they could identify with more closely, displacing the submissive ingenues as well as the glamorous jet-set crowd. Heroines not only aged but became more mature and more sexually experienced. Editor Tara Hughes advised aspiring romance authors attending a 1985 Silhouette-sponsored workshop that “nothing turns a reader off more than a heroine who continually sets herself up for abuse.” She warned them to “steer clear of traditionally feminine jobs. Pick something unique, such as a judge, probation officer or sheriff.” The Wall Street Journal headlined an article about Silhouette’s success, “If the Damsel Is in Distress, Be Sure It’s Career Related.”

Emma

Okay. That's the three examples sent me. Yeah.

Chels

Okay. A judge, probation officer, or sheriff. Make sure that she...

Beth

Only the judicial system.

Emma

Is she like, maybe she's taking notes because she's in court and she's like, What jobs can I give for my big speech today?

Chels

If I was an author who was told to do this, I would be like, Okay, she's a judge, but he also was the one who's on trial or something.

Emma

There's an old Hollywood movie that's like that with Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck. He's a judge, and he takes her home for Christmas. He's like, your punishment is to come home with me for Christmas.

Beth

Oh my God, I love that.

Emma

Let's remember the night.

I recommend.

Beth

Also, Emma's face when child read, the heroine who could totally sets yourself up for abuse. I wish I could have a screenshotted that.

Chels

I just feel like the... Well, what you said Emma, and then I started talking. I just feel like the way that sometimes romance readers or authors or whoever talk about characters is just so unsympathetic in a way where it's just... I mean, this is pretty obvious. Sets yourself up for abuse. What is she doing that's making her such a loser? I don't know. Maybe she's just trying to get by in a world that's slowly crushing her to death. Welcome to I don't know.

Emma

I think the theme of this episode is like, asterisk, asterisk, asterisk around the for women by women tagline that we hate so much. It's like, men have been it from the beginning, and also the women who've been involved have been saying shit like this from the beginning. It's just like, this is not a feminist who's talking, even though she is high in romance and is trying to get romance solace. She probably thinks she's saying something really feminist by saying, Oh, make her a judge. But she's been very.

Chels

Carceral feminist. Right. Yeah.

Beth

Alright. We're going to talk a little bit more about this job stuff. Okay. So this wasn't unique to Harlequin, and this push for a career-minded heroine is always pitched as something new nowadays, but has been around for a long, long time. Thurston notes a diversity of careers, quote, “chemists, cartoonists, caterers, and construction workers, as lawyers, psychiatrists, and government agents” and sometimes involved in work other than what she gets paid for. Thurston analyzed sixty-five romance novels between 1982 and 1985 and “found that 97 percent of heroines had careers.” Thurston quotes several publisher tip sheets, but I will just reference these three.

So from Silhouette Special Edition: “Generally 23-32, she is intelligent and mature. . . . Independent and accomplished, she supports herself successfully in her chosen profession and is never clinging or weepy."

From Harlequin Temptation: "The heroine is a capable, mature American woman in her twenties or thirties, established in an interesting career."

Dell Candelight Ecstasy: "Most Ecstasy heroines are between the ages of 25 and 35, most are established in an interesting career.”

So this aging up and focus on more masculine careers is partially in reaction to the 1970s heroines who and this is Thurston quoting my Enemy Ann Barr Snitow, "Teachers, Nurses, and Nurserymaids."

And then Thurston quotes from Margaret Ann Jensen's 1984 book on Harlequin, Love's Sweet Return. That heroines were, quote, "marginal workers with little commitment to the labour force, who work for ‘pin money’ rather than for necessities” (Jensen 97). Thurston contrasts this with—" And I'm going to mess up this person's name, and I Google it several times, but there's like an umlaut over the O, and I don't know how to pronounce it. But Moëth Allison's 1983 novel, Love Everlasting, where the heroine makes $400,000 a year by running her own cosmetics company. Thurston says: “Though she obtains outside financial help from the hero to expand her business, this thirty-year-old woman quite obviously is not working for pin money, and her necessities include a great deal more than food on the table and a roof over her head. She has worked hard and with considerable personal sacrifice to develop her company, as well as her skill and knowledge, and she refuses to allow the hero to dominate her business decisions."

Emma

Okay. It would just be a majority owner. Angel investor.

Chels

I'm wondering if like, because we always frame the heroine has a job as a feminist thing, but is this really an '80s Reagan thing? Is this a working girl? You know what I mean? It's more like-

Emma

The pin money aspect of it, it's like...The people who I imagine are working and laboring are teachers and nurses. Like those people—

Chels

They started with the nurse, yeah.

Emma

But they're like, those are people who are making $30,000 a year. That's not pin money to them. That is like their livelihood, and they maybe don't have time to be jet set off to Rome or whatever is happening in these books. The pin money frame is very bizarre to me. It feels very '80s. These feminine jobs are not only... You only do them for extra money because your father is taking care of you or your husband is taking care of you. It's like, if you want to be a single, You have to make $400,000 by owning a company. There are people who make less than that and are not married, and they also existed in the '80s.

Beth

I had this thought I wanted to run by both of you. So Ann Barr Snitow, she wrote this article in 1979, where she really comes for romance. And at the time, I think Gothics would have been more popular. And I feel like there's this push against these young heroines. And there's lots of aspects to this, but I feel like one might be the fact that how mean people are about these heroines, teachers, nurses, nursery maids, are just young girls, oftentimes. These protagonists are 18, 19, 20. So there's this weird thing that I feel like we need to acknowledge. It feels weird. I don't know how to describe it, but I've just been thinking a lot. I'm like, We hate young girls as a society that feels like this.

Chels

I agree. I also... Because first of all, in all these category lines, they're emphasizing maturity. You have it all together. And that does leave out the younger heroines who are also the ones that really annoy people. I'm thinking of a really well-written 18, 19-year-old Mary from the Windflower, which I guess is bringing it to historical. But I think one part of the charm of the Windflower is that Mary is not good at a lot of things, but because she's 18.

Beth

But she's young. It's like a coming of age story, too. And I think... I don't know why people hate those. They're like, this person is acting like an idiot. I'm like, this person is a child. If I think of what I did when I was 19, I would like to cringe out of my body.

Chels

Yeah. It's just the realistic portrayal of how they would move through the world just really annoys people.

Beth

Yeah.

Chels

And so, no, I really do think you're onto something. I think something part of the Gothic heroines, they were always, or not always, but they were usually very, very young. I think having that idea about gothics is you would have to be deliberately obtuse because the gothic is about your uncertainty, what you don't know, your fear, your disorientation. And so if you have this, I am a career woman who's figured it all out. I'm showing up to this mansion. It's a very different story.

Beth

Well, it's a different genre. Yeah, you're exactly right. If this has a horror element to it, part of horror is that you want the character to open the door. You want them to go into the basement because we're experiencing this world. We do want to be scared a little bit or feel uneasy. And I think it's good to explore that through a young person who maybe is already uncertain about the world willing to open the door because they don't maybe know better, or they're just their curiosity gets the best of you.

Emma

I was also thinking about the jobs thing. I wonder if there's a reaction to... It's like as the heroine gets older, she's 35, there has to be a reason narratively why she's not married. And she's been working. If she's a 35-year-old teacher, it's like, Well, what have you been doing? Why aren't you married yet? I wonder if that's also part of it, that they can't conceptualize someone who is in their 30s and doesn't have a reason as to why they're available. Because that feels like a throwback from historicals, too. Like the spinster of it all. But that they're... Because I think it's like you have trouble conceptualizing. There's a gap in the narrative. How do you explain that she's still on the market? I think that may be part of it. These young women jobs, the reason that they're young women jobs is because they stop doing them when they get married. It's like that's the cultural perception. And it's like, well, if you're owning a cosmetics company, you've been working. You've been doing something that is worthwhile while you weren't prioritizing your romance.

Beth

I'm going to like, yes, and. I think, again, there's multiple reasons why the content is moving this way. I think another, again, like Markert talks about a lot, we've talked about a lot where I was like, okay, your competitor is writing about virginal young heroines, so you're going to pivot and you're still going to do similar stories, but your heroines are older and they've got jobs. I feel like a lot of these... A lot of elements here, but I feel like there is that slight need to differentiate from what is already on the market or what was on the market. I think eventually this becomes... This is what we have now. I feel like it's all these people with these kinds of jobs. I think we could also... I don't maybe want to go into this too much, but there is this element of they have a good job. We talk about what's historical romance all the time. It's like we have hot girl hobbies. We don't have people writing about maids who maybe stay maids or are staying within their class. It's like the Duke rescues them. But yeah, I think there is that element of what is an acceptable job to have for a romance heroine.

Another thing that Thurston talks about. And so up to this point, most books are from the heroine's point of view. But this begins to change in the '80s when, quote, “71 percent of readers surveyed in 1982 expresseda desire to see ‘‘a well-developed hero point of view,’ and by 1985 “mixed heroine-hero point of view” was at the top of the list of the five most-wanted story attributes."

Emma

Which I guess this is a difference. This is coming into categories because the historicals have always... And not always had dual point of view, but Like, lots of them have always... Like, Georgette Heyer writes dual point of view. Yeah, it's hard to...

Beth

I feel like you're right. I feel like it's much stricter with the categories because we have those old guidelines from Mills & Boon. I think that maybe also would have influenced Harlequin. Because if you read some early historicals, They were just head-hopping all the time. It wasn't as strict.

Emma

It wasn't even like—

Chels

It was like 30 points of view, actually.

Beth

Yeah, it was like within a paragraph, it would be like you've been in two different people's heads.

In 1986, Anne Hampson, she's an author, accused Mills & Boon of keeping at least one million pounds from her and 100 other authors. The feeling I get from jay Dixon's book, she wrote a book about themes of Mills & Boon books across the decades, and she's English, and she worked at Mills & Boon. So the feeling I get from her book was like, Mills & Boon is small and less money-focused, and Harlequin is the money-hungry corporate overlord. But smaller doesn't always mean the company won't screw over its workers. I don't want to absolve Harlequin as being an extremely shitty corporation at times. During the mid '80s, they treated their workers with perks and benefits to head off the potential of them unionizing. Plus, layoff seemed to be a semi-regular thing.

Back to Anne Hampson and the million pounds between her and other authors. The disparity in royalty payments. This was where the money is being lost. It's coming from this disparity in royalty payments from overseas royalties, so how they structured it during the '70s. Authors were due 75% of American royalty shares and then 50% of Canadian royalty shares.

Mills & Boon combined this into one 50% North American royalty check, so they're not getting that 25% that they're owed from America. The Boons had this reputation of being good to their authors, which took a severe hit when this came to light. Gresco says Alan Boon handled the author's accounts. A senior executive said Alan, quote, "didn't pay attention," although he had been told by one North American colleague that he was incorrect. When that colleague checked in on it a few years later, he was told, "It's coming along, fine." John Boon failed to resolve it. This same senior executive said, "He was too timorous to do anything. He just wasn't paying [the additional royalties owed to the authors.] It stayed in the company. Instead of doing it, he did in effect not do it." The auditors never caught on all those years. I don't know, Alan Boon. My inclination is to allow the people who did a first chance at weighing this action, but it feels more malicious than to say he wasn't confident, which is what timorous means. I had to look that up. Like you're nervous or you're lack confidence.

Emma

He's too nervous to pay his bills? Right. That's the argument?

Chels

How long had he been doing this?

Beth

I feel like it was through the '70s, and then maybe when Harlequin and bought them, I wonder. But I feel like he bought them in '71.

Chels

But he's been in business for decades. This isn't just some random guy. This is Alan.

Beth

Yeah. That's why I say it feels way more malicious than the way this senior executive is framing it. Alan Boon, we talked about him last episode. He's very paternalistic in he approached his authors. So I think he could have this self-image of himself being like, Oh, I'm so good. I send flowers, and I congratulate my authors when they do well. Who cares if I'm pocketing this extra money?

Chels

This 25 % of the North American.

Beth

Yeah, like skimming off the top here. They already got 75%. So Harlequin was motivated to resolve this quickly. Image-wise, it looked bad, and they wanted to head off an outside audit as authors, at least in America, at that time, had the right to audit their publisher's books. In March of that year, Alan Boon sent out a letter to authors saying they would be paid those royalties with interest.

We're going to look at another controversy, and this is to do with pseudonyms. Gresco cites Richard Pollack's 1992 article in The Nation, Romance Slaves of America, which criticized Harlequin pseudonym practices. Pollack quoted literary agent Anita Diamont as saying she couldn't get a contract from Harlequin unless her client agreed to a pseudonym. Typically, publishers allow for the rights to a book to revert back to the author after it goes out of print. Harlequin, except for a few cases, refused to do this. Pollack clarifies why Harlequin wanted pseudonyms:

Emma

“Once a writer signs the contract, Harlequin takes the position that the pseudonym belongs to the company, something it could never do if the author wrote under her real name. Harlequin, a subsidiary of Canada’s billion-dollar Torstar media conglomerate, has almost 1,000 writers here and abroad churning out about sixty novels a month. Since Harlequin Enterprises controls an estimated 80 percent of the romance fiction market, these women challenge the company at considerable risk.”

Beth

So the RWA, the Romance Writers of America, seemed, quote, "unwilling to challenge Harlequin," and Pollack reports that it was possibly because several board members, quote, “[got] special treatment from Harlequin’s editors.” Several RWA chapters wrote the Authors Guild about the RWA's inaction, and the Authors Guild opened an investigation into Harlequin. Novelist Inc., another professional organization, backed the Authors Guild.

Two anonymous bestselling Harlequin authors hired lawyers to protect their pen names. Harlequin backed off on using pseudonyms by 1995, although they still wanted established writers to ask permission to use their pseudonyms at other publishing houses. According to Libby Hall in Gresco's book, Harlequin knew that if it went to court, the courts would back the writers in "100 percent of cases."

Okay, so we're at the '90s to mid-2000s now. We're going to make it. Harlequin has developed many lines meant to cater to a particular audience and give a predictable reading experience. For example, they had a Nascar Line from 2007 to 2010, Harlequin Medical Romance presents and romance are still going strong. It looks like the American Romance Line ended in 2016, but now there are two lines, Montana Mavericks and Fortunes of Texas. Although I looked at Montana Mavericks, I think it's been around for a minute.

If listeners aren interested in the different lines and past lines, just check out Markert's book. See his charts you can look at, or you can just look at the website, a Harlequin's website. The one line I wanted to touch on is Arabesque, developed by Kensington Publishing in 1994, which eventually would go under Harlequin's Kamani Press. Apparently, head of Kensington Publishing, Walter Zacharias heard two Black women in a New York Bookstore despairing over the lack of Black romance, so he created a Black romance line. These were books with Black characters aimed at a Black audience. Walmart and other big box chains indicated they wanted books for a Black demographic.

Harlequin had started acquiring manuscripts to meet this need when Harlequin had the opportunity to buy the Arabesque line from BET Books in 2005. Kensington had sold Arabesque along with two other lines to BT Books in 1998. Kamani Press and Arabesque were single titles, so not quite a category line, and the novels tended to be longer at 75,000 to 80,000 words. I think most categories still are like 55 to 65. There wasn't a preset number of books published every month. Markert says, “Kimani Press, however, is considered Harlequin’s flagship multicultural imprint and publishes only established authors who have a strong fan base in women’s fiction, whereas Arabesque novels are contemporary romance—not, the writer guidelines clearly emphasize, women’s fiction”

Arabesque had a few holdover guidelines from combining with other lines from BET books, including that the character should be models, like as in good people. Condoms should be used for unmarried characters. No excessive profanity, no drugs, limited violence. And one of the lines that they combined was a Christian spiritual line. Knowing that, it makes more sense when I look at these new guidelines that they have where they merged all those into one.

Harlequin discontinued Kamani Press in 2018. I feel two ways about this. First, that it shouldn't be necessary to have lines like this or an imprint in this case, since all lines should be including people of color as main characters. Yet, realistically, I'm not sure how much this is happening. Having dedicated lines purposely slots these books into publishing. If we look at the guidelines they have now, like Harlequin's guidelines, this is what they say: "We want all readers to see themselves reflected in the books we publish and we’re committed to publishing diverse and inclusive voices and stories. As such, we are actively looking for more story submissions from authors in underrepresented communities and invite you to add #RomanceIncludesYou with your manuscript title when you submit.”

Chels

Well, we talked about this a little bit during the Fabio episodes, actually. So I guess we don't want to rehash all that. But I don't want to say that sucks. It sucks so much. I hate the idea that, Oh, we're closing this line, but you can submit to all of our other lines. So it's fine.

Beth

Yes. It does feel like when I look at their website, there's still some books being published, but I think you're right. It's a different than having a dedicated press to being like, hey, we're prioritizing Black characters, Black authors.

Chels

Yeah. Because it's not just... It is on the author side, but it's also like you're telling me your readership, who you're... Okay, we actually don't... It doesn't matter that we don't need to cultivate this readership anymore. They'll take one out of every 25 out of however. So you aren't... I just hate this framing.

Emma

I mean, this is the issue with so many of these diversity initiatives that fall by the wayside or the framing of this all the time. The benefit of this is not just that romance, they exist. It's like that the group together is useful for readers. Black readers can go to this line and trust that there will be Black characters who are represented, who are written by authors who are interested in writing Black characters, who are not getting this prompt to write the 25th book that needs to have representation. It's like, well, if it exists in other parts, you don't need this dedicated area. It's like, no, it's like a queer bar. It's like things exist just because a bar exists that doesn't beat up queer people. It doesn't mean that we want the queer space to go away. You still want the space. And that's true for products as well, especially in 2018, the fact that it falls, by the way, set in 2018, which is not necessarily even a low point of diversity in products. I would point to as... It's not where we are right now, where I feel like this would be even harder to sustain or get started at a place.

Beth

Yeah. We're just going to talk about the present year, 2025, and the dismantling of mass market publishing. Jim Milliot, former Editorial Director of Publishers Weekly, has written about the move away from mass market publishing. On February 24th, 2025, Milliot wrote about Reader Link's decision to stop distributing mass market paperbacks by the end of 2025. He says, Mass merchandizers, so that's like, think like Walmart, Hudson News at the airport, quote, “Lost interest in a format that produced slim margins and proved inefficient to both publish and sell.”

There is still a profitable sector of mass markets, which is classics. For example, in 2024, Animal Farm in 1984 by George Orwell sold about 200,000 in 6, and 218,000 copies, respectively. According to data from pod favorite, Circana BookScan.

Chels

Boo.

Beth

I'm waiting for someone to clarify.

Chels

Bookscan sucks because I mean, I guess for a lot of reasons, but BookScan is like, well, you can't access their data.

Beth

You're a publisher. That's how you access that data. And their data is not even comprehensive. I don't think they're counting any [indy] bookstore— they're missing data, but Yeah. Their biggest sin is it's hard to access. This is not transparent information.

Emma

People will be like, well, the BookScan numbers. And it's like, They could say anything.

Chels

They'll be like, Okay, well, here's one piece of data. And it's to sell you something or to tell you a narrative or a story or whatever. But you can't compare it to other things. So the meaning of what they just told you is completely lost. Bookscan, by the way, is one of the big people behind TikTok is selling the books at a time where it could have... It was also right at that time of the pandemic where people were saying, people are buying really popular books from the 2010s because they know they like it and it's good. So you were getting told two different things. And eventually, the TikTok narrative really took off and became its own beast. But BookScan are the ones who brought that forward.

Beth

Yes. Publishers who spoke to Publishers Weekly said they would move authors who previously published in mass market to Trade Paperback. I quote, “HarperCollins, which owns romance publisher Harlequin and is the second largest publisher of mass market paperbacks behind Penguin Random House, said in a statement that it has been broadening the availability and distribution of trade paperback formats, and is ‘supportive of retailers and distributors doing the same.’”

In a follow-up article two days later, Milliot opened with how mass market makes up 3 percent of “units sold at retailers that report to Circana BookScan in 2024.” Mass merchandisers like, again, Walmart and Hudson News make up to 60 to 70% of mass market sales.

"Mass market paperbacks," and I'm quoting from Publishers Weekly now, "are published by relatively few publishers, and those contacted by PW said they were still developing strategies to cope with what all those involved with the format agreed was “a big deal” for the future of the format. The head of one Big Five publisher, speaking with PW on condition of anonymity, said that the house was still looking for ways to “mitigate” the loss of the mass merchandise channel for the format.”

So it feels like in the end of an era. And now we're all going to have to read trade paperbacks with pastel characters on them.

Chels

Yeah. It just feels... I think for me, the expense of it is kinda really what guts me a little bit, because if you read an old romance novel, you'll get the adverts where it's like, okay, you can get three a month for eight bucks or something. And that was the model of how you sold romance, is that you could get people to try new authors and try new things really easily because it wouldn't be very expensive. You're We talked about Walter Zacharias earlier. That was a huge thing with Zebra was being inexpensive and mass producing, getting tons of new authors. Zebra, in particular, would seek out people who struggled with getting published or just didn't really have a name behind them. And And so I feel like you're like... When it becomes so expensive, it feels like they're less willing to take risks on things. And then also both for the publisher and then also for readers, I guess when it comes to purchasing, because of course, always you can get books from the library. So I don't know. It just bothers me. As someone who prefers to read paperbacks, not just over hardbacks, but I prefer paperbacks over digital books.

It just sucks. It's hard to take trade paperbacks around with you. I used to be able to put mass... I could put mass markets in a Fanny pack or in a bag. Mass markets are the perfect books to read a bathtub. This seems like anti-bath tub reading.

Beth

I guess I'm curious for the future of Harlequin, where it's like, currently they do like picture, like photos of real people for their covers. And I like those covers. And I'm like, I'm so curious if they were going to move more towards what other romance books look like now. Because again, you're always copying your competition, but then you lose your unique branding in the process. Also, I just way prefer those covers any day over than poorly... Not poorly. I don't want to come for any artist, but I'm sure you don't get a lot of money or a ton of feedback, or you're allowed to really go big on some covers. But yeah, I'm curious what Harlequin will look like in the future.

Emma

Yeah. Just as Chels is thinking about it, the taking risk, you can see the way it's that... Maybe that reader experience has moved to Kindle Unlimited of low barrier of entry of trying something.

Chels

Oh, that's such a good point.

Emma

It's now on KU.

Chels

That's such a good point.

Emma

Which is depressing. It's like, that's a bummer. It's like, that's a bummer that it's these things that are often unedited. The whole theme of these two episodes is this relationship between editor and author of we are working together to make this thing that is a union of product and art. And there are differing motivations for that. And I think you could read the history that Beth told us about in a very cynical lens. I was like, Oh, these people, we're revealing them to look at them as we consider art as product. But now what's happening is that we have things like KU where it's like, yeah, I believe that there are authors on KU who are putting a lot of effort into their art. However, there's no investment from any institution to make it the best it could be or make it the best product for the reader. It's just you have to go through so much of it to figure out what's good. There are books on KU that we like. We've covered on the podcast. But there's also a lot of dreck on there. But that's created that low barrier of entry. It's like you pay a certain amount a month and you get access to a library that you can just try and try and try until you find something you like.

But that relationship that was so central to Harlequin and also other romance authors and their editors, like Jackie Bianchi we talked about last week, that's totally fallen by the wayside.

Chels

As an author, you can't really opt into that unless you agree with KU's business model of pay, which is very different than how you would get paid if you were being traditionally published. So I get that. I have KU. It's so easy to just try new things. And if I don't like it, I'll nope out really easily. I don't need to waste time with anything. I guess it's just the low barrier to entry, the lower cost. That's the whole thing that was the big romance boom of the 1980s. You could read 30 books a year. It's just hard to imagine an environment that they had back then where you would have that culture of Romantic Times or something like that when you don't have people who are able to read, to try romance broadly that cost $20 a book. It feels like a lot nowadays when people selling romance are trying to make it a boutique experience, It's in a way that... I guess why it bothers me is because in the '70s and '80s, when people were denigrating romance, they were like, Oh, these old baddy ladies. And then when you get to the new...

When we're trying to market it now, they're like, We're not the old baddie ladies who used to read romance. And it's just like, Why is everybody being so mean to this once perceived person, this one perceived group of people? That was a side tangent.

Emma

They're always in defense of the old baddie ladies because I like them. I like the books that they like.

Chels

If My taste is closest to anybody's. It is your grandmother's. That was my-

Emma

Absolutely. Your grandmother's romance.

Chels

Yeah. I am your grandmother's romance. They were exciting and fun. But yeah, no. Bring back the mass market paper back. It's just such a bummer. It makes me more... More than the covers. I think I like a little bit... I guess I don't really care. I care about oil-painted covers, obviously. But there's no way. Whenever people are, they're like, We should bring back the oil-painted covers. I'm like, Okay, how much money do you have How much money do you think publishers are going to be willing to pay? Because it was so much more.

Emma

Yeah, that economic aspect. It feels like... And again, this is a theme. I think this Beth did such a good job with these two episodes. The theme, it's taste, but it's also economics. It's not just that publishers are now like, We don't think people are going to like the oil-painted covers. That's why we're not doing them. It's because they don't want to pay for that money. But also, not only do they not want to, I imagine it would be very difficult to make money back on a book, a romance book, if you paid someone a living wage to paint an oil painting. If you put that much effort into the marketing and all these things, it would be hard to get royalties. You're like, Oh, I mourn the loss of this. But it's also like, we're not... To go back to it would also be unreasonable.

Beth

Yeah. Also because we have completely shuttered the infrastructure for it. You can't just snap your finger and you have people who can do oil paintings. They had a whole system like when Chels did that interview with Sharon Spiack and Shirley Green. You had photographers, you had people coming up with the costumes, and they did them all together. You can reduce your cost because you are doing so many. But yeah, that's gone.

Emma

And it also depends on readers. Readers making a wage that has them spent, and they spend that wage on books. It's all of those things that... I mean, one of the most annoying things to me is when people talk about romance economics and act like those happen separately from the rest of the country's economics. People are like, This trend, or I don't think that annoys me about any romance, where they're like, This trend is happening in romance. Zoom out one more click, and this is something... It's speaking romance existed in society. Right. Including the economics. Yes.

Beth

Okay. Well, we did a lot of podcast.

Chels

Can I say good bye to Bones? I don't know where he left off, but like, bones.

Beth

Rip Bones.

Chels

Rip Bones. Rip Alan Boon.

Emma

Thank you for your forthcoming comments. Or your... Not forthcoming. Is that the right word? I don't even remember.

Beth

That your dad didn't do a good job initially. I think you're honest. And yeah, thanks for coming on this journey with me. Thank you so much for listening to Reformed Rakes. If you like bonus content, you can subscribe to our Patreon at, Blue sky, and Instagram for show updates. The username for those platforms is @reformedrakes, or email us at reformedrakes@gmail.com. We love to hear from our listeners. Please rate and review us on Apple and Spotify. Helps a lot. Thank you again, and we'll see you next time.