Talk About Your Quickie Affairs

By Ron Hogan on December 21, 2005 8:50 AM

Late last week, Booksquare reported that Harlequin will be making a significant adjustment to their major imprints. Specifically, writes author Susan Gable, the word counts on “lines such as Superromance, Silhouette Special Edition, [and] Silhouette Intimate Moments” will be tightened by about 10,000 words (about 40 manuscript pages) in order to accomodate larger typefaces and narrower margins; fellow Harlequin writer Angelle Trieste has the full page breakdowns. Jo Leigh takes the optimistic view: “Some books, by some authors, have been coming in very long and when printed, the print bleeds into the margins, making it difficult for some readers. From what I understand, that’s all they’re trying to fix. The aim is to give folks a more pleasant reading experience.”

Another Harlequin novelist, Alison Kent, thinks aloud on her blog about whether these changes are tied to a possible failure to reach young audiences: “Why isn’t HQ picking up the younger generation? Are the authors writing more toward the older readers and not giving the younger readers anything of interest, or to which they can relate? Or are there truly fewer readers in the younger generation?” Some commentary on the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books fanblog, the readership of which draws heavily from the generation Kent worries the genre is losing, is rather more cynical. “It’s not like they are going to charge us any less for the shorter, suckier series romances that will be the result,” complains one reader. Co-blogger “SB Sarah” adds her own two gloomy cents: “The books will look like Sweet Valley High and Sweet Dreams novels.”