This is bullshit.
February 6th, 2026 04:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vintageromancereaderWell, this is not how I intended to start my blogging year, but here it is:
Harlequin has announced that the Historical line will be discontinued in September 2027. They cite a decline in popularity of HR over the last few years. This is both devastating and infuriating. It's devastating because Harlequin has one of the strongest stables of authors publishing today, and now where will these stories go? It's infuriating because of the company's absolute utter failure to support them. Harlequin Historicals only recently starting showing up on shelves at my local B&N again. They are not carried in drugstores/supermarkets anymore (no paperback books are), and unless you are "in the know" enough to purchase direct from publisher, you are pretty much never going to get these books in paper form.
These authors - these stories - deserve better.
I say in my About Me post on this blog that I have not cared for the direction HR has gone in the last 10 years, and that's still true. The only new Historical novels I've purchased since 2018 have been from Harlequin. With the loss of this line - making the prophecy that HR is dead decidedly self-fulfilling - I don't know where I'm going to find new offerings.
I will continue to scour the secondhand market for vintage gems, but I worry for the authors who are currently writing. Where will they end up? Maybe at Sourcebooks Casablanca? The only other publisher that seems to be pushing HR these days is Dragonblade, a small press without a developmental editor and which is locked in Kindle Unlimited.
As a vintage romance reader, one of the best things about these books is that they *are* physical objects which can be held and enjoyed. The demise of MMPB is going to be bad enough (I can already smell used book prices going up) but the loss of a major publisher is worse. As the person in the video says, this is likely the beginning of the end of category romance as a whole.
Harlequin has announced that the Historical line will be discontinued in September 2027. They cite a decline in popularity of HR over the last few years. This is both devastating and infuriating. It's devastating because Harlequin has one of the strongest stables of authors publishing today, and now where will these stories go? It's infuriating because of the company's absolute utter failure to support them. Harlequin Historicals only recently starting showing up on shelves at my local B&N again. They are not carried in drugstores/supermarkets anymore (no paperback books are), and unless you are "in the know" enough to purchase direct from publisher, you are pretty much never going to get these books in paper form.
These authors - these stories - deserve better.
I say in my About Me post on this blog that I have not cared for the direction HR has gone in the last 10 years, and that's still true. The only new Historical novels I've purchased since 2018 have been from Harlequin. With the loss of this line - making the prophecy that HR is dead decidedly self-fulfilling - I don't know where I'm going to find new offerings.
I will continue to scour the secondhand market for vintage gems, but I worry for the authors who are currently writing. Where will they end up? Maybe at Sourcebooks Casablanca? The only other publisher that seems to be pushing HR these days is Dragonblade, a small press without a developmental editor and which is locked in Kindle Unlimited.
As a vintage romance reader, one of the best things about these books is that they *are* physical objects which can be held and enjoyed. The demise of MMPB is going to be bad enough (I can already smell used book prices going up) but the loss of a major publisher is worse. As the person in the video says, this is likely the beginning of the end of category romance as a whole.
no subject
Date: February 7th, 2026 02:16 pm (UTC)How the fuck, in this era of Bridgerton, do you fumble the bag so painfully on HR? Surely there must have been an uptick in interest for each season premiere, and not just for that series in particular. I think JQ is launching a book box for HR, but that's hardback (they are pretty) but still.
Oh, and isn't Harlequin also fucking over their translators in France? Pretty sure they are. HOW DOES PUBLISHING SUCK SO MUCH?
Sorry, got swept up in general fuckery.
*adds video to tomorrow's watch list*
This suuuuuuuuuuuuuucks.
no subject
Date: February 7th, 2026 11:34 pm (UTC)I definitely hopped on the Harlequin train fairly late into my reading journey as an adult, but the HR line has been one of the strongest to me ever since I discovered I could order direct from the publisher and get those paper books in my hot little hands, LOL. I love the banana-crackers crazy of the Presents line, and the calmer stories in the Love Inspired and Heartwarming lines, but nothing quite satisfies as much as a Historical. Practically all of my current auto-read, auto-buy authors wrote for HH at one point or another in their careers. Some of them have already published independently - and seeing Caroline Linden in the indie space recently has been a revelation. I don't think Beverly Jenkins has a current contract for historicals, either. Maybe Avon has already stopped new offerings, too?
I mourn the demise of the traditional regency, a subgenre that's been gone for over 20 years now, but the upside is that there is a rich vein of it in the secondhand market, especially if you know where to look. The published books aren't going anywhere, even if new ones are not being written. There are lines I haven't ever seen in real life (like the Harlequin Gothic line), and others that disappeared into the ether that I haven't even discovered yet!
I haven't heard about any fuckery with translators and Harlequin, but at this rate I would not be surprised. As the lady in the video says, I'm really surprised they are ending their Historical line and not the quieter Medical and Heartwarming lines, or the Romance line. These are already only available in large print if you want a hard copy.
Yes, I'm on JQ's mailing list so I saw the announcement about her special edition books...of previously published HR novels, no less. Someone's going to be making a mint!