Romance web site - romance bookstore, your romantic horoscopes, quizzes, polls, travel, tips, advice, gifts, and much, much more! eHarlequin Product Catalog available here!
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"You can't believe how excited I am to find a place like this where you can talk about your favorite books with people who understand what you are talking about!"
Welcome to EHarlequin.com — the place to read and talk about Romance online.
The EHarlequin.com Story
We launched the EHarlequin.com site in the year 2000 with the mission of providing Romance lovers with a safe and engaging place to escape the day-to-day pressures of a busy lifestyle, to interact with like-minded Romance readers, and to purchase Romance novels with ease and comfort.
Through our wide array of relationship-oriented articles, interactive games, and discussion groups, plus our comprehensive coverage of Romance authors and huge selection of Romance novels, we have become the ultimate destination for romantic escape on the Internet.
The History of HARLEQUIN Enterprises Limited
Canadian publishing executive Richard Bonnycastle founded HARLEQUIN in 1949. In its early years the company published a wide range of American and British paperbacks, including mysteries, Westerns, and cookbooks.
It was not until 1957 that HARLEQUIN began buying rights from Mills & Boon, a British publisher of Romance fiction since 1909. Mary Bonnycastle, wife of the founder, noticed the enormous popularity of "these nice little books with happy endings," and suggested the company concentrate on them. By 1964 HARLEQUIN was publishing Romance fiction exclusively.
Rather than focusing on bookshops, the traditional locale for book purchases, HARLEQUIN took its books to where women shop most — supermarkets, drugstores, and department stores. The strategy worked, and HARLEQUIN boldly crossed the Atlantic in 1971, purchasing Mills & Boon and, with it, the romantic talents of more than 100 British authors.
Since then, the growing popularity of the Romance genre, along with HARLEQUIN's effective marketing and promotion techniques, has enabled sales of Romance novels to soar from three million in 1970 to the current annual total of more than 160 million worldwide.
In its continual quest to find new ways to serve the Romance novel reader, HARLEQUIN Enterprises decided to venture online, launching www.romance.net in 1996 — its first attempt at providing Internet-based coverage of its authors and Romance novel offerings.
Slowly, and with much success, the site evolved to include online book serials, community features, interactive contests, and electronic newsletters. Many of these features are included today in EHarlequin.com, the next generation of Romance.net.
Torstar Corporation, Our Parent
HARLEQUIN Enterprises is a wholly owned subsidiary of Canadian communications giant Torstar Corporation, publisher of Canada's largest metropolitan daily newspaper, the Toronto Star.
Torstar's current business is in three main areas: newspapers, book publishing, and supplementary education materials. The company's operating revenue for 1998 was more than $1.3 billion. For more information about Torstar Corporation, click here.
Fun Facts About HARLEQUIN
Last year HARLEQUIN sold more than 160 million books worldwide — more than 5.5 books a second.
HARLEQUIN books are sold in more than 100 international markets and translated into more than 23 languages around the world.
During the past four decades, HARLEQUIN characters have kissed each other over 20,000 times, shared about 30,000 hugs, and headed for the altar at least 7,000 times.
If you set out to read all of the HARLEQUIN books sold over the past 10 years, and averaged about two hours per book, you would be reading for the next quarter of a million years.
Approximately one in every six mass-market paperbacks sold in North America is a HARLEQUIN or a Silhouette novel.
More than 50 million women read HARLEQUIN books worldwide.
Date Added to Directory: 1/21/2002, Current Content: 7/5/2008, Days in Directory: 2357
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