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Marketing Love: Romance Publishers Mills & Boon and Harlequin Enterprises, 1930–1990

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 January 2021

DENISE HARDESTY SUTTON Open the ORCID record for DENISE HARDESTY SUTTON [Opens in a new window]
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Abstract

When Harlequin Enterprises acquired British publisher Mills & Boon in 1972, the merged firm became the world’s dominant publisher of popular romance novels. Little is known, however, about the role that innovative marketing strategies played in the growth of these two romance publishing companies, especially their use of product sampling, direct mail, product standardization, and what was known at Mills & Boon as the “personal touch.” Through research in the Mills & Boon company archive at the University of Reading, the Grescoe Archive at the University of Calgary, as well as an analysis of company histories, trade publications, interviews, and marketing techniques, this study reveals how Harlequin and Mills & Boon took a different approach to product promotion than traditional publishers. Their innovation was to incorporate consumer goods marketing strategies, familiar to other industries, that disrupted and redefined standard practices of book publishers.

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Article
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , September 2022 , pp. 680 - 710
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved.

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References

Bibliography of Works Cited

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Ewen, Stuart. Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of Consumer Culture. New York: Basic Books, 1976.Google Scholar
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Howsam, Leslie. The Cambridge Companion to the History of the Book. Cambridge, UK: University of Cambridge, 2014.Google Scholar
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Johanson, Graeme. Colonial Editions in Australia, 1843–1972. Wellington, NZ: Elibank Press, 2000.Google Scholar
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Lewis, Jeremy. Kindred Spirits: Adrift in Literary London. London: Faber & Faber, 2009.Google Scholar
Lippard, Lucy. From the Center: Feminist Essays on Women’s Art. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1976.Google Scholar
Markert, John. Publishing Romance: The History of an Industry, 1940s to the Present. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2016.Google Scholar
McAleer, Joseph. Passion’s Fortune: The Story of Mills & Boon. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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Radway, Janice. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984.Google Scholar
Regis, Pamela. A Natural History of the Romance Novel. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003.Google Scholar
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Stearns, Peter. Consumerism in World History: The Global Transformation of Desire. London: Routledge, 2001.Google Scholar
Sutton, Kim Maya. How Contemporary Publishers Reach Out to Their Customers: Transition from B2B to B2C Marketing in the Publishing Industry. Hamburg, Ger.: Diplomica Verlag, 2013.Google Scholar
Tadajewski, M., and Jones, D. G. B., eds. The History of Marketing Thought. 3 vols. London: Sage Publishing, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, John B. Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Plume, 2010.Google Scholar
Thurston, Carol. The Romance Revolution: Erotic Novels for Women and the Quest for a New Sexual Identity. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Tufts, Eleanor. Our Hidden Heritage: Five Centuries of Women Artists. New York: Paddington Press, 1975.Google Scholar
Vincent, David. Literacy and Popular Culture: England, 1750–1914. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weaver-Zercher, Valerie. Thrill of the Chaste: The Allure of Amish Romance Novels. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Wilson, Nicola, ed. The Book World: Selling and Distributing British Literature, 1900–1940. Leiden, Neth.: Brill, 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woll, Thomas. Publishing for Profit: Successful Bottom-Line Management for Book Publishers. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. London: Hogarth Press, 1929.Google Scholar
Adorno, Theodor, and Horkheimer, Max. “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.” In Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, 94–136. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Baer, Markus. “Putting Creativity to Work: The Implementation of Ideas in Organizations.” The Academy of Management Journal 55, no. 5 (2012): 1102–1119.Google Scholar
Bergendahl, Magnus, and Magnusson, Mats. “Creating Ideas for Innovation: Effects of Organizational Distance on Knowledge Creation Processes. Creativity and Innovation Management 24, no. 1 (2015): 87–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coser, Lewis A. “Publishers as Gatekeepers of Ideas.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 421 (1975): 14–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Granados, Cristian, Bernardo, Merce, and Pareja, Montserrat. “How Do Creative Industries Innovate? A Model Proposal.” Creative Industries Journal 10, no. 3 (2017): 211–225.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoppenstand, Gary. “Genres and Formulas in Popular Fiction.” In A Companion to Popular Culture, edited by Burns, Gary, 101–122. West Sussex, UK: Wiley, 2016.Google Scholar
Kipping, Matthias, Wadhwani, R. Daniel, and Bucheli, Marcelo. “Analyzing and Interpreting Historical Sources: A Basic Methodology.” In Organizations in Time: History, Theory, Methods, edited by Bucheli, Marcelo and Wadhwani, R. Daniel, 305–330. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Maryles, Daisy. “Fawcett Launches Romance Imprint with Branding Marketing Techniques.” Bookselling & Marketing 216 (September 1979): 69.Google Scholar
Moore, Ieva. “Cultural and Creative Industries Concept—A Historical Perspective.” Procedia—Social and Behavioral Sciences 110 (January 2014): 738–746.Google Scholar
Raff, Daniel M. G. “The Book-of-the-Month Club as a New Enterprise.” In The Emergence of Routines: Entrepreneurship, Organization, and Business History, edited by Raff, Daniel M. G. and Scranton, Philip, 21–49. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Showalter, Elaine. “Women Writers and the Double Standard.” In Woman in Sexist Society: Studies in Power and Powerlessness, edited by Gornick, Vivian and Moran, Barbara K., 323–343. New York: New American Library, 1972.Google Scholar
Towheed, Shafquat. “Negotiating the List: Launching Macmillan’s Colonial Library and Author Contracts.” In Nationalisms and the National Canon, The Culture of the Publisher’s Series, edited by Spiers, J., vol. 2, 134–151. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.Google Scholar
Wilson, Nicola. “Boots Book-lovers’ Library and the Novel: The Impact of a Circulating Library Market on Twentieth-Century Fiction.” Information & Culture: A Journal of History 49, no. 4 (2014): 427–449.Google Scholar
Wirten, Eva Hemmungs. “Global Infatuation: Explorations in Transnational Publishing and Texts. The Case of Harlequin Enterprises and Sweden.” PhD diss., Uppsala University, 1998.Google Scholar
Book Business Google Scholar
Financial Post (Toronto) Google Scholar
Financial Post Magazine (Toronto) Google Scholar
Forbes Google Scholar
Globe and Mail Google Scholar
Marketing Google Scholar
New Republic Google Scholar
Quill & Quire Google Scholar
Research World Google Scholar
The Telegraph (London) Google Scholar
Toronto Star Google Scholar
Harlequin. “Company Information.” Accessed January 10, 2019. http://corporate.harlequin.com/.Google Scholar
Harlequin. “A Global Success Story.” Accessed January 8, 2019. https://www.harlequin.com/shop/pages/harlequin-enterprises-limited-a-global-success-story.html.Google Scholar
HarperCollins. “The Growth of Harlequin Romance.” Accessed December 11, 2018. https://200.hc.com/stories/the-growth-of-harlequin-romance/#page-content.Google Scholar
McCann, John M. “The Changing Nature of Consumer Goods Marketing and Sales.” Report at Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, March 10, 1995. http://people.duke.edu/~mccann/cpg/cg-chg.htm.Google Scholar
Mills & Boon. “About Us.” Accessed December 17, 2019. https://www.millsandboon.co.uk/np/Content/ContentPage/5.Google Scholar
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Mills & Boon Archive, Special Collections, University of Reading, England.Google Scholar
Paul Grescoe Archive, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada.Google Scholar
Hallowes, Guy (former HMB executive). Interview by the author via telephone. November 29, 2019.Google Scholar
Somerville, Clare (former HMB executive). Interview by the author via telephone. February 11, 2020.Google Scholar
Alvesson, Mats, and Sköldberg, Kaj. Reflexive Methodology: New Vistas for Qualitative Research. 3rd ed. London: SAGE, 2017.Google Scholar
Blaszczyk, Regina Lee. Imaging Consumers: Design and Innovation from Wedgwood to Corning. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Buckland, Adelene, and Palmer, Beth. A Return to the Common Reader: Print Culture and the Novel, 1850–1900. New York: Routledge, 2011.Google Scholar
Clark, Giles, and Phillips, Angus. Inside Book Publishing. London: Routledge, 2008.Google Scholar
Coser, Lewis, Kadushin, Charles, and Powell, Walter. Books: The Culture and Commerce of Publishing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.Google Scholar
Drucker, P. F. The Practice of Management. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1954.Google Scholar
Ewen, Stuart. Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of Consumer Culture. New York: Basic Books, 1976.Google Scholar
Finkelstein, David, and McCleery, Alistair. An Introduction to Book History. New York: Routledge, 2005.Google Scholar
Greco, Albert N., Milliot, Jim, and Wharton, Robert M.. The Book Publishing Industry. New York: Routledge, 2014.Google Scholar
Grescoe, Paul. The Merchants of Venus: Inside Harlequin and the Empire of Romance. Vancouver: Raincoast Books, 1996.Google Scholar
Howsam, Leslie. The Cambridge Companion to the History of the Book. Cambridge, UK: University of Cambridge, 2014.Google Scholar
Jensen, Margaret Ann. Love’s Sweet Return: The Harlequin Story. Bowling Green, OH: University of Bowling Green Popular Press, 1984.Google Scholar
Johanson, Graeme. Colonial Editions in Australia, 1843–1972. Wellington, NZ: Elibank Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Jones, Amelia, ed. The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader. New York: Routledge, 2003.Google Scholar
Jones, Geoffrey. Multinationals and Global Capitalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Jones, Geoffrey, and Tedlow, Richard S., eds. The Rise and Fall of Mass Marketing. New York: Routledge, 1993.Google Scholar
Krentz, Jayne Ann, ed. Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women: Romance Writers on the Appeal of the Romance. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Lewis, Jeremy. Kindred Spirits: Adrift in Literary London. London: Faber & Faber, 2009.Google Scholar
Lippard, Lucy. From the Center: Feminist Essays on Women’s Art. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1976.Google Scholar
Markert, John. Publishing Romance: The History of an Industry, 1940s to the Present. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2016.Google Scholar
McAleer, Joseph. Passion’s Fortune: The Story of Mills & Boon. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McKendrick, Neil, Brewer, John, and Plumb, J. H., eds. The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982.Google Scholar
Modleski, Tania. Loving with a Vengeance: Mass-Produced Fantasies for Women. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1982.Google Scholar
Mussell, Kay. Fantasy and Reconciliation: Contemporary Formulas of Women’s Romantic Fiction. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984.Google Scholar
Ohmann, Richard. Selling Culture: Magazines, Markets, and Class at the Turn of the Century. New York: Verso, 1996.Google Scholar
Parker, Rozsike, and Pollock, Griselda. Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology. London: Pandora Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Pollock, Griselda. Differencing the Canon: Feminist Desire and the Writing of Art’s Histories. London: Routledge, 1999.Google Scholar
Pride, William M., and Ferrell, O. C.. Marketing. Boston: Cengage, 2016.Google Scholar
Radway, Janice. A Feeling for Books: The Book-of-the-Month Club, Literary Taste, and Middle-Class Desire. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Radway, Janice. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984.Google Scholar
Regis, Pamela. A Natural History of the Romance Novel. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Russ, Joanna, and Crispin, Jessa. How to Suppress Women’s Writing. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983.Google Scholar
Schumpeter, Joseph. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. 3rd ed. 1942. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1976.Google Scholar
Squires, Claire. Marketing Literature: The Making of Contemporary Writing in Britain. Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stearns, Peter. Consumerism in World History: The Global Transformation of Desire. London: Routledge, 2001.Google Scholar
Sutton, Kim Maya. How Contemporary Publishers Reach Out to Their Customers: Transition from B2B to B2C Marketing in the Publishing Industry. Hamburg, Ger.: Diplomica Verlag, 2013.Google Scholar
Tadajewski, M., and Jones, D. G. B., eds. The History of Marketing Thought. 3 vols. London: Sage Publishing, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, John B. Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Plume, 2010.Google Scholar
Thurston, Carol. The Romance Revolution: Erotic Novels for Women and the Quest for a New Sexual Identity. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Tufts, Eleanor. Our Hidden Heritage: Five Centuries of Women Artists. New York: Paddington Press, 1975.Google Scholar
Vincent, David. Literacy and Popular Culture: England, 1750–1914. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weaver-Zercher, Valerie. Thrill of the Chaste: The Allure of Amish Romance Novels. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Wilson, Nicola, ed. The Book World: Selling and Distributing British Literature, 1900–1940. Leiden, Neth.: Brill, 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woll, Thomas. Publishing for Profit: Successful Bottom-Line Management for Book Publishers. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. London: Hogarth Press, 1929.Google Scholar
Adorno, Theodor, and Horkheimer, Max. “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.” In Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, 94–136. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Baer, Markus. “Putting Creativity to Work: The Implementation of Ideas in Organizations.” The Academy of Management Journal 55, no. 5 (2012): 1102–1119.Google Scholar
Bergendahl, Magnus, and Magnusson, Mats. “Creating Ideas for Innovation: Effects of Organizational Distance on Knowledge Creation Processes. Creativity and Innovation Management 24, no. 1 (2015): 87–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coser, Lewis A. “Publishers as Gatekeepers of Ideas.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 421 (1975): 14–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Granados, Cristian, Bernardo, Merce, and Pareja, Montserrat. “How Do Creative Industries Innovate? A Model Proposal.” Creative Industries Journal 10, no. 3 (2017): 211–225.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoppenstand, Gary. “Genres and Formulas in Popular Fiction.” In A Companion to Popular Culture, edited by Burns, Gary, 101–122. West Sussex, UK: Wiley, 2016.Google Scholar
Kipping, Matthias, Wadhwani, R. Daniel, and Bucheli, Marcelo. “Analyzing and Interpreting Historical Sources: A Basic Methodology.” In Organizations in Time: History, Theory, Methods, edited by Bucheli, Marcelo and Wadhwani, R. Daniel, 305–330. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Maryles, Daisy. “Fawcett Launches Romance Imprint with Branding Marketing Techniques.” Bookselling & Marketing 216 (September 1979): 69.Google Scholar
Moore, Ieva. “Cultural and Creative Industries Concept—A Historical Perspective.” Procedia—Social and Behavioral Sciences 110 (January 2014): 738–746.Google Scholar
Raff, Daniel M. G. “The Book-of-the-Month Club as a New Enterprise.” In The Emergence of Routines: Entrepreneurship, Organization, and Business History, edited by Raff, Daniel M. G. and Scranton, Philip, 21–49. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Showalter, Elaine. “Women Writers and the Double Standard.” In Woman in Sexist Society: Studies in Power and Powerlessness, edited by Gornick, Vivian and Moran, Barbara K., 323–343. New York: New American Library, 1972.Google Scholar
Towheed, Shafquat. “Negotiating the List: Launching Macmillan’s Colonial Library and Author Contracts.” In Nationalisms and the National Canon, The Culture of the Publisher’s Series, edited by Spiers, J., vol. 2, 134–151. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.Google Scholar
Wilson, Nicola. “Boots Book-lovers’ Library and the Novel: The Impact of a Circulating Library Market on Twentieth-Century Fiction.” Information & Culture: A Journal of History 49, no. 4 (2014): 427–449.Google Scholar
Wirten, Eva Hemmungs. “Global Infatuation: Explorations in Transnational Publishing and Texts. The Case of Harlequin Enterprises and Sweden.” PhD diss., Uppsala University, 1998.Google Scholar
Book Business Google Scholar
Financial Post (Toronto) Google Scholar
Financial Post Magazine (Toronto) Google Scholar
Forbes Google Scholar
Globe and Mail Google Scholar
Marketing Google Scholar
New Republic Google Scholar
Quill & Quire Google Scholar
Research World Google Scholar
The Telegraph (London) Google Scholar
Toronto Star Google Scholar
Harlequin. “Company Information.” Accessed January 10, 2019. http://corporate.harlequin.com/.Google Scholar
Harlequin. “A Global Success Story.” Accessed January 8, 2019. https://www.harlequin.com/shop/pages/harlequin-enterprises-limited-a-global-success-story.html.Google Scholar
HarperCollins. “The Growth of Harlequin Romance.” Accessed December 11, 2018. https://200.hc.com/stories/the-growth-of-harlequin-romance/#page-content.Google Scholar
McCann, John M. “The Changing Nature of Consumer Goods Marketing and Sales.” Report at Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, March 10, 1995. http://people.duke.edu/~mccann/cpg/cg-chg.htm.Google Scholar
Mills & Boon. “About Us.” Accessed December 17, 2019. https://www.millsandboon.co.uk/np/Content/ContentPage/5.Google Scholar
Bookscan, Nielson. “A Profitable Affair: Opportunities for Book Publishers in the Romance Book Market.” July 5, 2016. Accessed July 15, 2020. https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/article/2016/a-profitable-affair-opportunities-for-publishers-in-the-romance-book-market/.Google Scholar
RWA (Romance Writers Association). “Resources.” Accessed April 6, 2019. https://www.rwa.org/Online/Resources/.Google Scholar
Mills & Boon Archive, Special Collections, University of Reading, England.Google Scholar
Paul Grescoe Archive, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada.Google Scholar
Hallowes, Guy (former HMB executive). Interview by the author via telephone. November 29, 2019.Google Scholar
Somerville, Clare (former HMB executive). Interview by the author via telephone. February 11, 2020.Google Scholar