Harlequin a Vanity Press?

It appears that I am boring my followers.

I only got two comments yesterday, out of 57 followers.

I could delusion myself into thinking that everyone I know is disconnected from the internet or getting sick on turkey already...but I saw how many people posted blogs yesterday.

So! Looks like I need to step up the pace if I'm going to keep my readership.

The truth is that my life is incredibly boring and other than my writing, I don't really have anything going on. And I don't have any expertise in anything.

So, in the effort to appear knowledgable, interesting, and worth commenting on, I'm going to weigh in on the new Harlequin press--the one that is a vanity press, or self-publishing (there is a difference between the two, but for simplicity's sake, I'm going to group them together as not being traditional publishing).

Harlequin recently created a new imprint, called Harlequin Horizons...but what's got people all riled up is that this imprint is not actually an imprint at all, but a vanity press masquerading as a part of Harlequin. It says it all quite clearly on the website--this is a pay for services. It's a bold move by Harlequin, one that will help them meet their expenses in this economy and take advantage of all the rejections they give out in a week's time.

Here's the problem: When a rejection is given, does Harlequin then 'recommend' that an author submit to Harlequin Horizons? Does it give the writer the impression that doing so might just enable them to be picked up by Harlequin itself in the future?

How many inexperienced authors would fall for that? If you look at how many fall for the scam agents and publishing companies, probably many. Especially since Harlequin is a known and legitimate name. (Although Harlequin has promised to change the name of Harlequin Horizons so they seem less like sister companies.)

I'm sure you've been reading about this on every blog for the past week, but just in case you want to see what people are saying today, here's a few more blogs talking about it. Just click here and here. This is a very heated discussion. Nobody seems happy about it.

My take? Writers need to do their research and know what they're getting into. Then if writer chooses to go with a press like Harlequin Horizons, it's not because they're expecting something they're not getting.

Go ahead. Leave your comment. What do you think?