Mills & Boon are a publishing house based in London. They were founded in 1908 and have remained consistently successful in business, despite being much ridiculed for their literary ambitions. They have no literary ambitions, in truth, happy to plough a field of emotionally-stunted, instantly dated romance fiction read by middle-aged women with no discernible taste and written by middle-aged women with no discernible talent.
Who understands what readers want better than the readers themselves? asked Mills & Boon, both men, Gerald and Charles, who died decades ago. Shortly after Mills' death his firm began to concentrate on the romantic fiction it has since become famous for. Then, in 1971 romance changed forever, when Mills & Boon was bought out by a Canadian firm, Harlequin Enterprises, the North American equivalent of Mills & Boon.
Who understands what readers want better than the readers themselves? asked Mills & Boon, both men, Gerald and Charles, who died decades ago. Shortly after Mills' death his firm began to concentrate on the romantic fiction it has since become famous for. Then, in 1971 romance changed forever, when Mills & Boon was bought out by a Canadian firm, Harlequin Enterprises, the North American equivalent of Mills & Boon.
Soon after that it all got tawdry, with Harlequin ending their relationship with Simon and Schuster. Enraged, no doubt, and questioning their own capacity for love, Simon and Schuster formed Silhouette, tapping the untapped market of American romance writers Harlequin had spurned. Naturally jealous to see their ex-partners doing so well, Harlequin found a new sugar-daddy in the Torstar Corporation. Torstar sounds rugged, with prominent jaw-line and eyes as green as emeralds. Maybe a scar too, but underneath the wounds there lurks a conglomerate desperate for compassion.
Tiring of the jealously and spite between the rival publishing houses, Torstar bought Silhouette in the early eighties, back when buying companies was popular. And because of that rather dodgy plot contrivance, Silhouette and Harlequin confessed to being perfect for one another all along and lived happily ever after. Despite becoming one Silhouette retained its independence and possible feelings of superiority, which to continue the analogy makes Silhouette the woman, with Harlequin the Greek tycoon's idealistic and passionate brother, and Torstar the Greek Tycoon, so cruel, distant and wealthy. But of course, we all knew Silhouette would end up with Harlequin, the artistic one. Silhouette needs to be loved, yes, but also respected and treated as an equal. That's who Silhouette is. It's in her feisty Canadian blood.
There are many, many romantic fiction publishing companies, but nowadays they are all owned by the same group, to simplify matters needlessly complicated. We are unlikely to hear from Torstar again (at least until the cheques roll in), but from now on when the names of Mills & Boon, Harlequin and Silhouette crop up, we will know who they are.
When a new Mills & Boon novel is published it heads onto the shelves of the kinds of shop that sell Mills & Boon novels, and there it stays for a month. Any copies unsold after those four weeks are pulped, because once the month is up a new book is ready to take the shelf-space. After that, if a reader wants a specific book they must trawl charity shops, second-hand bookstores with no dignity and libraries for a particular title. The love in the fictional stories is eternal, the books themselves, however, are not so fortunate.
If this sounds as if it could be a cheap and shameless exploitation then your insightful will be wasted on reviewing romance titles. After all, how can a publisher feed a manuscript lies of triumph, adulation and the opportunity to select the torsos which will adorn the novel's cover, only to then use it and throw it away, and move onto the next without so much as a thanks, baby, for a fleeting moment of connection? That feeling of dirtiness is probably worth getting used to.
