A $455 million dollar publishing bombshell…

 

Who knew? I certainly had no idea that Harper Collins intended to purchase my publisher, Harlequin, until I got a wee little message from my agent. He was surprised too. Amazingly, Harper Collins managed to keep it on the down low, scooping up Harlequin to add to its arsenal. Recently, Harper Collins made another surprising move, acquiring Thomas Nelson and merging it with Zondervan to create their Harper Collins Christian Publishing division. Why purchase Harlequin? Well, aside from the fact that it’s an awesome company which employs more than 1300 authors and produces 110 books each month. The big selling point for H.C. appears to be that 40 % of Harlequin’s revenues come from works published in languages other than English, and H.C. is looking to expand its international footprint.

So what does this mean for me personally?

No idea!!!! As of now, H.C. intends to operate Harlequin as a separate entity under their umbrella and I’m happy to keep writing my little LIS and Heartwarming books. However, I’ve been in this business to know, well, it’s a business and there will be changes, tidying up, examinations of bottoms lines and redundancies and such. My new employer could decide to nix the lines I write for. Or they could expand them. Uncertainty is the name of the game in this biz. For now, I will keep on writing and wait for the coming changes.

Have you or your loved ones faced uncertain job situations? Did they turn out better or worse than you anticipated? Giving away a Barnes and Noble gift card in May.