Interesting about Harlequin being bought. It says in the article that they will continue to act like a separate company, but that HC will take advantage of the global reach HQ has and offer their authors many translations. There are some great authors that write for HQ, I found some gems especially in the historical romance line and with HQN.
And I have liked that HC has lowered their prices on many romances with the Avon line and allowed them to be in libraries and on services like Scribd. Many HQ are already in libraries. Heck, my local library has basically only been adding harlequin titles for months now it seems. I guess they cost less to the libraries than the other publishers.
I grew up in Germany and I remember reading harlequin novels. They were published with Cora Verlag in Germany. They were everywhere, I think it was and might still be one of their big european markets. Full sized books were quite expensive in germany because of that law they have there. No discounting and its the same no matter where you buy. I remember mountain stories were popular and doctors and some royalty stuff. That stuff still is.
