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Originally Posted by Elfwreck
Most buyers had no idea that the authors were getting paid substantially less than authors signed up with other publishers....
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Harlequin is on par, if not better, than most other romance publishers. They pay royalties, which isn't common.
The only authors that do better, really, are the ones that sign with one of the Big 6. And they probably don't have nearly as many authors on their payroll.
By the way, Brenda Hiatt has done a survey of romance payouts since 2001. There's actually quite a bit of info out there about writing for Harlequin.
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Originally Posted by Elfwreck
An author who challenged any aspect of the contract would be frozen out, stuck without a job, sometimes without the right to continue using their name on future books.
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This is incorrect.
Harlequin does not negotiate contracts -- as one might expect for a genre company that publishes 120 titles a month. (By the way, Harlequin reverts rights to the authors after 5-7 years, unless they are reprinted.) If you don't adhere to the terms of any contract, there are going to be some consequences.
Harlequin does not control pseudonyms. There's no problem if you want to switch to another publisher once you've fulfilled your obligations.
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Originally Posted by Elfwreck
Now... authors have other career options, and that brings with it the power to seek reparations for the harms done to them.
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Getting a bit melodramatic, aren't we?
This has nothing to do with authors allegedly fleeing for self-publishing (something that doesn't seem to be the case). It's about ebook royalties for books published between 1999 and 2004, that were sold as ebooks.
Since Harlequin in 2012 gets around 13% of its revenues from ebooks, you might want to moderate those sweeping claims.