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Originally Posted by Elfwreck
Harlequin creates "Harlequin-Subsidiary, a special overseas company." H-S is owned by people from Harlequin, and has no rights to do business other than those granted by Harlequin.
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The purpose of Harlequin Books S.A. is as follows (from the original Swiss Commercial Registry):
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Harlequin Books S.A., acquérir, exploiter et vendre toutes oeuvres littéraires, artistiques et audio-visuelles, qu'il s'agisse de littérature, de cinéma, d'enregistrement sonore ou de tout autre domaine. Elle peut également financer d'autres sociétés du groupe. Le société peut exécuter toutes les transactions commerciales et financières qui favorisent son but. La société peut avoir des participations d'autres sociétés et peut établir des succursales et des sociétés affiliées.
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Which basically comes down to acquiring, exploiting and selling all types of media, as well as financial services for the rest of the group. The company can be owned by other companies, and can own companies itself.
So, in principle, it is not limited in it's business to Harlequin -- whether the do business with other companies on the publishing level I don't know. It's rather unlikely they don't do business with financial institutions outside of the Harlequin group.
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Harlequin licenses the book to H-S, agreeing that H-S gets 90% of the cover price.
Book sells for $8 list. H-S keeps $7.20, handing $.80 to Harlequin. Harlequin pays author $.40 per copy sold. At the end of the year (or whatever), H-S's profits get folded back into the main Harlequin profits. End result: Harlequin keeps $7.60 per title, and pays the staff at H-S out of that.
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Here's really a nice spin -- non of the books sell for $8 list price; as indicated by the different authors involved on the blogs. Mostly it's between $3.99 and $4.99. In the suit there's an unrealistic number for the sale price, and a real number for the author payouts.