by Steve Laube
New information has surfaced regarding the sale of Heartsong to Harlequin.
In my post on Friday I made the assumption that the sale included all the backlist and the currently contracted titles. This was reflected in point #5 in the post.
That is not the case. Harlequin did not buy the backlist or the currently contracted titles. Those will remain the property of Barbour Publishing. Thus future repackaging opportunities remain for those titles. That also includes the Heartsong e-books that Barbour is releasing under the “Truly Yours” banner (also mentioned in #5 in that previous post).
Harlequin bought the brand name and the club mailing list, not the books themselves.
This changes some of the implications for Heartsong authors.
1) Heartsong authors are not suddenly going to become Harlequin authors by virtue of the purchase.
2) Future acquisitions for Heartsong, if there are any, will be handled by Harlequin. New Heartsong acquisitions have been completed for all of 2012.
3) Existing Love Inspired authors will be marketed to the Heartsong direct-mail club members (and vice versa). My assumption is that Harlequin is betting they can increase their Love Inspired direct-mail club membership very quickly.
Check back to see if there are further developments as more details come available.
