Thoughts and Ponderings on a Publisher

To be honest with the exception of one, I’ve never paid that much attention to publishers until lately. In my never ending tinkering with my book spreadsheet (and I think I’m going to have a question for Rosario on that one now that she’s back) I’ve recently added a column for publishers. I thought I’d run a comparison on who publishes most of my favourites. In light of that there is one publisher that I seem to be buying quite a few books from lately. And that one is HQN. They are a fairly new division of Harlequin and publish full-sized mass market romance. And I must say I’m quite impressed with them. I’ve read a number of very good books they’ve published; some by Kasey Michaels(I loved her Romney series) some by Susan Mallery and at least one by Gena Showalter. Julia Justiss wrote one I really enjoyed, the Courtesan, although I was pretty disappointed that her web site is sadly out of date. I have a Catherine Mann in my TBR pile. I hear she’s pretty good. I also have a Helen Kirkman on the TBR pile and I’m thinking of getting some more. What impresses me about them is the wide variety of genres they are publishing. They range from the paranormals of Gena Showalter to military suspence of Catherine Mann; contemporaries of Susan Mallery, Leanna Banks to the Viking stories of Helen Kirkman and the medievals of Margaret Moore. They have some old favourites such as Diane Palmer and Bertrice Small and some newcomer Nicola Cornick.

While looking around their site, here are a few interesting things I found.

Susan Mallery has the cutest website! Check it out.

Pamela Britton does have plans for another historical or two – Yea! While I know some may like her Nascar books, I’m not one of them. I do like her historicals though.

I haven't read many books by Margaret Moore. I'm not exactly sure why, she writes Medievals which I like, and she's from the home Country. I know Erika thinks she's hit or miss, but I really ought to try some more.

She first started with Harlequin - not bad covers.

She then moved to Avon where the covers were.......different
Now that she's moved to HQN, I think her covers are much better.





Nicola Cornick I must admit, is an author I'd never heard of before. Somehow she slipped through my radar. But I think this cover is gorgeous!


I didn't realize until looking through her site, how many books she's written, many for Mills & Boon (which we don't ever see here) and a number for Harlequin Historicals.


I'm going to have to keep my eye out from now on.

Of course all is not perfect with their web site. They aren't very good with future releases or updating. I couldn't find anywhere that Susan Grant's newest is an HQN book.

Anyway - that's my publisher spotlight for the day.

'til later