Harlequin to make all new books available for downloading

CBC News

Harlequin Enterprises, the Canadian-based romance publisher, said it will make all its new titles available online for downloading.

"It's every single line, every single title, so it's over 120 titles a month," Malle Vallik, Harlequin's director of digital content, told Quill & Quire magazine, an industry publication.

Harlequin will become the first Canadian publisher to do such a thing, Vallik said. The company thought the move was necessary to be relevant to younger readers who can download to laptops or cellphones, she added.

Vallik also suggested that fans of the romance genre might enjoy some confidentiality — with books accessible online, fans can collect them and no one else will know.

Harlequin Enterprises, owned by Torstar Corp., publisher of the Toronto Star, is the world's largest publisher of romance and women's literature.

The Toronto-based company sold more than 131 million books in 26 languages in 2006.

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