Harlequin announces ebook partnership with ‘Cosmo’
Harlequin Australia has announced a partnership with Cosmopolitan magazine that will involve the publisher launching a digital romance fiction program called ‘Cosmo Red Hot Reads from Harlequin’.
The partnership will produce two shorter-format ebook titles each month from a range of romance authors, beginning with the first instalment in a new miniseries from US romance author Sylvia Day in mid-August.
The program will also feature established Harlequin authors, such as Lauren Dane, Sarah Morgan and Tawny Weber, as well as debut authors. At this stage there are no local authors on the list.
The ebooks, which will be priced at $4.99, will be available from all retailers, both locally and internationally. The books will be around 30,000 words in length, which the publisher hopes will appeal to ‘readers on a variety of platforms, including mobile devices’.
The launch of Day’s book Afterburn on 15 August will coincide with the September issue of Cosmo, which will contain exclusive extracts of the book. The sequel Aftershock will be published on 12 November, and the two titles will also be released as a ‘two-in-one paperback’ in mid-November. At this stage only Day’s titles will be released in print.
Harlequin brand manager Lauren Roberts told Books+Publishing that Day’s heroines were ‘Cosmopolitan-style’ and would appeal directly to Harlequin’s target audience.
Roberts said the Cosmo head office will select the titles for the ‘Red Hot Reads’ series, and that the Cosmo team ‘will be reviewing the books to give readers staff recommendations’.
Harlequin announced a similar partnership with Cosmo in the US earlier this year.
Category: Local news
