When I learned a couple of years ago that RWA was planning on hosting their annual conference in San Francisco in 2008, I immediately marked it on my calander.  Mostly because it meant I could avoid flying the “friendly skies” and drive.   I don’t know about you all, but flying for me these days is on par with getting a root canal, a bikini wax and your finger nails pulled out….all at the same time.

The conference is always great fun for me because I love chatting with authors, whether they be rock stars or aspiring.  I get a lot of good information to take back to my library day job, and I learn about upcoming titles.  As if all that wasn’t cool enough, this year, our own dear Sybil hooked me up with a dinner invitation with Harlequin’s Digital team.  Not only did I get to eat seafood while gazing upon a fantastic view of the bay, I also got to chat with the Harlequin team about their upcoming ventures.

Launching in November will be Harlequin Historicals Undone, which will be ebook shorts similar to Spice Briefs and Nocturne Bites.  These will be short, tasty, historical stories with a higher sensuality level than a traditional full-length Harlequin Historical title.  I think I speak for HH fans everywhere when I say I hope these prove to be big hits.  The HQ Digital folks told me that the Spice Briefs have proven to be quite popular, so could a sexier HH short generate as much interest?  I sure hope so!

One of the things that the HQ Digital team offers, and I think is cool beans, are ebook bundles.  For example, with one click of the mouse you can buy all the Harlequin Presents titles that are out in any given month.  Also, they’ve done an Anne Stuart bundle that featured several of her “out of print gems.”  I would love to see more of these, and I would especially love to see Harlequin really dig into their rich and deep backlist.  Reissue some of these great older titles (oh, like Nicole Jordan‘s HH titles!) in ebook format.  I’d be first in line, waving my credit card in the air.

Harlequin has really been a trail-blazer in the digital frontier.  Online Reads have been offered on the eHarlequin web site for the last ten years!  I had no clue the program had been around that long.  In that vein, Harlequin has expanded their digital content to include “enhanced” ebooks, digital audio books, and mobile content for cell phones.  There’s also DailyLit, a subscribtion program that delivers a chapter a day of a book right to the reader, either by RSS feed or e-mail.  One of the big reasons I love to pimp Harlequin?  The fact that the books are shorter, quicker reads, and ideal for busy readers.  Now they’re giving us our fix by having a read delivered right to our Google Reader or in our e-mail inbox! 

I think we all know that Harlequin has been sneered at over the years.  Those books with the dreadful titles couldn’t possibly be any good.  That they’re throw away books written by hacks.  All nonsense, and a myth further dispelled by the work of the Harlequin Digital team.  They are on the cutting edge of offering digital content, and it has shown in their sales.  Vendors who deal in ebooks have quickly learned how popular romance novels are, because much like mass market paperback sales, romance dominates over the other genres in ebook format as well.

It’s really an exciting time for readers, authors and the fine folks at Harlequin.  I can’t wait to see what the team cooks up next!