Harlequin Enterprises: the Mira Decisions Essay

authors are taking up a huge portion of the market and therefore more beneficial for

On an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show, Winfrey shares with her viewers “What a difference it makes in your world to go into some other life. It’s what I love most. I’m reading always to leave myself…behind” “That’s what reading is. You get to leave.” and in 1996, carrying this passion of hers, she began a self-titled book club to share the joy of literature with the public. Oprah’s Book Club was a huge hit from the start of the segment and over twenty million viewers were a part of this phenomenon. This increase in book popularity also had an immense increase on publishing companies. With the swift change brought by the book club, this was the largest change to benefit publishing companies in more than

Did you know that the Harry Potter series has been translated into 68 different languages and has sold over 400 million copies worldwide? Harry Potter has inspired a new generation of readers. Harry Potter is banned in so many schools, but it still has changed our culture.

Some might claim the YA genre has grown to be too dark for its target audience. Meghan Gurdon, a firm believer of this idea, explains why she believes this in her article, “Darkness Too Visible”. Gurdon describes the experience of a mother of three in a bookstore looking to purchase a YA novel for one of her children, when she found herself leaving the bookstore empty-handed due to the content of the teen books. While teen books decades ago contained less violent/corrupted material, times have changed along with the genre. She is concerned that these books could have an effect on these young readers’ brains as they are merely transferring from childhood to adulthood. Gurdon still has faith that YA books would sell just as well and connect with young readers today without all of the dark subject matters discussed in them these days.

The bookstore chain has been decreasing in profit in the US over the past 20 years. Most of the books retailers are shutting down their operations and only a few are still operating in the country. Barnes and Noble has become the largest bookseller in the book retailers industry. The firm has integrated its business philosophy into web presence though eBook marketplace. This business strategy assisted the firm to be able to reach a large scale customers and remain as a strongest competitor in the book retailing market.

Lisa Nakamura argues in her article, “Words with Friends”: Socially Networked Reading on Goodreads, that Goodreads is a successful Web 2.0 business, worth studying by literary scholars. By applying the argument Carolyn Miller makes for a successful genre, in her text, Genre as Social Action (1984), Revisited 30 Years Later (2014), one can examine why Goodreads is successful in terms of fulfilling its requirements to its public. Miller defines genre as being “a multidimensional construct”, that is a “typified rhetorical response to” an uptake of a situation, “a ‘macro’ speech act”, “a mediation between private intentions (purpose) and socially objectified needs (exigence)”, and above all she emphasizes that genre must create social action,

While value is a competitive advantage for Barnes and Noble’s retention of market share, their prices are not low enough to impose a low cost strategy.

All this has added to the growing popularity of the Harry Potter brand that is everywhere today. Young readers can relate to Harry’s issues and the books create another world the readers can subconsciously ‘escape’ too.

That is where Harlequin’s competitive advantage ends. In the overall romance novel market Harlequin does not possess a competitive advantage. The series romance

worlds of which readers desire to be a part. Most North-American homes are blessed with one

Harlequin Enterprises has been able to capture 80% of the series romance market. Our great existing strategy (see exhibit 1) has allowed us to be the biggest player in the series romance market. Now we face the opportunity to capture a rapidly growing market of single-title women 's fiction novels. I recommend that Harlequin aggressively pursue the single-title market, using its extensive back list collection to reissue novels by best-selling authors.

In the UK, H&M’s, the other major fast fashion major brand, average selling price of women’s clothes are £10.69, whereas at Primark, the average selling price was £3.87. Further, in terms of the annual average sales of clothes per square meter, H&M sells £3,400 per square metre, while Primark sells £5,300. These clearly point to a more optimised strategy (The Economist 2015).

Better World Books (BWB) was founded in 2002 as a B corporation, meaning it targets successful performance in three fundamental areas: financial, social, and environmental endeavors. BWB has grown successfully since its creation as a small, socially motivated firm to one of the larger, more successful corporations of its kind. Despite the impressive and inspiring performance and growth through creative expansions, BWB acknowledges the changing conditions of the used book marketplace and is pleased to outline a brief review of current strategy and recommendations for supporting operations moving forward.

The prevalent of e-books creates numerous platforms for the marketplace of books. For example, when Steve Jobs announced the launch of the iPad iBooks, it created an enormous opportunity for publishers.

The second option involves entering the book production business. But, its potential is unlimited. Here we are dealing with huge market consisting significant figures of 50,000 new titles and 1,500,000 repeat titles a year. Moreover, the market for on demand and short run books is extended beyond the life cycle of normal book. This makes market interesting in terms of extent it can expand to.