Harlequin Enterprise case report

With the increasing popularity of e-books, Harlequin needs to understand how it can cope with the trend. Since Amazon Kindle was launched in about a decade ago, the e-books segment has rapidly grown over the years. Major changes can be observed in the United Kingdom and the United States. These markets massively contribute to Harlequin Enterprise’ market share. Therefore, the company should take the issue of e-books with great seriousness. Before the introduction of e-book publishing, the book industry was run by a system where authors would deliver texts to publishers, who would evaluate, edit, print and distribute the published texts to bookshops, libraries, and individual readers. This system has been around for over four centuries. The introduction of the e-book in the book industry has the potential of disrupting the processes of production, distribution, and use of authorial texts.

This trend in the book industry is reminiscent of the concept of disruptive technology described by (Crossan et al. The success or failure of a company is largely dependent on the strategies it employs to adapt to the emerging technology and trends in the industry it operates. Pros: i. E-books allow readers to have a wide selection of books from which to choose. Using a single device, a reader can hold an entire library of preferred books. For example, with mobile phone connection or Wi-Fi, readers can access all e-books on Amazon. Therefore, by adopting this strategy, Harlequin has the opportunity of tapping into a broader marketplace. iii. Making books digitally available raises the issues of digital rights management. Alternative 2: Focusing on single-title books For decades, Harlequin has developed and expanded in the highly profitable series romance fiction that targets women.

Through the constant production of quality romance books that reliably met the expectations of readers, Harlequin managed to be the leading global publisher of women’s series romance fiction. However, the series version of books is gradually losing popularity while the single-title books are taking up the books industry. The single-titled printed books constitute of a higher risk venture compared to series romance fiction. ii. For every single-titled book under consideration, Harlequin has to take into account the author’s reputation, the writing quality, and the subject matter. iii. Single-title book publishing calls for extensive investment in infrastructure and working capital. In adapting to the rise in e-books, Harlequin has to change its perception of the traditional “book concept. ” With the e-book technology, a book is not merely a set of pages printed texts and images, hipped together in volumes.

Instead, through e-book, Harlequin can use files such as MOBI and EPUB to reshape and reformat texts using different font styles and sizes. Furthermore, when illustrating a concept, e-books allow authors to used more techniques beyond graphs and images. In addition, Harlequin could apply e-book features to intertwine texts with videos, sounds, and other means of expressing content. , Bonnet, D. , & McAfee, A. Leading digital: Turning technology into business transformation. Harvard Business Press. Appendix 1. Thus, they easily adopt to digital reading due to its features and their ease in facilitating the learning process. Harlequin enhance the process of reading for its readers by integrating more essential information in its ebooks. This step is beneficial to both the company and its consumers in terms of time and costs incurred.