Harlequin Mills & Boon - Getting Your Book Published

Harlequin Mills & Boon is one of the heavy hitters in romance novels. Their historical group is based in England. You need to send them a cover letter, a one to two page synopsis of the entire story, and then the first three chapters of your novel, double spaced. You also need to send them a self addressed stamped return envelope. You CANNOT submit that book to anyone else while they are reviewing your work.

This is a professional group that nicely sends you a return response immediately when they get the manuscript, so you know at least they are working on it. I sent my package in to them for Badge of Honor on June 6, 2008 and got my "we got it" response from them dated June 26, 2008. I then got my rejection letter from them on September 9 2008, so about 2 1/2 months later.

I appreciate the initial letter and the follow up letter. While people with email submissions often pop back a generic "your email was received" this is the only paper-submission publisher I have encountered who actually verified receipt of the paper copy.

I next sent them a copy of the first three chapters etc. of Seeking the Truth which is a much more "rowdy" story, which I hoped would catch their eye more readily. I sent that in October 2008. By November 29, 2008 I hadn't even gotten my initial "we got it" letter. I *think* on the actual three chapter pages I forgot to put my book title in the header-on-every-page. I think I put my author name in that header but not my book title. I wonder if they tossed the submission in the trash because of that. I would think they would have sent it back to me in my SASE with an "incorrect format" note ...? I'll give them another month and then send a full follow-up submission package with a note that maybe the previous one got lost in the mail.

December 31, 2008. Still no response, no letter, no nothing. I will get together a package and re-send them everything. It's just a pain because you have to actually print everything out and then mail it out to the UK with a SASE. Note that their guidelines now say you must include a SASE postcard if you want the initial "we got your package" confirmation, so I am doing that in this set.

Harlequin Mills & Boon Historical Romance Guidelines

Actual Responses from Publishers with Timing
Getting Your Book Published
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