Donna Hayes, the leader of MIRA team and vice president of direct marketing was vested with the responsibility of launching a new line of single-title women’s fiction novel (MIRA). She knew that a previous attempt to launch a single title novel Worldwide Library had failed. The previous venture had taken a span of two years from its launch date from 1986 to 1988 when the venture was abandoned by Harlequin. In order to benchmark in subsequent issues regarding single title novels, the management saw it desirable to appoint a taskforce that would investigate the causes of failure for Worldwide Library. The taskforce unearthed several factors that may have resulted in the failure of the issue. Among the reasons were inadequate distributions across North America, unfocused editors, little use of the direct-to-reader channel, low support for the venture and bad selection of titles and authors.
The MIRA challenge presented Harlequin with an opportunity for redemption after an investigation revealed that the single title market was just as profitable as their business model. Upon assessment of the MIRA project, the taskforce discovered that Harlequins would not incur additional indirect overhead costs because it has pre-existing infrastructure to handle promotion and logistics. It would compensate mid-list, new and bestseller authors with advances and royalties of about 13% of the retail price. Single title topics could cover romance, fiction and mystery. The distribution needed to be modified with most emphasis on bookstores. Of the two options Donna had to launch MIRA, she should have chosen the least expensive one where she would re-issue selected novels from bestselling authors who now worked for other publishers.
In conclusion, the launch of MIRA was bound to be a success due to the intensive research done and benchmarking on Worldwide Library.
References
Will Mitchell (2005) HARLEQUIN ENTERPRISES LTD.: THE MIRA DECISION
(CONDENSED) Ivey Publishing, Ivey Management Services, c/o Richard Ivey School of Business, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada, N6A 3K7;
