Mills and Boon

100 years old this month eh! One hundred years of churning out that garbage. Well that's what a young man, at a writers' gathering I was at a few years ago, called stories for certain women's mags. He was sitting in the front row of a group of people being lectured to by an astute lady who had once been an editor of a woman's magazine, and he kept asking seemingly serious questions about the business of writing stories for such magazines and novels for Mills and Boon. "I take it you yourself write or attempt to write this kind of story," she said obviously taking it for granted that he was since he was taking such a serious interest in the topic. "Write this stuff!" he said, his voice full of contempt. "I think they are simply garbage," he said.
There was a librarian in the audience who said "When we buy Mills and Boon books we buy them by the yard."
I have met only two people who have actually read a Mills and Boon. One was a friend of mine (male) who thought he could make some cash out of writing one. "Easy," he said. And he proceeded to read five straight off so that he could "get a feel for the genre". He actually wrote one but it was turned down. "Too much sex?" I asked. "Apparently not enough" he said. He never tried again.
The other was a highly intelligent lady who could speak five or more languages and made a career out of translating texts into English - mostly medical and scientific work. She loved reading Mills and Boon books. You could tell: she'd curl up on an easy chair and read a book right through without stopping. "They are so wonderfully romantic," she'd say.
Someone from the Mills and Boon publishers came to give us, a writers' group, a talk on how to write books for them. After the talk everyone was excited, thrilled at the thought they might actually write one and get rich quick..... Except an old lady who I sat next to in the bar later. "Is that all it's about?" she said. "Ugh?" I said. "Well, you know, love and romance and meeting someone and marrying?" "Ugh?" I said. "Literature I mean," she said. "There's Tolstoy, and Shakespeare and Austen and Eliot and we're excited about this stuff." "Mmmm," I said. I think I know what she was getting at. They don't buy Tolstoy by the yard.