Yay!
Easy to answer questions!
I know Romance is the best selling genre, but if Harlequin are putting out a batch of novels every month, how many people in general actually read all of them?
LOTS! Now, mind you--category romances (do you understand what a category romance is versus a single title? I don't want to presume) are down from what they used to be, but they still easily sell tens of thousands of copies. Yes, EVERY single book by Harlequin!
Aren't there too many to keep up with?
Nope. Certain people like certain categories, and go back faithfully every single month.
Wouldn't it be almost like the equivalent of a daily, daytime soap compared to, say, a weekly serial or again, to a movie - ie, too much of it just over-saturates the market and maybe dilutes the product?
Um . . . and there are HOW many soap operas on television every weekday? No, there's no saturation. Romance sales account for over 50% of all fiction sold in the United States. According to Publishers Weekly magazine, the primary trade magazine for the industry, in 2004 (I couldn't find stats for 2005) the total the public spent on NEW books was $19 billion. Yes, that's BILLION. So, of that, $9.5 BILLION was spent on romance novels. No worries about saturation! People love to read, and won't be stopping any time soon.
Or do people still buy anyway?
Yep. The worse the economy is, the more people buy books--particularly paperback books. It's a cheap way to spend a few hours of recreation time.
Have any Harlequin novels ever made any general bestseller lists, or does
romance have a best seller list of its own?
Yes, and yes. Romance Writers of America (the premier romance author organization) keeps track of the various lists their members make (not all romance authors are members, but a good number of them are. RWA membership is about 9,000 right now.) Here is
a link to the lists people have made, including the New York Times Bestseller List, USA Today list, Publisher's Weekly, Waldenbooks, etc. There is also the Nielsen BookScan list, which tracks actual point of sale (cash register rings) to the public, which is a specifically romance list.
Would these Harlequin novels ever get noticed by anyone else who aren't particularly into romance?
Yep. How do you think Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb became such a large name? Or Sherrilyn Kenyon/Kinley MacGregor, Catherine Coulter, etc., etc. Many, MANY "big" names on the hardback shelves started as Harlequin authors.
Or is it just a niche market, albeit a big one?
That too. But any genre other than mainstream is a "niche". Western, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Horror, etc. They're all niche markets.