I was chatting to a friend earlier today and she told that Mills and Boon were on the verge of bankruptcy before e-readers became popular. Apparently the advent of e-readers meant that people were finally able to enjoy reading a romance without everyone around them knowing what they were reading, and this saw their sales in an often-scorned genre increase exponentially. I don’t know if there’s any truth in that – a swift search on Google didn’t give me any information either way – but certainly it’s true that the UK’s once most popular erotic line, Black Lace, was resurrected to publish ebooks and is now going from strength to strength.