Brief Biography of Janet Dailey, The World's Bestselling Romantic Novelist

Janet Dailey is one of the world’s bestselling authors having written more than ninety-nine books.

She is the world’s third largest selling female author with more than 300, 000, 000 copies of her books in print. Her books have been sold in over 98 countries and translated in more than 19 languages.

According to HarperCollins Publishers, her most recent bestseller, Masquerade, Rivals and Heiress have sold more than one million copies each.

She became the first American writer to be published by a Toronto-based publishing company known for publishing romantic novels. Her books which were published by Harlequin sold an estimated 80 million copies worldwide. In total, all her books have sold an estimated of 100 to 300 million copies worldwide to date.

Despite her success in writing romantic novels, Janet Dailey was faced with copyright infringement of another author, Nora Roberts who is also bestselling author in romantic fiction. This nearly ruined her career as an author. She was sued in 1997 from plagiarizing Nora Roberts’ books. She did admit that she borrowed some ideas or passages from Nora Roberts’ two novels, Aspen Gold ( 1991) and (1996).

“Dailey admitted that passages from Aspen Gold and Notorious were indeed plagiarized, the case was settled, and Nora Roberts donated her settlement to literary causes.”

She apologized for that act indicating she did so as a result of stress she was undergoing because her husband was going through cancer surgery. The case was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.

Janet Dailey’s husband died in 2005 while she passed away in 2013 as a result of heart surgery complications as stated by her lawyer, Donald W. Ingrum.

Janet Ann Hardon was born in Storm Lake, Iowa on May 21, 1944. She was born to Boyd Haradon and Lena Louise Zimmer.

She worked for a construction company owned by later-to-be husband, Bill Dailey as a secretary. It was her first job after graduating from high school in Independence, Iowa.

Her career as a romantic author begun when she was almost 30. Her first novel ‘No Quarter Asked’ was published in the year 1976. She decided to write this novel when her husband, Bill, challenged her to write a novel. This was as a result of Janet insisting she was going to write a novel without any indication she really meant it.

The following are some of the novels Janet Dailey wrote: