Authors Electric

Last night I picked the final piece of paper from my newly emptied attic floor and placed it in Box 16 of 22 (labelled Amalgamated Press serials 1931-1935, print and manuscript, since you ask). I turned the page and this was how the story began. WOMEN WORSHIPPED HIM! MEN ADMIRED AND ENVIED HIM! WHO WAS THIS HANDSOME STRANGER WHO CAPTURED ALL HEARTS? Well, the answer to that question was not Herbert Allingham – the author of The Spell of a Rogue and about 300 other magazine serial stories. The issue of The Oracle  that I was packing away was published in March 1934 when Allingham was approaching the end of his fifty year working life.  Less than two years later Allingham would be dead but neither The Oracle  nor any of the other cheap papers would mention the fact – let alone pay tribute to his lifetime of work. The first instalment of Allingham's first serial story had been published in 1886, the last would be completed posthumously in 1937. Allingham...

  From the Penny Dreadful to the Halfpenny Dreadfuller by Robert J. Kirkpatrick – it's my current reading and what a handsome volume! Published by the British Library, 576 pages, copiously  illustrated   indexed, appendicised, footnoted, bibliographed; rrp £50 and weighs in at a thunderous 1.6kg. It almost certainly costs more (£6.50, second class, £7.95 first) to post a single copy than the hapless author or even the publisher will expect to earn. I mention this fact not only as a thank you to Robert for his generosity in sending me this copy (and because I'm incensed by the current Royal Mail hike in parcel costs) but also as a passing reminder that every development in publishing is inextricably linked to the current state of the distribution network. As a print publisher I howl with anguish every time I do my sums and remind myself that to post a single copy of even my paperback books costs almost as much as I paid to have them printed. As an e-publisher I tr...