Fri 11 Feb 2011
COLLECTING PULPS: A MEMOIR, Part Seven: PULPS, DIGESTS AND E-READERS, by Walker Martin.
Posted by Steve under Collecting , Columns , Pulp Fiction[14] Comments
PART SEVEN — PULPS, DIGESTS AND E-READERS.
by Walker Martin
A question came up on the Yahoo PulpMags group earlier this week. Why, it was asked, didn’t Thrilling/Popular Library convert their pulp magazines to the smaller digest size in the mid-1950s?
As a magazine collector I’ve often thought about this topic. I also like Startling Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories and I guess one reason as to why they did not make the change to digest was that they simply did not see that the digest era was upon them.
The pulp format had been very successful for 50 years and maybe they figured they could continue somehow. But the digest format swept everything aside (excepting Ranch Romances).
Maybe they figured even the digest format would not survive. They had seen Street & Smith convert all their pulps to digest in 1943 and then finally give up on the digests in 1949 (except for Astounding).
Same thing with Popular Publications. They changed most of their pulps to a slightly larger digest format but it was a failure also They then switched back to pulp size but within a couple years killed all their SF, detective, western, sport, love pulps.
Look what we are going through now. Newspapers and magazines are all suffering from declining circulations. The digital, online format may be next since they cannot continue to lose massive amounts of money with the hardcopy, print format.
My hometown paper, The Trenton Times, has made so many editorial and staff cuts, that the paper is a shadow of its former self. This is happening across the country to many newspapers and magazines.
The digest era now appears to be just about over. Very few outlets bother to carry the magazines at all. In the the Trenton area, the only place left for me to buy the SF or mystery digests is Barnes & Noble. My Borders superstore bit the dust recently and that chain appears doomed.
I checked the circulation figures in the January or February issues of the SF digests:
ANALOG SF — 30,000 average
ASIMOV’S — 23,000 average
F&SF — 15,000 average
The above figures are a fraction of what these magazines used to announce. The downward decline has been going on now for years and in the future people may say how come the SF digests did not see that the digest era was over. Is digital the answer? Asimov’s I believe has already started. Maybe the others are also available on Kindles, etc.
But I have no interest in e-readers or reading fiction online. I have a houseful of pulps, digests, slicks, literary magazines. Like Startling and Thrilling Wonder I’m in for the duration and like them I’ll be holding out until I die.
So as collectors and readers, our battle cry has always been “Remember the pulps!” Soon we will add another cry which will be “Remember the digests!” Will the book format be next?
Not for me, and my final words will be “To hell with the e-readers!”
Previously on Mystery*File: Part Six — Are Pulp Collectors Crazy?.
February 12th, 2011 at 12:32 am
I am an Kindle fan for several reasons. First, I read for the words, the content. Since the Kindle I have discovered Norbert Davis, Harlan Halsey, and many other forgotten writers. Second, I have over 600 books stored in a library I can carry in my hand. I was fed up with every time I wanted to re-read or look at an old favorite it was lost in a storage bin full of cardboard boxes. Third, many of the out of print, lost stories and books are again available to read for less than a couple of dollars.
Yes, I believe the digests are on Kindle. The tablet such as the iPad and others offer a future to magazines, comics books, and even maybe bring back the pulps. The short story near dead is returning to life because of the Kindle and Amazon.
Imagine those pulp covers on a 27 inch monitor with HD. My Kindle for Mac make the print book covers look bigger, better, and you can see more detail than looking at today’s small mass market paperback.
You make a good point comparing the change from pulp format to digest format (and the mass market paperback). The e-book is just a format, a format that has under ten percent of sales. If you listen to the media you would think print will disappear tomorrow. It is not. Collectors such as yourself and those who love the Hard Case Crime books will still find the stories you want to read in a print format. Small publishers will survive on you just as used book stores used to. Even years from now when e-books make up the bulk of sales there will be choices, other formats. Can you name one entertainment object that exists in one format? Heck, even the iPhone had competitors; even the iPhone has not killed the land phone.
So how is the success of the e-book with its reprinting endless stories from the old pulps going to threaten the life of the pulps you collect? Won’t more people reading those stories and discovering those authors lead them to want to own the original? Won’t it make your pulps wanted by a generation that has nearly forgotten the old format?
It is ok if you don’t want an e-reader. But I am looking forward to a time where pulps exists in the original form and an easier to find and cheaper format called the e-book.
February 12th, 2011 at 1:08 am
Well, Walker, also, when you look at it, the Standard/Thrilling group, as you note, kept publishing RANCH ROMANCES into the 1970s…but mostly concentrated their efforts on becoming Popular Library, a reasonably large and durable paperback publisher (till, IIRC, they were bought up by CBS in the latter ’70s, which already had Fawcett). Likewise, Popular decided to stick with ARGOSY, and remake it over into the kind of Manly men’s magazine that seemed to be flourishing on the postwar newsstands, if not as goofily so as SAGA or TRUE or their more tawdry imitators…the slightly down-market ESQUIRE. I’ve often wondered why S&S killed off All their other pulps, aside from ASTOUNDING, and often wondered if they simply wanted to hang onto Campbell, because they wanted him to edit their attempt at an aerospace magazine, which I believe he did for its short run. Daisy Bacon, I guess, didn’t have that kind of specialized expertise…much as Ziff-Davis knew what to ask of Cele Lalli after selling FANTASTIC and AMAZING out from under her in 1965, and she became ever more a bridal magazine honcho till her retirement. Though I guess the loyalty of sf readers to their magazines was unusual…Love Romances had folded every other title but PLANET for a year or so when that magazine gave up the ghost as well, and that in the mid 1950s when the ANC mess was already in progress, iinm. And a collector of little magazines like yourself knows that we’ve had a bit of an efflorescence in that arena, though the cutbacks in arts funding, university activities and big-box-store newsstands isn’t going to help with that, even for the littles that are essentially trying to go it as essentially commercial properties, from WEIRD TALES to TIN HOUSE to A PUBLIC SPACE to CRIMEWAVE (or at least that last’s distribution in the US).
As the e-readers improve, I suspect they will become easier to take…who thought we’d be reading from so many monitors, back in, say, 1975? Even the sf stories that suggested as much, from some time previous, wouldn’t for the most part have guessed how common it would be so quickly…
February 12th, 2011 at 1:23 am
No doubt the digest is a dinosaur that is coming to an end, but I don’t really think we need worry about the book. E-books make an nice addition to my reading, they allow me to read many older books I could not otherwise find or afford (I picked up an E copy of one of the Clyde Allison 0008 soft core spy spoofs for .99 cents — a paperback of that rare series would have been between $75 and $300), and they are ideal for magazines, newspapers (I’ve been reading The New York Times on line for several years now — saves me a couple of hundred dollars a year), and comic books (who have embraced the medium and done well with it).
That said I haven’t invested in a Kindle,Nook, or other e-reader yet For now my lap top is portable enough and I can store the books on Cds and in my back up storage to save space on the pc. But everyone I know who has purchased a Kindle is enthusiastic — even a number of people who protested the loudest they would never read on line.
The e-book is a convienence, and a revolution, but I don’t think the book is in all that much danger from it. The newspaper and the digests and likely magazines are another thing though. Those I think are soon to be things of the past — and what will we do then? Seems a bit expensive to wrap fish in a $139 Kindle or shred a Nook when you run out of litter.
February 12th, 2011 at 8:06 am
My vision of the future has books coming in three basic formats. The e-book, the audio book, and POD. Print on Demand with keep print books alive as long as there are people who want them.
February 12th, 2011 at 8:34 am
The same decline in circulation afflicts Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (EQMM) and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine (AHMM), from the same publisher as the sf digests (Dell). Both are important cultural resources, both publish many interesting short stories that otherwise would not have been written.
Both magazines are REALLY cheap to subscribe to: my subscriptions cost me $2.50 per issue. Since each is as large as a sizable paperback book, this is the cheapest mystery fiction you can buy anywhere. I just sit back, and they arrive in the mailbox every month.
I have no idea why there are so few subscribers. Novels have become some sort of religion among today’s readers. They don’t want to read short stories, plays, radio plays, comic books: the short forms that featured so much of the best fiction in the 1890-1970 classic era. It’s a cultural disaster.
Gardner Dozois says that the circulation declines are linked to the demise of independent local distributors circa 2000. Every town used to have one – but they have all been consolidated into a few national chains.
February 12th, 2011 at 10:38 am
Thanks for the interesting comments on the subject of the e-book. I’ve been thinking about the e-book format for over 10 years. I’ve been retired for 11 years and remember being excited about it before I stopped working. Basically I thought the e-book would be of value for 4 reasons:
1. Most readers are not collectors and think nothing of throwing or giving away books or magazines. They should like the e-books.
2. E-books would be great if all you wanted to do was read a rare or expensive book.
3. If you travel alot for business, e-books would be more convenient than packing alot of physical books.
4. When you go on vacation for two or three weeks, e-books are the answer also.
However, having said the above, I never thought the e-book format should replace regular books as my main method of reading. I’ve been a serious collector of books and magazine since the 1950’s and I know and have known alot of collectors. I still see many at the pulp conventions I attend like Windy City, PulpFest, and the NYC Paperback Expo. Most of them share my love for books, pulps, vintage paperbacks.
My whole life has resolved around not only reading all types of fiction, but collecting a houseful of books and magazines. I love the smell of books and pulps, the feel of them, their value and rarity as artifacts. I love looking at a room full of my favorite type of reading. The physical book, made of paper, has been with us 500 years and I don’t personally see how the e-book can begine to compare with regular book format.
Sure it is convenient for all the reasons I listed above but despite many attempts, I still do not enjoy reading fiction online or on an e-reader. And many of my collecting friends have admitted the same thing to me. I can read newpapers online(although I still prefer print), and I use the computer alot for information, especially about books and movies. I use google.com as sort of a giant encyclopedia. I can read non-fiction online but fiction is simply not an enjoyable experience.
Like I said above, I’m in for the duration now and I’ve made my choice. I can see the handwriting and the future looks bad for newspapers and magazines. More and more bookstores are going out of business and closing. I can remember when the majority of newstands, drugstores, etc, stocked the latest issues of the SF and mystery digests. No longer.
Yes, the world is changing, but I’ll stick with my collection of books and magazines. All my life, friends, neighbors, co-workers, relatives, have criticized me for spending money on books and magazines and instead of throwing them away, I actually save them!
I wouldn’t have it any other way…
February 12th, 2011 at 10:56 am
The belief that ebooks are causing the decline of fiction magazines just doesn’t seem true.
The circulation declines in sf and mystery digests were under full swing around 2000, long before the heavy reading of ebooks.
AND, it is just as easy to read EQMM on the Kindle as it is to read novels.
Instead, we have a cultural shift: people refusing to read anything other than novels, especially long novels and long series of novels.
February 12th, 2011 at 11:06 am
Mike Grost in Comment #5 mentions the decline of circulation for the short story digests(SF and mystery). I collect all these magazines and it is really a sad state of affairs when such magazines find themselves at such a low point.
During the 1890-1970 period that Mike mentions, the newstands groaned under the weight of fiction magazines. The short story was a major part of not only the pulps and digests, but also of the slick magazines. Now if you want to write a mainstream story, there is just about no market at all. The NEW YORKER prints one short story an issue, PLAYBOY prints a couple and the literary quarterlies still offer a market but one that pays poorly. The online markets pay poorly also, if at all.
I think part of the problem is simply that we are distracted by the many electronic gadgets that keep coming at us. Instead of reading, most people now are addicted to internet surfing, texting, tweeting, ebay, facebook, You Tube, TV, etc.
I have more than one friend, men that used to be able to sit still and watch a film noir movie for instance, that now line up their cell phones, blackberries, and other gadgets that they are addicted to. The have lost the ability to concentrate on the movie. Even while eating, they are constantly checking some nonsense or texting.
It is indeed a cultural disaster.
February 12th, 2011 at 11:10 am
Walker Martin’s point about Internet addiction and constant surfing is a great one.
It is indeed destroying people’s interest in the world around him.
An acquaintance teaches film history in a university.
When his students watch old films in class, they like them.
But when he assigns them as homework, they report not liking the movies.
His suspicion: texting is banned in class. But when they “watch” a film at home, they are also sending 88 text messages, answering cell phones, and completely destroying their concentration.
February 12th, 2011 at 11:49 am
Holding out against eBooks is merely running from the inevitable. True these pulps will always be there, but if you want anything new digital will soon be the only way.
February 12th, 2011 at 12:03 pm
Gary, I still have not forgiven you for leaving Randolph Scott off your list of 10 favorite western actors.
Concerning eBooks, I know you are definitely for them and see them as the wave of the future. In fact I’ve complained about them on your website. I guess you will have plenty of eBook readers buying your latest electronic western but I unfortunately will not be one of them.
I’m burrowing back into my pulp collection, pardner. Instead of heading into the electronic future, I have plenty of pulps and digests to read. Besides, the smell of old books is like ambrosia to me. It’s my drug of choice…
February 12th, 2011 at 12:34 pm
I have worked retail in magazines and books. I could not give away the mystery and sf digests of today, but my customers read magazines more for non-fiction than fiction.
However the success of the Kindle single shows there is a market again for the short story. Several of today’s authors have noticed the acceptance of short fiction at less than two dollars price and there are more short stories and short stories collections coming out every day.
Walker, you do not have to defend your preferred format. That is why there is and always will be a choice in ways to read. When Penguin invented the mass market paperback there were many who hated it. It did not end the book business or kill the hardcover, instead it just gave people another choice. Enjoy your print books, I’ll enjoy the e-book, and we will both be happy knowing it is the same book, the same words.
Mike, don’t tell your teacher friend, but I remember loving those boring films they would show in history class or wherever because it got me out of listening to the teacher. I also remember my reaction to the book I chose on my own vs the same book as assigned homework.
February 18th, 2011 at 7:51 pm
I’ve got a garage full of digest magazines, and they will outlast me. Unfortunately, the only way I can add to my digests is through subscription, and I let them all expire. I’m posting my covers (slowly) on my Yahoo Group at SF Digest Mags and I try to swap my thousands of duplicates on my Yahoo Group at And What If. But finding other collectors is also nearly impossible today. I feel like the last collector in the world!
May 16th, 2011 at 12:30 am
Tom, I know what you mean about feeling like you’re the last collector in the world. At the Windy City pulp and paperback show, one of my friends was selling a few hundred digests from the 1950s to the 1970s for $2, then later $1 apiece. I picked up seven science fiction digests from the 1950s for $1 each in nice shape. In all cases, at $1 these digests were being sold for cheaper than their cover price, factoring in inflation! Just imagine: You could have beat a digest in 1961 or the “Fantastic Four” comic book #1, kept them in perfect shape, and 50 years later one is worth $1 and the other is worth $100,000 or more in mint! Of course, most comic books from 1961 are worth only a few dollars at most. I’m slowly collecting all the science fiction pulps and digests from the 1938-1959 and have about one-third of the total. At Windy City, I picked up a decent copy of a 1940 Thrilling Wonder Stories for $5 — now I need only two issues to have all 111 Standard issues — and that was cheaper than a current science fiction digest on the stands! I was happy, of course, but somehow I’m also a little amazed that so many items have actually gone down in value, adjusted for inflation. I occasionally pick up issues of Ranch Romances with authors I like for $2 or $3 –again, cheaper than the original price, consideration inflation. One reason I am still an enthusiastic collector/reader is that so much “pulp literature” is actually remarkably affordable!
The other day, while I was on my regular Saturday morning sale hunting, I got to an estate sale about a half hour late, having been delayed by a couple of unexpected good scores. The crowd was huge, well over 300 people. And yet, there in one of the rooms with a lot of old Life magazines and books, were four gorgeoous copies of art-deco Liberty magazines from 1932-1937 for $2 each!! It was amazing to see these still available. One issue is a collectible rarity — a chapter of the “Tarzan and the Lion Men” serial that appeared before the book. I’ll auction it off at Pulpfest.
Walker, one reason Standard decided not to go the digest route is that it decided to publish a ton of paperbacks while it was easing out of both the pulp and comic book business all within a couple of years. Standard tried selling attractively produced, fairly well written undated western digest novels circa 1952 and apparently did very poorly, for these are mostly scarce today, as are other western digests from Hillman, Gunfire and others. Standard numbered them from #11 through #32 — some numbers may not have been used — I own eight of them and there are at least 12 others I don’t have. One of my copies, “Man to Man” (#17) (sorry, can’t remember the author and it’s filed in a box) is so scarce it’s not listed in Holroyd or other guides. Any 1950s publication from a major corporate publisher that had not been discovered until I found it (at an antique mall in Des Moines, as I recall, on one of my trips to Chicago) has to show how poorly some of these publications sold on the crowded newsstands of the day.
As for the Kindle and its ilk, I can see the utility for travelers, apartment dwellers and others with little space, etc. etc., but I’ll stick with my “real” print items, old or new. If I ever acquire a Kindle, it would be solely to gain access to stories I simply can’t find or can’t afford, such as Fredric Brown’s late-career hardcover rarities or scarce novels by the likes of Steve Fisher and Octavus Roy Cohen.