Summation 1991: Horror
Ellen Datlow
More than any specific event in 1991, the continuing recession proved to have the most impact on publishing. In what has long been held to be a recession-proof industry, the effects were finally being felt both in magazines and books. Despite this, the American SF, fantasy, and horror book publishers seemed to hold their own, with remarkably few changes; this was not so for the nongenre publishers.
A year after the takeover of MCA (including Putnam, Berkley and Ace books) by the Japanese electronics conglomerate Matsushita there have been no perceptible editorial effects.
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich accepted a takeover bid from General Cinema Corp., the fourth largest theater operator in the U.S., after rejecting an earlier smaller offer to bondholders.
Farrar, Straus & Giroux cut its staff by sixteen people, including Linda Healey, the editor brought in four years ago to develop journalistic nonfiction books for the company. Healey has since joined Pantheon, which has been restarted by Andre Schiffrin as a nonprofit foundation.
The hardcover William Morrow SF, fantasy and horror program edited by David Hartwell and the Avon paperback line edited by John Douglas were combined into one line under the new palindromic imprint of AvoNova with John Douglas as editor. The new Avon-driven hardcover list will appear in the fall of 1992. Avon will do all editorial, advertising and promotional work. They will coordinate with the Morrow production staff; the Morrow sales staff will handle the books. It will have a Morrow imprint; Avon will pay a distribution fee; Carolyn Reidy, President and Publisher of Avon Books and a supporter of SF and fantasy at Avon, left the company late in 1991 to become President and Publisher of the Simon & Schuster Trade Publishing Division. Howard Kaminsky, Chief Executive Officer of the Hearst Trade Books Group is temporarily filling in until someone is appointed to replace Reidy.
On the magazine end, Aboriginal SF pulled back to quarterly publication with the final 1991 issue, and has applied for nonprofit status.
General Media, the parent corporation of Omni, laid off one hundred twenty employees throughout the corporation in October and moved most of the operations of Omni down to Greensboro, NC, with the exception of the fiction department and two senior editors of other departments.
Davis Publications sold Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Analog, Science Fiction and Fact and Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine to Bantam Doubleday Dell in early January 1992 The four magazines will be added to the Dell Magazines Group, which publishes crossword, horoscope and word game magazines. It was announced that no changes were contemplated in the editorial staff or direction of the four magazines, which will continue to operate out of their own headquarters for at least a year.
On March 1, 1991, Kristine Kathryn Rusch became the sixth editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in its forty-two-year history. Retiring editor Edward L. Ferman remains publisher and art director of the respected monthly digest. In early January 1992 Rusch announced that she was giving up her editorial duties at Pulphouse, although she will remain on the Board of Directors and keep an advisory role. Most of her editorial duties have been taken over by Mark Budz.
Pulphouse: The Magazine, originally announced as a weekly, cut back to a biweekly schedule after only four issues because of the following factors: readers complained that they didn’t have time to read a weekly and were worried about the costly subscription price of $95 a year; writers complained that a week on the newsstand would not give enough exposure to their stories; booksellers complained that there wasn’t enough time to sell a weekly magazine because most customers only visit a bookstore once a month. The fifth, sixth and seventh issues came out biweekly; as of the eighth issue, the magazine will be issued monthly. On October 21, 1991, Pulphouse became a corporation, with stock, a Board of Directors and a business foundation.
British book and magazine publishing fared far worse than American, being the center of seven major upheavals in and out of the field, some of which were the result of financial problems. Since Robert Maxwell’s mysterious death on November 5, 1991, his empire has been in chaos—Macdonald was forced to file for the UK equivalent of bankruptcy protection and was bought by Time Warner, Inc., in February 1992. Meanwhile, Macmillan executives in the U.S. assert that Macmillan Publishing Corp. (U.S.) will not be sold; it is not currently liable for MCC debts.
Reader’s Digest UK fired eighty of its full-time staff and thirty part-timers; David & Charles, a Reader’s Digest subsidiary, announced cuts of nearly 20 percent, with eighteen employees leaving now and sixteen projected losses through attrition.
Hodder cut 120 of its 640-member staff, while HarperCollins let go sixty, Ladybird cut fifty-four, Random Century cut sixty-six and Faber cut fourteen. Deutsch dismissed its entire sales force; for nonfinancial reasons (at least not directly) all but one member of the editorial staff of The Women’s Press resigned, including SF editor Sarah Lefanu. Rumors held that the departures were the result of an “internal putsch,” and that The Women’s Press may now turn to a more mainstream brand of feminism. Soon after, in a surprise move, Kathy Gale, Pan Books’ editorial director of specialist fiction, revealed she was leaving the mass market imprint to become publishing director of The Women’s Press. She is corunning the company with plans to expand, develop and redirect the list.
Anthony Cheetham, fired late in 1991 as head of Random Century, has formed Orion Books and bought Weidenfeld & Nicolson and its subsidiaries, Dent and the paperback division of Everyman Library. Deborah Beale, who built the Legend imprint at Century, has joined him as publishing director. She will build a new SF imprint, Millennium, in hardcover, trade paperback and mass market. John Jarrold has left Orbit (MacDonald) to replace Beale at Legend. Malcolm Edwards has been made managing director in charge of fiction for HarperCollins trade division and Jane Johnson has been promoted to editorial director in charge of SF, fantasy and horror.
Fear magazine, Britain’s only slick horror movie/short fiction magazine, started a companion all-fiction magazine, FTighteners, edited by Oliver Frey. The first issue was published on June 27 and unfortunately, within a week had been pulled from the shelves by many booksellers because of a Graham Masterton story “Eric the Pie,” which had a particularly disgusting scene in it. After complaints, the retailers removed all copies of the issue and destroyed most of the 45,000-copy print run. The magazine published three issues—I only saw the first and the fiction was pretty dreadful. Partly as a result of the financial loss incurred by the destruction of the print run, Newsfield Publications, publishers of both Fear and Frighteners, has gone into liquidation, the mid-September business failure occurred less than a week after John Gilbert resigned his post as editor of Fear. Fears publication was suspended after thirty-three issues. The magazine attempted to combine literature and film in equal proportion but later issues were pushed more toward gore by the publisher to increase sales. The fiction was inconsistent throughout, but the magazine was an interesting and useful addition to the horror field. John Gilbert, who owns the title (having leased it to Newsfield), is looking for a publisher to start it up again.
Argus Specialist Publications cancelled Skeleton Crew only nine months after it was launched as a rival to Fear. The magazine never really recovered from the sacking of its original editor after the first two issues.