After a hiatus of fifteen years, editor Doug Ellis finally published the fourteenth issue of Pulp Vault through Tattered Pages Press/Black Dog Books as a substantial softcover volume. Boasting a previously unpublished cover painting by Virgil Finlay, it featured many fascinating articles and classic pulp fiction by, amongst others, Bob Weinberg, Will Murray, D. H. Olsen, Donald Wandrei, Hugh B. Cave, Otto Binder, Doug Klauba, Tom Roberts and Mike Ashley.
Only nine months after the launch of the Kindle, Amazon.co.uk announced that e-books were now outstripping the sale of hardcover books by two-to-one on its site in the UK. However, the online retailer also added that hardback sales were continuing to grow. In America, e-books reportedly sold more than all the paperback and hardcover copies put together.
Figures released by the Association of American Publishers in June confirmed that revenues for print books had decreased dramatically, while the income from e-books jumped 161 per cent from $30 million to $181.3 million in just one year.
In the UK, e-books accounted for up to 10 per cent of total book sales after a rise of 600 per cent in the first half of the year, resulting in a total revenue of ?25 million.
As a result of these dramatic increases, it was also revealed that e-book piracy had become a huge problem, with many hundreds of recorded books being offered illegally for free downloads.
Penguin announced in November that it would withhold editions of its e-books from British and American libraries amid “concerns about security”. The publisher said that it was also considering withdrawing its electronic books from Amazon’s lending service for the Kindle e-reader. Penguin joined Simon & Schuster and Hachette Book Group, who already had a similar ban in place, while HarperCollins restricted the number of times a library book could be loaned out digitally.
Amazon.com announced that Charlaine Harris became the first genre author to sell more than a million books for the Kindle e-reader, putting her alongside other “Kindle Million Club” members Stieg Larsson, James Patterson and Nora Roberts/J. D. Robb. She was soon followed by Michael Connelly, Suzanne Collins, Lee Child and George R. R. Martin.
BlackBerry launched its compact PlayBook in June as a direct rival to Apple’s hugely successful iPad, despite complaints about a lack of available software.
Brian Keene was one of a number of disgruntled authors, including Tim Waggoner, Craig Spector and Mary SanGiovanni, who called for a boycott of the troubled Dorchester Publishing for reportedly selling e-books of various titles after the rights had been reverted.
In September, Gollancz launched its SF Gateway digital library with plans to have around 5,000 back-list titles available as e-books in three years’ time.
Stephen King’s original story Mile 81, about a mysterious mud-splattered station wagon that lured its victims to their doom, was available as an e-book in September. It also included a teaser excerpt from the author’s novel 11/22/63.
The Ghost Story Megapack from Wildside Press was a cheap e-book compilation of twenty-five out-of-copyright stories by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Bram Stoker, Rudyard Kipling, E. F. Benson, Wilkie Collins and others. The publisher also offered various other electronic “Megapacks”, including The Horror Megapack.
Available exclusively on Kindle, The Odd Ghosts was a collection of eight original stories by Maynard Sims (L. H. Maynard and M. P. N. Sims).
Edited by Jeani Rector, The Horror Zine was published online every month, and produced a special Joe R. Lansdale issue in October.
Trevor Denyer’s Midnight Street was available as a PDF download for a suggested donation, while editor Joe Vaz’s Something Wicked magazine became a digital-only publication starting with issue #11.
After interviewing a psychic on his show, a radio presenter was menaced as he attempted to solve the mystery of a missing girl in Ramsey Campbell’s paranoid chiller Ghosts Know, available from PS Publishing.
For fans of the author’s earlier work, PS also reprinted Campbell’s first book as the properly titled The Inhabitant of the Lake & Other Unwelcome Tenants. First published in 1964 by Arkham House, each of the ten Lovecraftian stories was beautifully illustrated by Randy Broecker, and the collection also contained the original versions of seven stories, notes on the first drafts, reproduced correspondence between the author and August Derleth, and an extensive and entertaining Afterword explaining how the book came about.
Ian R. MacLeod’s Wake Up and Dream was set in an alternate Hollywood of 1940 and involved one-time actor and unlicensed private eye Clark Gable and the mystery of a device that changed the world of entertainment forever.
Edited by Conrad Williams, Gutshot: Weird West Stories was an anthology of twenty original tales by Michael Moorcock, Thomas Tessier, Joe R. Lansdale, Christopher Fowler, Peter Atkins, Adam Nevill, Joel Lane and other dangerous desperados.
PS published two short story collections by Christopher Fowler back-to-back in a single volume in the style of an old Ace Double. Red Gloves: Devilry contained fourteen stories (three original) comprising “The London Horrors”, while Red Gloves: Infernal featured thirteen tales (two original) of “The World Horrors”.
Carol Emshwiller’s In the Time of War and Other Stories of Conflict/Master of the Road to Nowhere and Other Tales of the Fantastic followed the same double format, with covers by Ed Emshwiller and Introductions by Ursula K. Le Guin and Phyllis Eisenstein, respectively.
Edited with an Introduction by Stephen Jones, Scream Quietly: The Best of Charles L. Grant collected thirty-two stories by the late writer of “quiet horror”, along with a Foreword by Stephen King, commentary by Peter Straub, Kim Newman, Thomas F. Monteleone and Nancy Holder, an interview with the author by Nancy Kilpatrick, and interior illustrations by Andrew Smith. Former Weird Tales artist Jon Arfstrom painted the stunning cover art.
After being widowed at no less than three previous publishers, Mark Morris’ collection Long Shadows, Nightmare Light finally saw publication from PS with an Introduction by Christopher Golden. It contained fifteen stories (two original).
James Lovegrove’s second collection, Diversifications, contained sixteen reprint stories and an Afterword by the author, while The Butterfly Man and Other Stories was a retrospective collection of eighteen horror stories (five original) by Paul Kane with another Introduction by Christopher Golden. The author’s first accepted story from 1998 was included as a special bonus.
As part of its ongoing “PS Showcase” series, The Emperor’s Toy Chest collected fifteen stories (four original) by Tobias Seamon, and Dark Dreams, Pale Horses contained six stories (three original) by Rio Youers with an Introduction by Brian Keene.
PS also published new novels by Chaz Brenchley (Rotten Row) and Lavie Tidhar (Osama: A Novel), along with James Cooper’s horror novella Terra Damnata.
Most PS books were available as 100 signed copies and also in a non-jacketed trade edition.
Graced with an attractive dust-wrapper painting by the legendary Ed Emshwiller, The New and Perfect Man was volume 24/25 of PostScripts edited by Peter Crowther and Nick Gevers. The always-eclectic hardcover anthology contained twenty-eight stories by Carol Emshwiller, Michael Kelly, Ramsey Campbell, Thomas Tessier, T. M. Wright, Christopher Fowler, Rio Youers, Jay Lake and many others.
The titular rock band was menaced by a deranged Afghanistan war veteran and other forces of darkness in Robert McCammon’s The Five, while The Hunter from the Woods was a collection of six linked stories featuring the secret agent protagonist of the author’s 1989 wartime werewolf novel The Wolf’s Hour. Both books were available in signed and also traycased ($250.00) editions from Subterranean Press.
Baal was a reprint of McCammon’s first novel, originally published in 1978, with a
