Conversations - Greg Shepard

Over the last seven years, Paperback Warrior has discussed, reviewed, promoted, and contributed to Stark House Press publications. In this exclusive interview, Greg Shepard, Stark House's founder and editor, sits down with Eric to discuss his career in publishing, including Zebra's mass-market paperbacks in the 1980s and early 1990s, the humble beginnings of the Stark House name, working with the estates of heavyweight crime-fiction icons like Harry Whittington, Carter Brown, Lionel White, and the multiple series titles that he published and continues to publish. This insightful interview peers into the paperback publishing process from start to finish and offers a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the book business. To watch the side by side video click HERE.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello, Hello, This is Eric with the Paperback Warrior blog
podcast YouTube channel. As you can see on my screen here,
I've got a guest with me today. His name is
Greg Sheppard. He's the owner and editor of Stark House Press,
a name that's nearly synonymous with Paperback Warrior. Starkhouse Press
has released countless vintage fiction titles and contemporary releases authors

(00:25):
like Harry Whittington, Lionel White, Gil Brewer, Day, Keen, Bruno Fisher,
David Goodis. The list of crime fiction, crime no or
heavyweights is long, and Greg and his Stark House Press
publication has really dabbled into just a little bit of
all of those authors and their bibliographies in some way. Greg,
thanks so much for coming on the podcast and channel.

(00:46):
It's great to have you here.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
Pleasure to be here.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
I think it's a good opportunity for listeners and viewers
to put a face with a name.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
I think we're through one hundred and eighteen.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Some episodes of the podcast and we've discussed Star House
Press books on nearly every episode. That's either promoting them
as upcoming releases, reviewing the books, or tying them into.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
An author feature and check.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
This morning, I think we've written something like two hundred
reviews on Starkhouse Books just on the blog alone. So
it's a really remarkable relationship, don't you think.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
Very impressive.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Beyond just covering the books with reviews and commentary. Paperback
Warriors actually appeared in some of your releases. I know
Tom wrote an introduction to a Harry Whittington two for
and I had the opportunity to write an intro for
a Line Now White two for as well. So it's
been really exciting for both of us to briefly step
into the world publishing and be involved in that fashion.
So thanks for thanks for including us in some of

(01:48):
these publications.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Hopefully I can pull you into another one.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
Yeah, I hope.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
So I just need to get more educated on some
of these authors.

Speaker 3 (01:56):
A lot of the authors that you publish, a lot
of the books that you.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
Publish are they're new to me, so it's kind of
where I'm getting started with reading them. So hopefully I'll
become an expert at some point, but some of it's
still new to me.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
I don't know how you become an expert except just
through time.

Speaker 3 (02:14):
Yeah, flipping pages, lots of lots.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Of pages, I'm sure you're good at.

Speaker 3 (02:21):
Well.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
You and you and I have talked through email and
stuff for years about your early childhood reading habits, some
of your favorite authors growing up. What were some of
the books and authors that really kind of propelled you
at a young age to embrace reading and even collecting books?

Speaker 2 (02:37):
Will I first started collecting paperbacks through the school program
called Scholastic Books, and I started buying Jules Verne and H.
Two Wells and jar Allen Poe and Charles Dickens and
just having quite a time with it. But then in
my early teens, my grandmother handed me a stack of

(03:01):
Ace books of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Those really propelled me
into the world of science fiction and venture and fantasy
in a big way, bigger than Jules Verne even, and
I just started reading them raciously and collecting them, and
then started looking in the backs of these Ace books

(03:24):
and saying, well, what else can I get? And started
just going crazy with authors right and left, and it
kind of exploded from there.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
It's interesting because when I even today, when I'm reading
like a vintage paperback, always look in the back and
there's a list of all the titles that are upcoming,
and I always I can find new books that way
by just looking at all these old books.

Speaker 3 (03:47):
They listen the back as upcoming books, you know, and.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
Hey, next year in nineteen sixty seven, you have all
these books coming up.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
Yeah, down in the back of those books.

Speaker 3 (03:57):
It really is. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
I just wish the fifty that I could send off
now would get me the book.

Speaker 3 (04:02):
But unfortunately not.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
You're Your online bio states that you have dabbled in
things like graphic design, rock music critique, painting, book buying.

Speaker 3 (04:16):
Of course, you were a publisher sales rep, which we'll talk.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
About in a minute book distributing, sort of like you
went from like this artistic journey of creating to almost
like a type of curator in a sense.

Speaker 3 (04:27):
Is that right?

Speaker 2 (04:28):
Well, it's you know, it's been kind of a long road.
I've been in the publishing business one way or another,
really most of my life working for as a graphic
design art or artist for a magazine, you know, paste
up in the local newspaper and writing for them. Becoming

(04:49):
a sales rep, you know, just kind of one step
leading to the next. And also I'm a very hardcore
book collector, so curator if you will, I guess it's
just kind of part of the you know, everything has
kind of led up to this point.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
Really, Yeah, we had talked with you through I guess
their email.

Speaker 3 (05:13):
I've probably talked with you in the past about your.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
Your career working for Zebra Publishing, which of course was
an imprint of Kensington Publishing Corporation.

Speaker 3 (05:23):
This was Greg.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
This was probably in the eighties, early nineties when you
were working for Zebra's all right, right.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
Early the late eighties, mainly, I think it was the
early nineties when they decided that they didn't need a
sales force anymore, so they let us all go.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
Ah, okay, we did love working for Zebra.

Speaker 2 (05:43):
They were a great company to work for. They were
very generous. They were the two owners of the company,
Walter Zacharias and ROBERTA. Grossman, were approachable people, and you
could actually talk to a person who owned the company
and they were was looking for feedback. It was. It
was a good time. Really. I quite enjoyed working Receiver.

(06:05):
I didn't find myself being wildly enthusiastic about all the romances,
but I was quite prepared with her and Selom if
that was the gig.

Speaker 1 (06:15):
Yeah, that you're touched on what I was going to
bring up to Walter Zachariat isn't saying the name R
zach Ryce and ROBERTA.

Speaker 3 (06:24):
Bender Grossman?

Speaker 1 (06:25):
Did they both work previously at Lancer Books. It was
both of them involved with Lancer.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
You know, I really don't know too much about Roberta's background,
but yes, Walter zach Ryce was one of the partners
in the Lancer I believe he was also a partner
in Pyramid Books.

Speaker 3 (06:44):
Oh okay.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
According to Walter, he had had some connection with Ace Books.
Even at one point he claimed to me that he
was one of the people that came up with the
idea for Ace Doubles. True or not, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (06:59):
It sounds good, I'll go with it. Yeah, that's yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:03):
When we talk about Zebra, that's a publisher that's often
sought after by mass market paperback collectors, especially the horror community.

Speaker 3 (07:12):
I mean they Zebra's.

Speaker 1 (07:15):
Oddly enough, Zebra seems very collectible these days, especially after
paperbacks from Hell Book came out and everyone's now seeking
those Zebra paperbacks.

Speaker 3 (07:23):
It looks like they're there.

Speaker 1 (07:26):
Their pricing has kind of gone up over the last
five or six years.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
Amazing to me because I couldn't give those things. Who wait?
When I was a sales rip because my territory was
Northern California, and I guess there was a certain arrogance
in the the bookstores a northern California. It kind of
looked down on these these cheesy little horror books. But
you know, we they've put a lot of money into

(07:53):
the covers, and they were very attracted looking books, and
some of them were rather good.

Speaker 3 (08:00):
Not all.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
Yeah, well, you know the Zebra Zebra paperbacks I've always
looked for in in the used bookstores. It's always on
my list to check out, is those Zebra mystery puzzler books.

Speaker 3 (08:14):
Have you ever seen those?

Speaker 2 (08:17):
I've seen them that they kind of they were before
my time, but ZE think they were probably before uh
huh Zacharias and and Grossman bought the.

Speaker 1 (08:28):
Company probably so I think, if I'm not mistaken, they
came out and like, well, it would have been around
the same time. They came out in the late seventies,
and they have like the beautiful covers, but they have
like this really weird thing where and you may you
may know more about me, but they somehow they they
wrapped the last chapter in a rapping, so you wouldn't

(08:49):
be tempted to solve the crime yourself by flipping to
the back section, and.

Speaker 3 (08:55):
It was like it was almost like.

Speaker 1 (08:59):
It was it was totally a gimmick where you had
to figure out the killer yourself based on the cover art.
It was a very detailed cover art and then the
clues along the book, and then at the end it
would ask you who do you think is the killer?

Speaker 3 (09:12):
And then you would unwrap the backing of it and
then you.

Speaker 1 (09:15):
Would be able to see It's like not like I
choose your own adventure, but you were in.

Speaker 3 (09:20):
It's an interactive type of book.

Speaker 2 (09:21):
I never actually had a chance to sell those bo
those would have been fun to do.

Speaker 3 (09:26):
Yeah, I think, uh yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:28):
I think some of the other paperback publishers had their
own little gimmicks as well. I think Banham had one
that was sort of gimmicky like that. Oh, I guess,
anything just to try to sell, just to sell more books.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
I think it was that came up with the first
hologram cover. I could always but there was certainly that
was something that they they love.

Speaker 3 (09:46):
Yeah that, Yes, they had a lot of those there.

Speaker 1 (09:51):
Zebra was mostly known for their like you Touched on earlier,
their regency romance titles, and of course their their horror paperbacks.
You got had writers like Ruby, Ruby, Geen Jensen, Bentley
Little was there early on Shoe or Lansdelle, Ricottola Huchela
was one of them.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
In there.

Speaker 3 (10:15):
Yep, big names, Yeah, big names. Uh? Did you? And
William W.

Speaker 1 (10:21):
Johnston was another big one as well, not only just
for horror, because he was doing tons of horror paperbacks,
but he was also doing Out of the Ashes and
the men's action adventure paperbacks and things like that. Did
you have any uh, did you have an opportunity to
meet him? Do you have a cross pass with him?

Speaker 2 (10:36):
He never came to any of the conventions, any of
the sales conferences. He was considered probably one of the
more obscure writers that wrote for ZE. He stayed at home,
he wrote, You know, I always kind of pictured him
in this little cabin in the woods, you know, but
I it was very clear to me. It was because

(10:58):
we asked the editor, you know, can we ever meet
this Johnson? Or have you ever met this Johnson? No,
nobody'd ever met him.

Speaker 3 (11:05):
Wow. Yeah, there's so many different and you and I
talked about this.

Speaker 1 (11:09):
You know last week when we talked briefly, but there's
so many stories out there about him being reclusive, and
he was apparently like an FM late night radio host Chris,
he was in the military, and it was just he
writes like a like a he's very right right wing,
very far right writer with his out of the ashes stuff.

(11:31):
But then he writes crazy off the wall horror stuff.
And did he I'm assuming that he was one of
the bigger Zebra sellers. Was he the was he the
big guy?

Speaker 2 (11:41):
He was probably the biggest men's adventure writer, probably Western,
probably horror. He that was the William Johnson and then
the next tier down would have been How To Love
and Ruby Jean Jensen and the authors, and then kind
of down from there. But yeah, the Johnson books always sold,

(12:06):
which I never understood because it didn't seem real readable
to me. But you know, that's maybe it's just a
matter of taste. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (12:15):
Yeah, my and I've said it on the podcast before.
My dad is a.

Speaker 1 (12:19):
Huge fan of his and he reads everything and even said, hey, Dad,
those books here buying at Walmart. You know last week
they aren't It's not him. He's Johnson's dead. And this
is totally different writer, but to him it's just the same.
He just still reads them just like he would any
other He's read that out of the Ashes series like
a dozen times all the way through. His read every

(12:40):
every book, and I could suffer through two books and
I was like, I'm out, I'm done, Like this is
the most ridiculous thing.

Speaker 3 (12:46):
But he really, he really likes them a lot. In fact,
he's he just called me he's reading one right now.
It's I think it was a two books series.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
I think it was on Zebra that Johnston wrote about
a it's about a guy who can h shape shift
into a werewolf. And I think one of them is
called Hunted and the others called Prey. And my dad's
like great books, so I may try them at some point,
but not it's not on my on my list to
read right away.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
I've always meant to read one of his horror books,
but I never could quite get past the first pages.
But it's on my m list of books to read
in my lifetime. I have a.

Speaker 1 (13:30):
When we talk about like the mass market paperbacks, how
how much of a market share did Zebra have when
it's compared to the rivals like Signet or Bantam or
pocket books they have. Do they have a sizeable chunk
of the market.

Speaker 2 (13:45):
Well, they had a sizeable chunk of the romance market,
un questionable. And they were always trying to make inroads
into uh, you know, the rest of publishing it. But
they always had a real hard time getting on the
New York i'm the best seller list. And then they
started putting out a hardcover line, and they started doing

(14:05):
more mysteries, and they you know, they were always kind
of looking around. I think eventually when they dropped the
Zebra name and just went to Kensington and it's now
run by Walter's son, Stephen Zacharias. I think that they've
succeeded over the years better than when I was working

(14:30):
for them in the late eighties. Yeah, we didn't, you know,
it was always a matter of trying to get on
the best seller list. Yeah, pushed those books.

Speaker 3 (14:41):
You know. Well, I think you touched on this earlier.

Speaker 1 (14:45):
I think some of the like the high Brows stores
and things in the chains were probably did you find
that they were kind of frowning up on Zebra based
on like the campy look of it.

Speaker 2 (14:55):
Well, yeah, in my marketplace in Northern California. Yes, yeah,
you know. I you know, some of the better customers
I had at the time where Tower Books, because they
appeal to everybody. Yeah, so they didn't have any problem

(15:17):
with buying lots of romance and men's adventure and things
like that. But the average bookstore Northern California did kind
of look down their nose at what I was doing.

Speaker 1 (15:29):
Did you have a favorite retailer that you like to
call on back then? I know that you had, like
or some of the big ones, Tower b Dalton, Walden Books.

Speaker 2 (15:39):
Tower was probably one of my most favorite. I was
trying to think of. You know, there were lots of
lots of buyers in the area that I enjoyed selling
to and going down to Palo Alto and Santa Cruz
and sometimes I would get sent up to see you know,

(16:01):
I can't really think to myself that I had any
serious favorites, but I because everybody had their own little thing,
you know, there might be somebody that did in fact
saw a lot of romance, and they were kind of
fun to go to because then I could get a
real sense of what I had, what whether this was
a good author this month or not. Because the.

Speaker 1 (16:24):
Right, but you you ultimately retired from the corporate book
business world in what the mid early mid nineties that
you retired from that business.

Speaker 2 (16:37):
I think the term in England is made redundant, but
I'll take retired, okay. You know they really did. They
let their entire salesforce go and hired a New American
Library sales force, which I thought was interesting because New
American Library also had a very similar list that Zebra

(16:59):
had romance and mystery or so. I don't know how
that worked for them, because frankly, once they let their
salesforce go, we were, you know, it didn't matter anymore. However,
I had previously worked for a fellow who sold British
paperbacks in the United States. So my my then wife

(17:21):
at the time, we put this concept together of creating
a business called Firebird Distributing, of bringing British books back
into the US again, these kind of looking after the
titles that nobody else was selling, books that you know,

(17:42):
that weren't available over here. And and once again Tower
was one of my biggest customers.

Speaker 3 (17:49):
Oh interesting.

Speaker 1 (17:51):
How long how long did you run that particular business.

Speaker 2 (17:55):
That one might have lasted ten years? I can't remember
remember exactly. Oh wow, I probably should have looked up
some dates for you before getting on here. But one
of the things that killed it was Amazon, because all
of a sudden you could get British books without having
to pay lots of money for them, And and the

(18:18):
Tower was having problems and they sent thousands of dollars
of returns back to our warehouse. That was that was
hard to kind of recover from. You know, for one
reason or another, we decided that the business was not
viable anymore and we shut it down.

Speaker 3 (18:38):
How did how did you come about with Starkhouse Press?
How did that form? What was the beginning of that?

Speaker 2 (18:44):
Well, while I still had Firebird distributing, my dad came
to me. And he had been somebody who was in
the newspaper and magazine business most of his life, and
he had retired. He had previously worked, I had lots
of different kinds of magazines. But at this point I

(19:05):
think he was kind of looking for something new, and
he thought, well, why don't we put together a publishing company.
I thought, well, this is a great idea. He thought, Okay.
You know, we all had our various skills. My mom
was a proofreader, and he could be editor, and I
had a company where they're you know, distributing books, and

(19:28):
I had contact with authors. My brother was an art
director still is, and my then wife was an artist,
and so we've just put these skills together and created
our first book, Oracle Lips by Storm Constantine. We printed

(19:49):
a thousand copies signed numbered. Oh boy, this was a
slick production and sold about one hundred of them, maybe
one hundred and fifty. Mh. They the rest of the
family kind of looked a stance at my my first
choice there of authors, and they kind of backed off

(20:12):
a little bit and then kind of remained, you know,
it was over left up to me if if we
wanted to continue this. It was going to be kind
of my baby. And eventually I bought everybody else out
and went on my thing.

Speaker 1 (20:29):
Yeah, it's still a little bit of a family affair,
isn't it.

Speaker 2 (20:32):
Well. Mark is still the the arts editor, and I
still actually from my my ex wife now ex wife
still contributes the odd cover and my my wife Cindy

(20:54):
does an awful lot of the web work and and
proof reading some things for me, and you know, she's
she's totally invaluable, And is there anybody else in the family.
My folks have both passed away, so you know it's yeah,
there is some the family elements still exists.

Speaker 1 (21:18):
Nice is uh this year's I know you have two sons, uh,
justin Cole am I sitting there, who.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
Lives in Texas and Cole, who lives here in Eureka.

Speaker 3 (21:29):
Did they have any interest in taking over your business?
If something we're happen to the latest?

Speaker 2 (21:36):
Not even maybe.

Speaker 3 (21:39):
No interest?

Speaker 2 (21:40):
No, no, I say to my son Cole, some days
this will all be yours. Please live forever, Dad.

Speaker 3 (21:49):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (21:50):
Yeah, it's funny my, you know, Mike. My kids know
I do Paperback Warrior. They know I do the blog
and the YouTube channel and the social media stuff. And
sometimes I'll have like this viral post and I'll have
like one hundred thousand views, and I'll show it to
my daughter. I'll say, look at this, I'm popular, and
she'll just be like, it's just books.

Speaker 3 (22:08):
It doesn't count. No interest whatsoever, had none. So that's
just the way it goes. When you know.

Speaker 1 (22:20):
When you started out with the Starhouse Press, did you
was your goal to release books by contemporary authors like
contemporary releases or did you really want to do reprints.

Speaker 2 (22:32):
The first goal was new authors, and the reason that
we started with Storm Constantine is because since I was
selling British books, I had watched all of her books,
her British books which weren't in print over here, selling
like crazy for me. So I thought, well, it would
just contact Storm and see if she'd be willing to

(22:53):
put together a short story collection. And I sort of
imagined from there that we would go on to other
living authors here. But I don't think that the hardback model,
then the sumbered and the numbered and signed editions worked
for us, or at least it didn't work in a

(23:17):
way that it was appealing to me. I've always loved paperbacks,
and so I started looking around that authors that I enjoyed.
But I also also ended up reprinting I think about
three or four Storm Constantine books. So I've kind of
stuck with Storm for a bid. And then I went

(23:38):
over to altern On Blackwood for two or three books
because he was another favorite of mine, and I thought, well,
this would be this would be easy. He's in public domain,
work hard. I won't have to twist his arm, won't
get me a numbered editions, but you with that.

Speaker 3 (23:56):
Yeah, And.

Speaker 2 (23:59):
Then Eventually I kind of stumbled upon the idea of
doing the mysteries and two books in one, because the
mysteries were always so short that it seemed like two
books fit better in one. And also the printer that

(24:20):
I was using at the time, I was going to
have to charge nineteen ninety five no matter what I
put in that book to make it worthwhile to make
any kind of profit. So the two books, it is
definitely the way to go if you're going to charge
nineteen ninety five.

Speaker 3 (24:35):
Yeah, yeah, it makes sense.

Speaker 1 (24:37):
You've you When I think of Starcouse Press, obviously you
think of crime fiction, crime nor What is it about
those genres? The crime fiction? What about that genre that
you like so much? What draws you to that genre?

Speaker 2 (24:55):
That's really hard to say, because I don't I haven't
really given it a lot of thought. Why it appeals
to me the combination of tension, character, sometimes just the
notion of the pure mystery puzzle, you know, all the
things that make for a good mystery. But primarily I

(25:18):
suppose it's characters, intension, characters and lives and flux, and
that can just as easily be true of a you know,
for example, I Nina Edith Wharton novel as it can't
Dashiel Hammond mystery. But I don't know, there's something about
mysteries that just appealed to me more.

Speaker 1 (25:38):
Yeah, in the beginning, what authors or literary states did
you pursue first? When you decided to do the reprints
outside of just public domain?

Speaker 3 (25:49):
Who did you go after first?

Speaker 2 (25:50):
The very first mystery author that we've published was Elizabeth
Sanks a Holding, who had been a favorite of mine
when I discovered her Ace double and so I went
to I had been in contact with Ed Gorman, who
was tremendously helpful. I think it was Ed that put
me in touch with a member of the family of

(26:13):
the Holding family, I want to say a son, but
he was also rather old, and he eventually put me
in touch with the grandson of Elizabeth Holding, and I've
been working with him ever since. So you know, I

(26:35):
didn't really set out to be a public domain publisher,
though I do some public domain so you know, when
it came down to authors like day Keene and Peter Rabe, again,
Ed was very invaluable. He put me in touch with
the agent for Peter Rabe, and he put me in

(26:59):
touch with the agent for day Keene and Stephen Marlowe's
and Stephen himself was still alive when we did his
book and authors like that. He was always kind of
pushing me to stay in the top tier. When he
what he saw and I said, well, perhaps we should,

(27:22):
you know, perhaps I could do some of these guys
over here, he said, I think you really should stay
in the top tier for right now. Well, okay, that
was good advice. I wasn't willing with good advice. He'd
been in the hunger than I had.

Speaker 1 (27:36):
Yeah, oh yeah, definitely a respected guy. I've never heard
anybody say anything bad about Ed Gorman. Everyone seemed to.

Speaker 2 (27:43):
Just love He was about as generous as you could imagine. Yeah,
really nice guy. I always enjoyed talking to me. He
had kind of a krusty curmudgeon attitude, but he was
a lot of fun to talk to.

Speaker 3 (27:57):
I've always been interested in your process.

Speaker 1 (28:01):
Of of how how the uh how the sausage is made,
so to speak, what's your what's your process of due
diligence to learn if the rights holders you know is live,
for example.

Speaker 2 (28:14):
Well, very rarely are the rights holders that were alive
right because I'm you know, reprinting books from the forties
and fifties. But you know, for example, where we did
a book. We're doing a book called Make with the
Brains Pierre by Dana Wilson, who turned out to be

(28:36):
married to Covey Pricoli of James Bond Films. And the
fellow who recommended that I might want to consider reprinting
this book is the found name Randall Brandt, who's I
think Santa Barber Library anyway. He's he's the main head
of a library here in California, and he just he

(28:58):
had done the diligence himself contacting the family, so he
put me in touch with him. So sometimes it's just
a case of somebody putting me in touch with somebody,
but it's also a matter of just being really persistent.
When it came to Lionel White, I just got online

(29:22):
and kept pursuing Lionel. Lionel had died, so then there
was his his wife, but she had died, and so
who who might hold the rights to Lionel? And I
eventually tracked it down to Lionel White's second wife. Wow,
it wasn't living on the East coast theme where she

(29:45):
was living up in Washington, and she's been a pleasure
to work with. You know, she's she has the holds
the copyrights to all of the book Lionel White books
that were renewed.

Speaker 1 (30:00):
Have you had any issues like whoops moments where books
are being published and then you have to go back
and renegotiate contracts or I aren out any type of
disputes with rights.

Speaker 2 (30:12):
Probably generally speaking, if I'm going to do a book
that I know is in the public domain, I try
to be you know, to do that kind of diligence too,
so there's not too many whoops moments. I recently reprinted
a book that Wildside Press has the European rights too,

(30:41):
forgetting the Thomas Terrible Memory. But anyway, yeah, yeah, that's
thank you listen better than I do anyway. And there
he was quick to point out that that I don't
really technical. We have the right to sell this book
anywhere but northern North America, so I you know, Lee

(31:08):
wrote to him and said, you know, perfuse apologies and
back off and just making North American rights only. You know,
I think we've stepped on a couple of toes with
a couple of artists that we've used their covers. But
again I've you know, I've I've did pay them for

(31:28):
their work. I just I didn't realize that.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
Yeah, yeah, I've seen just a couple, just a couple
of situations where I'll see, you'll release a book and
then it'll be another publisher, like maybe like a Lee
Goldberg or somebody like I think you guys share one.
I think Ovid de Maris, there's an Ovid Demeris book
that I think you both.

Speaker 2 (31:51):
Have out John flag book that we both have.

Speaker 3 (31:54):
Yes, exactly how does that work itself out?

Speaker 2 (31:58):
Well? Their books in the public domain, so he has
as much right to reprint it as I do.

Speaker 3 (32:08):
Okay, Yeah, I.

Speaker 2 (32:09):
Wasn't quite sure why he picked Flag, Lee or whoever
was making that decision, because it was pretty clear that
we were on a John Flagg reprint program. But when
it came to Ovid DeMars, I didn't realize that he
was going to be doing so many of the Tomi's books.
So I as soon as I realized that he had

(32:32):
a commitment there, I just kind of stopped doing Demo's
books and only just hit the one. So, you know,
it just kind of comes down to I guess a
gentleman's agreement really you know, I won't step on your
toes if you don't step on mind and.

Speaker 3 (32:46):
Sorry, yep, yep.

Speaker 1 (32:52):
Well where do you get Where do you get your
ideas of which books you want to reprint?

Speaker 2 (32:58):
Well, I have thousands of books, so quite often I'm
just looking around me. Yeah, books that authors that I
enjoy reading, books that I've read in the past, Authors
who might have a book that I haven't read, but
you know, I'll pick up a title and find it

(33:21):
enjoy life book that we did this month called Cornered
by Lewis King, I was just kind of going to
the shelves and the caves and my shelf just have
to be at eye level, and I just kind of
pulled it out, said I wonder if this is any good?
And I read it and I said, yes, yes, this
is quite readable, you know, and just kind of proceeded

(33:42):
from there.

Speaker 3 (33:43):
Nice.

Speaker 1 (33:44):
Do you ever find that you become like a heavy
book book shopper when you're trying to track down copies
of books you want to reprint. Do you have like
a particular book that was really difficult to obtain?

Speaker 2 (33:57):
Well? I do use a uh and eBay a lot
for tracking down books by authors that I don't have
right now. I'm kind of trying to track down some
Luisa Revel books. I'm probably the only personal myself and

(34:18):
Curtis Evans are probably the only fans of Louise Louisa
Revel that we're going to change that.

Speaker 3 (34:24):
Yeah, I've never heard that name.

Speaker 2 (34:26):
Yes, we put out The Bus Station Murders another one
of her books recently, and tracking down all of her
books has been quite a challenge because they're rare, and
one of them I just have not even been able
to find anywhere, so uh, you know, you just keep checking.

(34:47):
There was a New Zealand no an Australian author named
Pat Flower that I was really interested in reprinting. Somebody
beat me to the punch, But I was a you
at one point trying to locate all the Flower books
I could, and I found all but one again through

(35:08):
eBay and a b E and sometimes even Amazon dot
Com might have them. So I'm not you know, I
don't have an awful lot of luck locally, but fortunately
the online I can do.

Speaker 3 (35:23):
Greg.

Speaker 1 (35:24):
Do you, I'm sorry, do you have to tear the
book apart when you when you're like feeding it into
the scanner with with optical character recognition.

Speaker 3 (35:32):
Do you have to tear the book apart to do that?

Speaker 2 (35:34):
No, I don't have to tear. My partner in crime
and this Jeff Or Zimmer, who is my associate editor
out there in Texas, he has a machine that does,
in fact, chop off the spine of the book and
shuffle the papers and scan them immediately. And I laboriously put,

(35:58):
you know, peel the pages back and try to keep
the book in as close to its original condition as possible.

Speaker 3 (36:05):
Nice, which, yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:07):
It's a little tricky with kind of flaky old paperbacks.

Speaker 1 (36:11):
I think I would have to turn my head if
I were going to see the book being dismembered. I
think I couldn't watch.

Speaker 2 (36:16):
No, No, it's it's a horrible site.

Speaker 3 (36:19):
I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
Jeff is not a paper collector, he's a book reader.

Speaker 3 (36:27):
Yeah, okay, he can do that.

Speaker 2 (36:29):
I can't do that.

Speaker 1 (36:31):
Well, A lot of a lot of books that obviously,
you know, you published a lot of books from the
early to mid twentieth century, and a lot of books
contain racial slurs, are just uncomfortable dialogue or situations regarding
racist of people. Uh, do you remove these things when
you go to reprint books or do you keep them
in and what you're reasoning for that.

Speaker 2 (36:53):
Generally speaking, I try to keep everything in as a
reflection of the times, the attitudes. Sometimes dialogue is a
little a little rough, but you know, it's it's indicative
of the character, telling of the character. There have been
some books where I simply passed on them because I

(37:14):
just couldn't abide certain words, didn't know what happened to
do with them. But there have been a couple of times,
and I think it was James Hadley Chase, if I'm
not mistaken, where the N word was used rather gratuitously,
and I just I said, there's no reason for that

(37:36):
to be there. Yeah, I just I did. I removed
it a couple of instances. But centerally, I just find
that it's it's just goes against the grain to be
changing books just to suit modern times.

Speaker 1 (37:52):
Yeah, well this is a this is probably going to
open up a whole can of worms.

Speaker 3 (37:58):
But do you think books should be banned?

Speaker 2 (38:01):
No, No, I do not think books should be banned.
I never have. Back when I was working for a
bookstore myself, in fact, I used to carry the Anarchist
cookbook before I realized that in fact it it wasn't
just a radical way of cooking radishes, but you know,
the way of making bombs. I didn't realize that. But
at the same time, I felt like that if it

(38:25):
had been published and somebody really wanted it, they should
have access to it. They should have access to information,
they should have access to everything. Just because a book
has been published doesn't mean you have to read it.
And I think that's probably one of the things that
bothers me most about the book Banners is they say, well,

(38:46):
I don't like it, therefore you can't read it, and
I find that's just repugnant.

Speaker 1 (38:53):
I wanted to talk with you about some specific books
that you've published and maybe gain some insight on what
drew you to those authors or titles, if that's okay, sure, sure, Well,
the first one I want to ask you about is
the late great Barry Mahlsburg, who you worked with for
a long time. I think you've got at least thirty
book releases of either his crime noir or sci fi

(39:17):
or action adventure short stories.

Speaker 3 (39:18):
What did you like about his writing and working with him?

Speaker 2 (39:22):
Well, I first discovered Barry back in the seventies when
I read Haroitz World and Beyond Apollo and the Falling Astronauts,
and I just loved his cynical take on the world.
I probably really appealed to anybody who's young and cynical.
I'm kind of an old fluffball now, but I was

(39:44):
using cynical in my day, and you know, Barry really
struck a nerve with me. And I was reading an
awful lot of Robert Silverberg at the time and Barry Mahlsberg.
And then I got a chance to work with Barry
because he was the acting agent for the Frederick Brown estate,

(40:05):
and so we started communicating and I just basically said, well,
do you have any books that are out of print
that you'd like to see back in print. And the
first thing he says, well, Underlay, that's my favorite book.
Underlay Great. So I said, well, let's do it, and

(40:25):
it just kind of turned into a whole relationship. I
will admit that some of sometimes his sex books make
me squirm a little bit, and I don't want to
sound like an old brood, but you know, sometimes they're
just a little much for me. But I like I
like the voice in Mary's books, and they're always pretty

(40:48):
much the same voice. But I find that I've been
enjoying that voice for something like forty fifty years and
I still do.

Speaker 1 (41:02):
Yeah, you you published one that he did and I like,
for me, I can't think of the name of it
was fire something. It's one word. It was a sleeze book.
What about it?

Speaker 2 (41:10):
Yeah, it's is the title fire?

Speaker 3 (41:16):
Okay?

Speaker 2 (41:16):
Yeah, I was going to look to see it. We
put it was, we paired it up with something else.

Speaker 3 (41:22):
It's got a soldier on the cover, I believe.

Speaker 2 (41:24):
Yeah, yeah, that was. I think that I could remember
my own books better than I do.

Speaker 3 (41:32):
So many it's so many.

Speaker 2 (41:34):
Oh well, it's in your some place. Yeah. Yeah, that
was originally had a different title, but it was one
of the very first books to dealt with a soldiers
returning with post stress syndrome.

Speaker 3 (41:48):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 2 (41:49):
And so I can't remember what the original title was.

Speaker 1 (41:57):
Uh something make me or made he was something like that.
But the one that i'm the one that I think
that I'm thinking of that was in there is the
one where the guy it actually educated me on the
pinball industry. And now pinball had no idea pinball machines
were banned Yea for so long. It was it was

(42:17):
so interesting and uh, and I love that character and
that's one of my favorite books. I just loved it.
It was just so good and I need to read
more of his work. But that one just really struck me.
It's just really entertaining. Yeah, you've you've never struck me
as a fan of like men's action of venture paperbacks

(42:38):
like Death Merchant or The Butcher or The Penetrator. But
and I may be wrong, but you published his whole
line of the Lone Wolf series. What made that one
different for you?

Speaker 2 (42:48):
Well, when it had a beginning, in the middle and end,
and that appealed to me as a series. I'm not
really much of a series reader, I am. I I
I've not read the Death Merchant and The Destroyer books,
even though I used to sell them. It just I

(43:14):
don't make a little gung ho too too much gung
ho for me. I don't know, but I think just
the simple answer is that it was a finite series
and that I knew that he was moving toward a
climax so that you could see it almost as one book.

Speaker 3 (43:34):
Yeah, makes sense.

Speaker 1 (43:37):
If if Starkhouse Press is the publisher that paperback warriors
cover the most. Then surely Harry Whittington is the author
we've covered more than any other. You've got at least
seven publication of Whittington's work, and some of those publications,
like you mentioned earlier, they feature two, sometimes even three
books in them. What did you like about Whittington's writing

(43:58):
so much? And has is a statement easy to work with?

Speaker 2 (44:03):
Well, his estate has gone through some changes, but they
answer the first question is there's something about the sweaty
desperation of his characters that I really liked. He always
just throws you into the middle of a really tense situation.
He has that much in common with Gil Brewer, and
of course they were friends. But the estate started out.

(44:28):
Let's see, I was dealing with a company called Jet
and then I was dealing with Howard Whittington, who passed away.
That was Harry Whittington's son, And I think I even
briefly connected with Catherine Waddington when she was alive, but

(44:53):
they all passed away and it's now the granddaughter who's
in charge, and she is a I love working with her.
Sizzy is great fun to work with, but she's she
has her own business trucking company, and she is not
does not have time to go through and do all
the research on the copyrights, and she really is She's

(45:15):
a really exacting person. She does not want to put
her okay on anything that she doesn't feel that she
knows exactly that it is okay, and I appreciate that.
So doing new Whittington books has been kind of a
challenge because because she hasn't had the time to work
on them. But I live in hope that eventually she will. Yeah,

(45:40):
you've also she's fun to work with.

Speaker 3 (45:42):
Well, that's that's good.

Speaker 1 (45:44):
You've published a number of Carter Brown volumes as well,
and typically those feature three books in one volume, and
I think you've got nine total volumes out. All of
them feature his Lieutenant Al Wheeler character. Do you plan
on releasing any books featuring any of his other characters.

Speaker 2 (46:00):
I thought I would do the Wheelers first, and then
I'm still in business, you know, I will look at
somebody else. Somebody recommended the Mavis books and I read
a couple of them that those just don't work for
me in a modern city. They're just a little bit
too sexist. Yeah, yeah, you know those that's an interesting

(46:26):
series I have to say a tip of the hat
to Charles R. Day is he was the one that
recommended they contacted him first the estate and and he passed,
and he suggested, why don't you try star cast? And
I thought this should be fun. Carter Brown. What's not

(46:47):
to like about Carter Brown?

Speaker 1 (46:49):
Yeah? Yeah, there's so much fun to read, and they're
breezy and they're just easy. And if I want to
just kind of turn off and still have a great
enjoyable reading experience, I can always go to that one.

Speaker 3 (47:00):
You know, that's easy stuff. I love it.

Speaker 2 (47:03):
Yeah. Oc usually his humor makes your wings.

Speaker 1 (47:05):
But you know, right, you've released twenty six twenty six
Lionel White novels, over at least thirteen volumes, and you're
clearly a fan of his work as well.

Speaker 3 (47:17):
What draws you to Line L White?

Speaker 1 (47:19):
And in particular, maybe in general, maybe like the heist
novel in general?

Speaker 2 (47:24):
Well, he is sort of the master of the heist novel.
I like the way he just sets the whole thing
up and you know that ultimately it's doomed to fail.
He still creates a situation where it looks like they
could pull it off, and but there's always some little

(47:46):
thing that happens that screws the whole thing up at
the end. He's written some straight mysteries too, but he
is definitely great heist writer, and I just find them,
you know, very compelling. There are a handful, maybe six
of his books that I don't intend to reprint either

(48:07):
because they had they were maybe they just didn't work,
you know. Not everything you wrote was perfect, and some
of them were clunkers. But one had a very violent
rape scene. I just couldn't bring myself to bring that
one back.

Speaker 3 (48:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (48:28):
Yeah, those that That's the one thing that it really
bothers me when reading and I have to skip those
scenes is read, I always have to skip it.

Speaker 3 (48:36):
It just bothers me. I can't. I just can't do it. Uh.

Speaker 1 (48:41):
You've also published a number of sax Romer novels, and
I wanted to ask you, what would you say to
someone who wants to read sex rummers never read them before?
Where's the best place to start?

Speaker 2 (48:53):
Hmmm? Wow, Well, fired Tom is a very good place
to start. Or the where I started was the Fu
Manchu books when I was a teenager. And I'm very
aware that there's something rather racist in the notion of

(49:18):
the wily Chinese villain and some of the mysteries of
the East that he that didn't don't really translate into
modern times as well. But he wrote such compelling stories
that I kind of feel like I'm willing to overlook

(49:39):
that kind of aspect. Not everybody can, I appreciate. There's
probably some younger readers that this simply could not get
past that. But oh, you know, I was looking here
at some of the things that we've done, and I

(50:00):
would say definitely bat Wing, fire Tongue, some of the
Gray Face. You know, there's there's a lot of good
adventures there, and.

Speaker 1 (50:19):
They part you know, see who sleeps mm hmm from
This was December, the most recent one, I believe.

Speaker 2 (50:30):
Yeah, that's a great little story. I really don't want
to give it away, but it looks like that they
have discovered the this woman who's been kept alive in
this tomb all these through the centuries, and they find
her and bring her into a modern world. And it's well.

Speaker 1 (50:54):
Sounds like I'm a cop fish out of water story.

Speaker 2 (50:57):
Yeah, uh, but that's the same way as that you
Philips Oppenheim. I personally enjoyed these books a lot. When
I was younger, and when I go back and read them,
I still find them very readable, and I like to
think that they still have an appeal to modern readers.
Not everybody, but unlike someone like Dickens, who was very verbose,

(51:26):
who could take, you know, paragraphs and paragraphs and paragraphs
to just describe one scene, one action, or people people
like h writer Haggard, who I still enjoy also but
could spend an entire page on a lion attacking somebody

(51:47):
step by step. People like Oppenheimer are much brisker read
and I still feel like they have some appeal to
modern writers readers. And Edgar Wallace is another one. I
guess I really do quite enjoy early twentieth century writers

(52:12):
in some ways more than modern writers.

Speaker 3 (52:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:16):
Yeah, likewise me too leisurely paced more too.

Speaker 3 (52:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:23):
Well, last year the stark House Anthology was published, which
you edited along with Rick Allerman, and I'm not mistaken.
This is the first stark House anthology of hand picked
stories from multiple authors. How did you go about picking
thirty great mystery stories? Did you have to comb through
like short story collections magazines or did you kind of

(52:44):
work off of suggestions?

Speaker 2 (52:45):
I like, I made my suggestions, but Rick did the
lion's share of the work. He's had health issues, so
it took This project has been several years in the making.
I think we must have probably started ten years ago.

(53:07):
I'm not sure where we came up with the original idea.
And I had some some ideas of my own and
some short stories that I collected from various sundry places.
And then he had a whole bunch of ideas of
his own. And he had a story of mine that
I had submitted to him for something else that he

(53:28):
didn't like for that project that he tossed in there
and then added one of his own, and and you know,
it kind of came together just through time.

Speaker 3 (53:41):
Really, I guess the same the same question.

Speaker 1 (53:45):
The question fits for the three volumes of the Best
of Manhunt magazine which you've put out as well.

Speaker 2 (53:51):
That okay, that's a labor of love. He he really
made that one work. And ye, Jeff is invaluable. He
does most of the vintage covers that you see on
our books because he has access to so much as
a great old art and he did he and David

(54:14):
Rachel's do the staccato line, and he really put together
the man hunt collections himself. So that was a lot
of work and you should not be one of the
unsung heroes. That was Jeff's baby.

Speaker 3 (54:31):
I got it. Very cool.

Speaker 1 (54:33):
Yeah, those are those are amazing collections, just great stories,
great authors, just amazing.

Speaker 3 (54:38):
Do you plan on putting out more of those?

Speaker 2 (54:41):
I planned to put out more of those. Does Jeff
plan to put out more? I don't know. I think
he kind of burned out a little bit, but I
hope so, I hope you will.

Speaker 3 (54:50):
Yeah, you know.

Speaker 2 (54:54):
You want to work.

Speaker 1 (54:56):
Have you had instances where an author or literary stage
just simply say as no, I'm not interested.

Speaker 3 (55:03):
Do you get that?

Speaker 2 (55:04):
M Sometimes it's easier to work with certain copyright owners
than others. I'm trying to think Floyd mahonnah for example.
I don't think his family wants any of his books

(55:25):
to be reprinted. They are impossible to work with. I'm
not offending the Floyd Mahonna family and saying that, but
the fact was they they're not very easy to work with.
Nobody really says no, but just can you will they

(55:48):
follow up? You know, I'm I'm trying to do a
couple of authors right now where I'm pursuing people who
just don't have this on, you know, the same burning
or urgency that I do to get something back into print,
and reminding him, well, you know, what do you think?
What do you think that that contract I sent to you?

(56:11):
You want to take another look at? Oh?

Speaker 3 (56:13):
Yeah, have you have you ransom?

Speaker 1 (56:16):
The situations where the the the heirs or the rights
holders just want some kind of outrageous amount of money.

Speaker 2 (56:24):
Sure, sure, I would love to publish Cornell Willwarick unabashedly
one of my favorite writers, but I just can't see
spending the money that they they want, you know, to
get for any one of his books, quite apart from
two of his books. And there are some people that

(56:47):
you know that are just priced beyond.

Speaker 3 (56:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (56:53):
Yeah, they consider that that's what they're worth.

Speaker 1 (56:56):
And yeah, that's what it is. I think you and
I have talked about Edward S. Aaron's and how he's
basically impossible.

Speaker 2 (57:06):
I'm glad you reminded me about him. Yeah, the Sun,
I think it was the Sun I wrote. I wrote
to him on several occasions, you know, would you be interested,
Here's a sample contract, Here's what I like to do.
And every time he would kind of think about it.
Finally he just came back and said, no, no, I'm
not interested. And well, then there must be somebody else

(57:31):
that he is interested in. Maybe we'll see hard Case
doing these books, or maybe you know somebody else and
I've never seen them, so I have to presume that
he shines everybody on. I don't know why.

Speaker 3 (57:45):
Yeah, it doesn't.

Speaker 1 (57:46):
Well, it surprises me how many times I've heard publishers
talk about an author's heirs and how I guess disinterested
they are in learning about their families writing. It could
be like a great grandchild or niece or nephew, and
when they're finally located, it's like I had no idea
grandpa wrote books, or I don't know about them, never

(58:08):
read them, never cared. Are you shocked when you're locating
author heirs the term rights and things for a book
publication and just discovered that they just never had any
interest whatsoever in any of it.

Speaker 2 (58:19):
Well, I don't encounter that as much as you might think.
I get more enthusiasm than I get clause is that's
a word, you know. For example, Bernice Carrie, we reprinted
all of her novels, and I worked with Bernice's I
think it's her granddaughter or grand niece. I'm not sure,

(58:42):
and she's she says, the family's just crazy about seeing
these books in print again, and that just makes you know,
it kind of makes you day a justice for both sides,
for the world, and now read these books again and
for the family.

Speaker 3 (58:58):
Yeah, yeah, I think that more often than not. Yeah,
I think.

Speaker 1 (59:06):
I won't say the author's name, but I'd reached out
to you last year via email because I wanted to
read an author's short story on the podcast, and my
fear was that the author's air wouldn't allow it.

Speaker 3 (59:16):
And you were like, the air is like a.

Speaker 1 (59:18):
Bartender or something, or he's in some bars somewhere and
wouldn't care, wouldn't know, wouldn't it, wouldn't have any interest
at all, doesn't care.

Speaker 3 (59:26):
And I was like, wow, that's.

Speaker 1 (59:27):
No interest whatsoever. And their uncle or somebody I can't
remember who it was, but.

Speaker 2 (59:32):
Yeah, I don't remember that situation myself. Yeah, yeah like that.

Speaker 1 (59:40):
Yeah, I'm not I'm not a Hollywood insider. I don't
know anything about film rights or any of those things.
How does that kind of thing work out when it
comes to you owning the rights to reprint like, I only.

Speaker 2 (59:54):
Buy the paperback rights, I don't the movie rights. I
worked with the line Will White copyright owner to put
together a deal with a fellow who wants to film
one of the Lionel White book Coffin for a Hood,

(01:00:18):
and he's he's still working on it. He's got a screenplay.
He's bought the rights, and he renewed the rights, and
he's got a screenplay that he likes. And I hope
that it happens because it sounds like it'd be a
lot of fun. But it really I'm willing to work

(01:00:42):
with the copyright owners, but I don't actually myself owned
the rights to represent them unless we negotiate that as
a secondary.

Speaker 1 (01:00:57):
Okay, Like like you published Desert Stakeout by Harry Whittington,
which just finished I think production. That's being adapted into
a film, but that has nothing to do with you.

Speaker 3 (01:01:09):
No.

Speaker 2 (01:01:10):
No, that was done strictly through the Waddington estate and
they they took care, they handled it entirely on their end. Okay,
is that due to come out soon or has it
come out yet?

Speaker 3 (01:01:25):
I want to say, yeah, me too. I think it's
this year. I think I think it does come out
this year.

Speaker 2 (01:01:30):
I heard about it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:31):
Yeah, I really like that book, so I'm curious to
see how it turns out. We're talking about rights to books,
the popular topic becomes that of cover art, and many
of your early releases had I guess, we're, lack of
a better term, generic art work adorning the covers.

Speaker 3 (01:01:48):
But over the past few years.

Speaker 1 (01:01:51):
That sorry, Mark, Well, you know, over the past few
years you've become way more liberal in releasing books with
their original vintage covers, or you've modified an existing vintage
cover to fit a new publication. In pursuing rights to artwork,
is that kind of just as tricky as the rights
to books? How far do you go down the path

(01:02:14):
to get a cover?

Speaker 2 (01:02:18):
That's an interesting question because really, for the most part,
Jeff handled. He has a list of people that he
considers untouchable, and then we just worked with everybody else
of just using the art from the original book as
much as we cost them we can. I'm just trying

(01:02:41):
to think of who was it the fellow who wrote
who did the cover for Leading Scissors. Not Beginners, but
the other big guy. Anyway, I did work a deal
for some art where I pay the daughter. In fact,

(01:03:04):
some of the original covers for the Gil Brewer books
came from I should just pull one off the shelf.
Too much trouble.

Speaker 3 (01:03:14):
I might have one here, you.

Speaker 2 (01:03:16):
Have one, you know, like some ones.

Speaker 4 (01:03:21):
The the black and white image came from shooting the
the the artists models that he Ben was doing covers with.
So it was, you know, in case of buying the

(01:03:41):
rights to that, which I thought was kind of cool
at the time. I'm not sure if it's as cool
as I think it is.

Speaker 1 (01:03:49):
Well, I know some books you've used foreign movie posters
as the covers, like you did. I think with Blood
Alley you're still able to get John Wayne on the cover,
But but you use a foreign movie post Are the
rights more lax when it comes to like foreign film?

Speaker 2 (01:04:06):
Thanks for asking, Thanks for putting that out there. I
don't know, you know that was that was I told Jeff.
I just kind of wanted to stay away from anything
too overtly John Wayne ish he came up with this
cover that came from I think Italy if I'm not mistaken,
and I said, well, I think we can get away

(01:04:27):
with that.

Speaker 3 (01:04:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:04:31):
Yeah, he's pretty good at not giving me part that
he thinks is going to cause you know, any any problems. Yeah,
I'm always happy to pay somebody if they come to
me and say, well, you know, you shouldn't have used that,

(01:04:51):
I said, well, okay, let's work, then I'll pay you
for it.

Speaker 3 (01:04:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:04:58):
Well, speaking of movies, that kind of leads me to
my next question was about the imprints or or really
good series titles that you've created. One of them, which
is the Starkhouse Filmed or Classic, which you've been pretty
active in releasing books in that series.

Speaker 3 (01:05:16):
I think you've got eleven books published.

Speaker 1 (01:05:18):
Under that line quarterly quarterly, okay, is well, my first
question is that an imprint like Black Gut books or
is it just a series?

Speaker 2 (01:05:29):
Well, excuse me losing my voice here, I haven't numbered
them and perhaps go off to but I wasn't seeing
it initially as a numbered thing where you want to
you know, collect and trade them, have them all be
the first one on your block. I have always been,

(01:05:52):
you know, fascinated with film noir, and I just thought, well,
we're we've already published some books that were made into
some classic noir movies. Hi Sierra comes to mind. Why
not create a series based around some of the the movies.

(01:06:14):
Books to movies and started off with Pitfall, which was
yet night Crass, the most recent. Yeah. I started off
with Pittfall because Timothy Lockhart had suggested Pittfall. I thought
that would be He's one of our authors, and I've

(01:06:37):
known him for a long time and he sometimes makes suggestions.
He said, I think Pittfall would be great as a
Starcast book, and I hemmed and hollered over that book
for about a year, and I thought, I wonder if
we maybe we could start something with this. I'm sorry

(01:06:59):
you're still talking this much, right.

Speaker 1 (01:07:02):
You kind of went over I think about an hour,
but this is such a good conversation.

Speaker 2 (01:07:06):
Yeah. So anyway, the series just kind of started with Pitfall,
and you know, kind of moved from there.

Speaker 3 (01:07:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:07:16):
With when we talk about in prints, you've got black
Cat books, which the main difference with those is that
and you've got seventy of those books published, but they're
printed in the mass market paperback format of four and
a quarter by seven inches. But what makes what's the

(01:07:37):
thought process on what becomes a Starkhouse Press release versus
what becomes a black Cat book release.

Speaker 2 (01:07:43):
Now, something you might not have noticed is that I
never repeat a Black Cat author in the series. So
there's there's one Harry Whittington, there's one Robert Silverberg, there's
you know, one Day King. Sure, so I sort of
see this as a series that is single author, single

(01:08:08):
book for the most part. I've even made a couple
of exceptions there. I did Gary lewit S's two short
Sherlock Holmes novels, but generally speaking, one novel something that
I feel like is a good standalone book. And this

(01:08:30):
series was suggested the original idea. I think it was
Rick Olderman and I were talking about what made the
old books look so good was just their size were
so cool, and we'll put together a series of books.

(01:08:51):
And I think he was the one that suggested that
I numbered them, and I thought, okay, number. Yeah. He
says people aren't going to want to collect him if
you don't put a number on them. Yeah, okay, thank
you very much, Rick. And it seemed like the most
natural thing in the world to start with Harry waiting
to since he was a favorite. Anyway. Oh, it's taken

(01:09:17):
me almost seventy books to get around to doing Gil
Brewer as a as a black Cat book, which we
did wild not too long ago. Yeah, which coincidentally happened
to be the very first Gilbrook Brewer book that I
ever read, and I always wanted to reprint that one.
But the thing that distinguishes, I guess is, is is

(01:09:46):
it a standalone book. And you know, sometimes mysteries seem
to work well as a package. And I've been doing
those two first for such a long time that I
think in terms of two books in one. I just

(01:10:08):
got finished working on another Saxophone book, a combination of
Dope and Yellow Shadows, both of which feature a character
named Red Carry and are both set in the Limehouse
district of London in the twenties. So I saw those
as a great combination that they fit very nicely together.

(01:10:28):
But you know, that's a corner that we did recently
by Lewis King. I saw that as a perfect little
standalone book, and a lot of the things that we've
done in that series books to me, worked just very
nicely as single title books. And I still love that size.

Speaker 3 (01:10:52):
Yeah, I do too. I've noticed that you have a
steady concentration on.

Speaker 1 (01:11:00):
Mystery writers, like you've got Martha Albrand, Mary Collins, Dorothy Cameron, Disney,
Ruth Finnissong, Marty Holland you name it. The list goes
on and on. You have a fondness for female writers,
more so than some of your other contemporary publishers, like
Hard Case Crime, for example. What makes what makes you
want to publish a lot of female writers? What draws

(01:11:22):
you to their writing style?

Speaker 2 (01:11:24):
Hmm, I'd like to have a quick, snappy answer for
you on them. When is it the coziness? I'm not
sure there's something about women writers that pull you further
into the character. Perhaps they tend to be a tad

(01:11:45):
more leisurely. Oh even so, you'd say Lee Brackett is
fairly hard boiled, and Craig Rice and people like that.
But these are all right that I thaoughly enjoy reading.
And you know, I haven't convinced the world that they

(01:12:05):
need to read Luisa Revel yet. But you know, there's
worlds away from say, you know, I'm Mickey Splaine Anna
Luis the Revel book, because one has got a hard
you know, a guy who uses his fists to solve crimes.
In the other is a little old lady who kind

(01:12:28):
of uses her wits to help solve crimes. And I
I guess I prefer as as I've gotten older than
the wits, more than the phisticus.

Speaker 1 (01:12:43):
Makes sense, I think with the female writers, and I
enjoy reading those almost more than anything else.

Speaker 3 (01:12:50):
It's just there.

Speaker 1 (01:12:51):
It's like their perspective of characters is a little different.
They're like more observant and you get a little more
inner soul searching. I guess it's kind of in a
more inner turmoil for them to explore. And I think
somebody like Margaret Miller Malar doesn't just as good as
anybody really.

Speaker 3 (01:13:10):
I think you even.

Speaker 2 (01:13:12):
Really good. Celia Fremlin from England. I'd love to reprint her.
That's another when you were talking about the states that
weren't interested in dealing with me, they weren't interested in
dealing with terrak House. But at the same time, I
would love to reprint some of her books because they're
just wonderful character studies involving crime and murders.

Speaker 1 (01:13:41):
I think at one time, in an email, you had
said to me, uh, when we were talking about women writers,
and you had said that a lot of them contribute
to a genre.

Speaker 3 (01:13:50):
And I wrote it down and I brought it up
at this interview.

Speaker 1 (01:13:53):
It's malice domestic or domestic malice.

Speaker 3 (01:13:57):
Did you coin that phrase.

Speaker 2 (01:13:59):
No, I don't think I coined that phrase. I wish
I had. I don't actually remember where I encountered it
malice domestic, but you know, I've seen it. I think
there's even a convention called that. I mean, I could
be wrong, but I think so. It's just a It

(01:14:22):
seemed to sum up a style in two words very nicely.

Speaker 3 (01:14:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:14:28):
Yeah, I had never heard that before, and it just
stuck with me every time I read one of these books,
I'm like, yeah, that's it falls under that on the
under that tag. I'm gonna I'm gonna wrap this up
here in just a second. I wanted to ask you
a go more quick questions. One I was gonna ask
you about this, and it's this is.

Speaker 3 (01:14:49):
Greg.

Speaker 1 (01:14:50):
I don't know if this is a question. I don't
know if this is a question or me maybe just vinting,
but I'll bring this up. Let's say let's say I
review a Starkhouse Press PubL location Day, Keen Bruno Fischer,
Charles Williams, Whittington, whoever it might be, just an outstanding
crime fiction writer, and I'll review one of the books
that you that you've published.

Speaker 3 (01:15:10):
I go and post that review on the blog, I'll
post it on.

Speaker 1 (01:15:14):
Facebook X, Instagram, whatever, and Paperback Warrior we get a
decent amount of eyes and ears anyway. But let's say
that I post a stark House Press book review and
it gets, you know, ten thousand views on average, maybe
like the first day. Everyone sees it. They see that
Starkhouse Press published it.

Speaker 3 (01:15:33):
Great.

Speaker 1 (01:15:34):
But I'll turn around and I'll review or maybe just
even make mention of a Hard Case Crime release. Let's
say like Max Allan Collins or Donald Westlake or Earl
Stanley Gardner, all great writers, great books. But those postings
will immediately garner like fifty thousand views like that that

(01:15:55):
first day. And that's not to It's my beef. Isn't
the discourage, you know, Heart Case Crime or their books
or the writers. It's just the reaction that Hardcase Crime
gets anytime I post their logo or book covers. It's
astounding and I and I don't understand why that is.

Speaker 3 (01:16:14):
And that's just me vincing, But well, how do you
feel about that?

Speaker 2 (01:16:18):
It doesn't bother me in the slightest. I think Charles R.
Day is doing a great job. He's got a lot
of great writers on his list and he's you know,
keeping people like Donald Westlake alive. And you know, he's
tends toward more modern writers. He does a lot more

(01:16:41):
original stuff than we did. He's a good editor, and
you know, I think he deserves his success. Titan Books
is distributing or publishes the line of hard case and
they're you know, they're they're a very big company. And

(01:17:03):
I'm sure that they're more they're getting more advertising, right,
so they're getting more advertising than we are. Yeah, And
I don't spend a whole lot on advertising. No.

Speaker 1 (01:17:16):
And you know, and I've said it before and on
the on the podcast, and I've read written this on
the blog and social media and stuff. But I mean
Starkhouse Press is they run circles upon circles around heardcase crime.
I mean, I know it's not a race, It isn't
a popularity contest, But I'm talking about in terms of
curating classic vintage fiction for the next generation. Your efforts,

(01:17:39):
your achievements unmatched anywhere, your labor to negotiate deals.

Speaker 3 (01:17:44):
Do you reprints hold.

Speaker 1 (01:17:45):
High standards upon your your production schedule and output, the
look and feel of your books, the endless supply of
new publications. I just feel like Starkhouse Press should be
celebrated and held in very high regard in the realms
of crime fiction, crime nor mystery and even action adventure.
And I just, for whatever reason, I just get the

(01:18:07):
impression that your company comes second fiddle to hardcase crime
and that really it just really irks me when I
see those things.

Speaker 2 (01:18:15):
Well, thank you, Eric, I appreciate comments. And you know,
I don't really mind being the h We also ran
in the slightest because to me, it's we're all trying
to put out good books and Lee's company cutting edge

(01:18:37):
the same thing with what he's doing. You know, yeah,
you know, I say there's room for all, and I've
made this my particular niche, but Charles has his niche,
and Lee and and other people. I say there's room

(01:18:58):
for all, And yeah, it doesn't bother me.

Speaker 3 (01:19:03):
Okay, it just bothers me.

Speaker 2 (01:19:06):
Yeah, bothers on my behalf.

Speaker 3 (01:19:10):
Yes, I'll carry that cross. And you and you don't
have to answer this.

Speaker 1 (01:19:16):
It's probably maybe digging a little too far into your accounting,
but you can you can skip this question.

Speaker 3 (01:19:21):
We wants it.

Speaker 1 (01:19:22):
But what what does what does success look like for
you when it comes to a book release? How many
copies does a book have to sell for you to
really consider this a successful release.

Speaker 2 (01:19:35):
That's an interesting question, and I don't think I'm going
to hand out numbers. Right the best selling book on
the Starhouse List, and I think you might find this
amusing is The King in Yellow by Robert Chambers. Wow,
I have no idea. I have sold many, over a

(01:19:59):
thousand copies of that particular book.

Speaker 3 (01:20:01):
Yeah, that's interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:20:02):
It was written in eighteen ninety eight. There are unteen
editions of this book. Ours happens to have paired the
stories with another collection called The Mystery of Choice, so
it really puts all of his weird fiction into one volume.
Maybe that has something to do with it. I would
love to have more books that sold well over a

(01:20:24):
thousand copies, but most of them don't. On the other hand,
we have very very low return rate right in me.
It makes a difference. I had a distributor that I
was working with some years ago that sold two or
three times as many books as I was selling myself home,

(01:20:48):
you know, quite an awful lot part. But then they
were just swamping me with returns. So what did I
getting there? I didn't consider I gained anything there. Returns.

Speaker 3 (01:20:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:21:00):
You know, I feel like most of our sales. If
I sell five hundred copies of a book and I've
gotten ten copies back, that I'm doing a great job
because I don't want the returns. I'd like the hard sell,
you know, the the final sale.

Speaker 3 (01:21:18):
Mm hmmm do you uh? Do you have any regrets
on publishing a certain book?

Speaker 2 (01:21:26):
Hmmm? Really no, I can't think of anything that I
regret publishing. I suppose if if you've given me that
question of Hammond hall Over for a few days, I
might have that we're a little disappointing. But know I.

Speaker 1 (01:21:52):
Well, my last, my last question for you is, you know,
there's a rising popularity for audio books, and I think
this is mostly due to our society constantly being on
the go these days and more and also, especially for me,
more and more people working from home. A lot of
people do data entry jobs or jobs where they can

(01:22:13):
listen to things like you know, their Audible subscription, or
they can listen to podcasts or YouTube broadcasts while they're
actually working, and I think that certainly boosts more and
more people to listen to listen to stories and books.
It's almost we're almost in an environment where we're in
that old radio show you and I talked about last week.
It seems like we're in the golden age of radio

(01:22:36):
where people are just listening to books and podcasts and things.
Do you have any motivation to offer any Starhouse Press
releases as audiobooks?

Speaker 2 (01:22:45):
I think I'd be spreading myself tooth thin, so I
don't at the moment. I suppose if a company came
to me and said I could turn all these books
into audio books and you know it only costs you, yeah,
some small figure, I might give it some thought. But
it seems like for a small operation that doesn't have

(01:23:09):
an awful lot of people working, that it really is
better to just stick with what you know, what's what
you can handle, rather than doing a whole bunch of
things poorly just to a couple of the well and
the ebooks. You know, they don't take up too much time,

(01:23:32):
so I can handle that, And I should do quite
a little thumb shout out to my proof of your
Bill Kelly, who also is a Tireless promoter and has
written a lot of introductions for us and created some
some fine collections, and you know it's he's part of

(01:23:53):
the team that makes this thing all work. Yeah, because
I'm a terrible proof of her.

Speaker 1 (01:24:01):
Yeah, I'm i'd lie. I do have one more question
for you, because I'm holding in my hand recently, just
you recently just put out this, which is a rare
Western title. You don't do a lot of Westerns, and why.

Speaker 3 (01:24:17):
Why is that?

Speaker 2 (01:24:21):
I have a light, nice collection of Westerns, and I
keep thinking I should do more westerns. They don't sell
quite as well as the crime novels. But there really
isn't a particular reason why I haven't done a lot
more westerns. I think I just get distracted by the

(01:24:41):
crime books. That's probably why I don't do it. A
lot of science fiction. You can only do so much.
And I would like to do some more Westerns and
probably will, But so there really isn't a particular the
reason behind not doing as many Westerns. I did work

(01:25:04):
with Arnold Hanno and getting some of his back into print.
That was more of an author driven thing. Yeah, in
that conscious decision to do westerns. Do you.

Speaker 3 (01:25:16):
My last question? I promised last question, the ultimate one.
I'll save this one for the last.

Speaker 1 (01:25:25):
So do you ever like which I forgot how to
say this when you're thinking about putting a book out.
Do you think of it in terms of this book
will sell and this is why I want to do it,
or do you just say I want to put this
on because I really.

Speaker 3 (01:25:40):
Like this book?

Speaker 2 (01:25:41):
Is there a definitely the latter?

Speaker 3 (01:25:43):
Okay, you'd ever look at if this is going to sell.
It's just like it.

Speaker 2 (01:25:47):
Sometimes I say to myself, well, I hope this does
well so it can justify another book. But I know
in my heart of hearts that if I really want
to put another book out by that author, then I
don't really care if it's sold or not. I want
to do it. I'll do it, all right, probably another
Luisa Rovel.

Speaker 3 (01:26:07):
Okay, all right, well, okay, well this is uh.

Speaker 1 (01:26:13):
This has been an awesome conversation and I'm so glad
that you agreed to do it. This was just amazing.
I learned quite a bit and your thing with there
hasn't been two. You haven't had but one author do
a black At book, which was amazed me because I
thought I knew everything about black At books. But then
it just dawned on me what you said where you

(01:26:34):
said that there's not two by the same author other
than the Garry labs.

Speaker 3 (01:26:38):
So I've learned quite a bit about your case.

Speaker 1 (01:26:42):
Yeah, yeah, but I've learned quite a bit about your
process and everything that goes into the Stark House Press
and releasing all these books, and it's been fascinating, really
has been.

Speaker 2 (01:26:53):
Well, it's been a pleasure. I should get out more.

Speaker 1 (01:26:59):
Yeah, Well, have to do something like this in the future,
just to learn a little bit more about it and
maybe even tackle a book together, like a review a
book or something, which would be really cool to get
your perspective on it. But yeah, just keep up the
good work and just keep on putting out books. It's
been it's been an amazing ride.

Speaker 2 (01:27:16):
Well, thank you very much, Thanks very much, Eric, It's
been a pleasure and I've enjoyed the time spent here.

Speaker 3 (01:27:25):
Excellent.

Speaker 2 (01:27:26):
We'll just keep both of us doing what we're doing.

Speaker 3 (01:27:29):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (01:27:31):
We'll take thanks for watching and tuning in and come
back for more written reviews on the blog. You also
follow us on Facebook, x, Instagram, threads, Pinterest if anyone
still does that.

Speaker 3 (01:27:45):
We're also on archive dot org.

Speaker 1 (01:27:47):
Tune in every other Monday every two weeks there's a
new podcast episode and Greg here's got books coming out
of normally about four or five every month. You can
always check them out on Amazon. Also the Starkhouse Press website,
and Greg himself is on Facebook as well, so you
can follow everything there in the meantime. Thanks for watching
and enjoy whatever it is you're doing.

Speaker 2 (01:28:10):
Thank you reading