Fantasy Press - History

History

Lloyd Arthur Eshbach ordered a copy of Skylark of Space from its publisher, the Buffalo Book Company, in 1945 or 1946. Like many of Buffalo's customers, Eshbach was frustrated by Buffalo's delays in publishing and lack of marketing, an area that Eschbach had some expertise in, from his job as a copywriter for Glidden. He wrote to the Buffalo Book Company offering suggestions as to how they could better market their books. Thus started a correspondence between Eshbach and Tom Hadley, of Buffalo and later of the Hadley Publishing Company. While never an employee of Hadley, Eshbach helped him with his marketing efforts and as a result ended up with a copy of the mailing list of Haley's customers. With two of his co-workers from Glidden and one other friend of theirs, Eshbach used the mailing list to start Fantasy Press. He approached E. E. Smith to obtain the rights to Spacehounds of IPC. Smith was enthusiastic and Spacehounds of IPC became the first title published by the new press. Eshbach eventually bought out his partners and operated the press for several years on his own. Ultimately, Fantasy Press was under capitalized and sales declined in the face of competition from the mainstream publishers. Eshbach wrote his authors and reverted the rights to their books while he took a job with a religious publishing house in Myerstown, Pennsylvania.