[projectaon] Re: The Covers Project.

  • From: "O'Toole, Laurence (2000)" <Laurence.OToole.2000@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "projectaon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <projectaon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2014 14:26:13 +0000

David Davis wrote:

> Re: educated guesses on Sparrow Books vs. Beaver Books for
> Shadow on the Sand - my guess is that there was never a
> Sparrow Books edition of Shadow on the Sand, and people
> have simply (not unreasonably) assumed this by reasoning
> "the re-brand from black back covers to salmon pink back
> covers must've coincided with the change of imprint from
> Sparrow to Beaver" - however I don't think this was
> actually the case.
> The biggest piece of evidence for this is the copyright
> blurb page of my Beaver edition Shadow on the Sands, which
> lists no previous editions (and I don't think there would
> have been *time* for any previous editions, as I bought it
> in 1985).
Forgive the lack of clarity. I believe you, and didn't mean to imply otherwise. 
I simply haven't been able to find a nice way to present this information. For 
consistency with the current layout, this cover would need a column of its own, 
which seems an inelegant solution.
Remove the 'Sparrow'/'Beaver' headings entirely, and move this information to 
inside each cell, perhaps?

>> But then again, it has proven difficult to find any kind
>> of concrete information about what happened to Sparrow
>> Books
> Would it be possible to search at Companies House for
> Arrow Books and Beaver Books
Nice idea, and they've got a searchable database on their website too. The 
results are less-than-stellar though:
- There is an 'Arrow Books Limited' that was incorporated in 1944. Is that the 
same company?
- There has never been a company called 'Beaver Books'.
... unless I'm missing something.
http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/

>> I had guessed that it was 1985, given that it must have
>> been released at some point after Sparrow's book 4 (1985)
>> and before the Beaver [I] issue for book 4 (1985). But
>> please forgive the nitpick: How sure is "reasonably sure"?
> - :)  By "reasonably sure" I mean "that's what my memory
> tells me. But my memory could be wrong" ;)  (This was,
> after all, 29 years ago :)
> I would also reason that Beaver brought out those new
> editions of Books 1 - 5 to coincide with the launch of Grey
> Star the Wizard and Kingdoms of Terror.
I have updated all three unknown years in Beaver [I] to '?1985?'. This is very 
likely correct, but I am reluctant to put definitive information anywhere in 
the project unless someone has (seen) the copyright page for the books in 
question.

> I suspect that poring over the adverts and news in the Lone
> Wolf Club Newsletters is going to be the best place to start
> researching these timelines. I don't think the LWNL ever
> mentioned the rebrands though (which is another reason I
> found them a bit  off-putting, as I thought we Lone Wolf Club
> members were meant to be getting all the important info from
> the newsletter.
If they don't mention the rebrands, then the LWNL would only be able to help 
with first publication dates, and we already have those. In fact, if you look 
at the leftmost non-grey cell in each row, we definitely have the first cover 
for 27/28 of the Lone Wolf  books. (The sole possible exception is book 9, 
which was necessarily released in 1987.)

>> I am reasonably certain that the Beaver [III] version of
>> book 2 was published in 1986 and said '3rd edition' on it
> This is why I scanned in the copyright blurb pages along
> with the front covers, to help clarify this stuff. I think
> those copyright blurb pages seem to be pretty rigorously
> written, so we can take what they say as gospel.
Yes, I agree. Copyright blurbs are so useful, I have toyed with the notion of 
including them online somehow. (Again, I'm not sure how to best do this.)

> For The Kingdoms of Terror, it doesn't say it's *not* Gary
> Chalk, and he's the only artist credited, so I guess we
> shouldn't remove his credit by saying its "unknown".
Unfortunately, it also doesn't say it's not Gary Chalk in book 8, but we know 
that cover was done by Peter Lyon.


> Re: the labyrinthine Arrow/Sparrow/Beaver/Century/Hutchinson/RandomHouse,
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutchinson_(publisher) tells
> us:
> "[Hutchinson] merged with Century Publishing in 1985 to form
> Century Hutchinson, and was folded into the British Random
> House Group in 1989, where it remains as an imprint in the
> Cornerstone Publishing division".
> So, various oligarchal machinations were going on between
> 1984 and  1985, which may explain the switch of imprints from
> Sparrow to Beaver as far as Lone Wolf was concerned.
The 1989 reshuffle might also explain why every previous Lone Wolf book was 
re-released by Red Fox ("a part of Random House Children's Publishers UK") in 
1990.


> To answer my own question - those "Game Book of the Year"
> awards were voted for my readers of White Dwarf magazine
> (according to a LWClub Newsletter)
Is it worth asking if anyone has access to back issues?


Cerulean

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