----- Original Message ----- From: "William Denton" <
buff@pobox.com> To: "RARA-AVIS" <
rara-avis@icomm.ca> Sent: Saturday, September 30, 2000
8:27 PM Subject: Re: RARA-AVIS: Brett Halliday
pseudonyms
> On 30 September 2000, GN wrote:
>
> : TITLE: Dividend on death
> : NUMBER: 1
> : COPYRIGHT: 1939
>
> So Davis Dresser started writing them in 1939, and
he churned out one
> score and ten of them, then sold out to someone who
kept it up as a house
> name? Why did he use the pseudonym? Did he intend to
just do a regular
> series, but when it got so popular others saw the
potential for, as they
> call it now, "branding," and started the magazine
and expanded the line?
> How popular were the books and the
magazine?
>
> Bill
> --
> William Denton : Toronto, Canada : http://www.miskatonic.org/
: Caveat
lector.
Sorry it's taken me a few days to reply to this. Can't say as
to why Dresser decided to use a pseudonym on the Shayne
books, but all through his career he used various pseudonyms
(Hal Debrett, Asa Baker, Matthew Blood, Don Davis, etc.). I
can think of only one of his novels that was published with
his real name on it, and that was a Western.
Clearly the books were popular, or there wouldn't have been
the movies, radio shows, and TV series. I've never seen any
sales figures on them, though. The magazine got started
because Dresser and Leo Margulies were friends from pulp
days, or at least so I've heard. It ran exactly 29 years,
from September '56 to August '85, for a total of 337 regular
issues plus 3 annuals. (Yeah, I found the checklist!) I think
it was still fairly healthy when it was cancelled. The last
circulation statement printed in the magazine showed a paid
circulation of 36,000 (23000 newsstand sales, 13000
subscriptions), with a newsstand sell-through rate of almost
50%. Those are pretty good numbers. I think the magazine
could have continued for at least several more years if the
owner had not started a video company and siphoned off all
the profits from the magazine.
Best, James
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