Spectrum Press

Spectrum Press, of Chicago, was an early electronic publishing house. Dan Agin was the editor/publisher. Beginning in the early 1990s, Spectrum published new and classic works on 3.5 inch floppy disks, shrink-wrapped in red paper packaging. They later moved to inserting floppy disks into CD cases for shipment.

Spectrum Press was a pioneering company of their day, one of the first publishers to offer works in electronic format, but did not survive society's move to the World Wide Web or to modern e-book publication. The company still existed as of 2001, but had ceased active publications.

House specialties of Spectrum included erotica and gay/lesbian fiction. They published several imprints:

Contemporary Fiction, Poetry, and Criticism
Artemis Books (lesbian fiction)
Sheridan Square Library (gay fiction)
Spectrum Classics
Nonfiction and Reference

Most of their business was done by mail order. Before the world wide web existed, they sent electronic catalogs to individuals and various online mail lists. (Some of these catalogs are still available in various web mail archives.)

The company described themselves in their catalog of February 1994:

Spectrum Press is an e-text publishing house committed

to quality fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, classics of consequence, outrageous literary entertainments, and all strong voices against political and social injustice. We publish complete electronic texts

on floppy disks for both PC and Mac.[1]

In 1996, the editor's signature tag reported Over 300 Etexts Delivered by Email; From Aristotelian Logic to Underground Erotica.[2]

In their active years, they published several hundred new works by some 50 authors. A number of works originally published by Spectrum were later picked up by traditional (paper) publishers.

References

  1. ↑ Spectrum Press Catalog
  2. ↑ "Re: every IP form from Spectrum Press on 1996-09-16 (CNI-COPYRIGHT)". .wcl.american.edu. Retrieved 2008-11-06.
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