The History of Empire Publications
In 1986, I published a 50 page, staple-bound, photocopied collection
of short stories I'd written, entitled The Forgotten Future.
I only made a hundred copies, and most of them I just gave away,
to family, friends, and acquaintances. I wasn't interested in
making any money on the enterprise; I just wanted exposure. That
people might read my stories was payment enough.
In order to lend a bit of credibility to what I was doing,
I created a fictitious publisher for my book, called Empire Publications.
The idea behind Empire Publications was to create a structure
for self-publishing that anyone who wanted to self-publish could
make use of. Each book was to have a uniform back cover, which
looked like this:
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THIS BOOK IS A PRODUCT OF EMPIRE PUBLICATIONS
Empire Publications is a cooperative group of writers and
poets, who publish their work independently. They are more interested
in getting their work into circulation than in making money.
Rather than submitting and resubmitting manuscripts to magazines,
the writers of Empire Publications put their efforts into their
own books. Each writer sells his books at cost, after doing all
of the writing, typing, editing, photocopying, collating, and
binding himself. If he can't sell them, he gives them away.
The board of directors of Empire Publications hopes that you
enjoy this book, and urges you to buy and read the company's
other books.
Your donation furthers the cause of Art.
Empire Publications
"Poems and stories, by the people, for the
people."
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I had hoped that this concept might really catch on with other
struggling artists, but only my friends John
Cooper and Charles
Dickson joined me in this. John put out a little volume of
poetry, called The Sun that You See, and Charles released
a series of tapes of musical compositions: Dreams, W.I.D.O.W.B.,
Honor's Thesis, and A Charles Christmas.
As for me, I published 8 books this way. The first as I said,
was The Forgotten Future, and it contained 25 short stories.
I released this at Christmas time in 1986, and made it my holiday
gift to most everyone I knew that year.
This proved so popular that I put
out another book the following year, called Open 24 Hours,
again giving it out as my Xmas gift to everyone I knew. My second
book only had 7 stories, but the first of them took up about half
of the book. Entitled "Icehouse", this story became
the chapters 2-33 of my 1991 novel, The
Empty City. It also featured descriptions of an unusual
board game, called Icehouse.
Among the other stories in was the longish autobiographical story,
"When I
was a Little Guy."
In 1988, I published 2 books under the Empire Publications
name. The first, The
Cake that Baked Itself, was a kid's story, complete with
cartoons I'd drawn, that I created for my niece Sarah's birthday.
She was 6 that year.
The other book was called Saturn Cafe and became my
third mass-produced Xmas gift. It contained 8 stories, several
of which became chapters in the Empty City. I also included
another autobiographical piece, about my early experiences as
a Boy Scout, entitled "Henlopen."
In 1989, I started dating Kristin
Wunderlich, and my tradition of creating something to give to
everyone at Christmastime took on a whole
new meaning. The Empire Publications name was still useful,
though - our 1990 gift, The Enchanted Tiles, was published
under this imprint.
In 1991, we published one more book under the Empire Publications
name, entitled My
Secret World (and other stories). By then, my original
3 books were no longer in print, and since I had used material
from all 3 books in my novel, The Empty City, I didn't
want to do a straight re-issue of these books. So, My Secret
World pulled together the best remaining stories from these
3 books, along with a few new ones I'd written in the meantime.
Somewhere in there I also published a collection of recipes,
called Cooking
with the Emperor, and a compendium of shaggy dog stories
entitled Dumb Jokes My Dad Likes to Tell. These are both
way out of print.
