Fantasy Press

Fantasy Press was an American publishing house specialising in fantasy and science fiction titles. Established in 1946 by Lloyd Arthur Eshbach in Reading, Pennsylvania, it was most notable for publishing the works of authors such as Robert A. Heinlein and E. E. Smith. One of its more notable offerings was the Lensman series.

Among its books was Of Worlds Beyond: The Science of Science Fiction Writing (1947), which was the first book about modern SF and contained essays by John W. Campbell, Jr., Robert A. Heinlein, A. E. van Vogt and others.

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. Eshbach, who was working as an ad copywriter for the Glidden Company, did all of his work for Hadley as a gesture of good will with no payment. He withdrew when he saw that Hadley's ventures were going nowhere and customers were growing dissatisfied with the publisher.

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 Hadley's customers. Eshbach jokingly suggested to several of his co-workers that they could probably do as well with a publishing company of their own, and to his surprise, the men agreed. With two of his co-workers from Glidden (A.J. Donnell as illustrator and Lyman H. Houck as bookkeeper) and one other friend of theirs (Herb MacGregor shipping the books), 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 had seen the success of Hadley's poorly produced 'Skylark of Space and knew that a well done volume of E.E. Smith would probably be a strong seller. Spacehounds of IPC was extremely successful and sold several thousand copies. Eshbach immediately went out and got contracts for other books he thought would do well. Fantasy Press swiftly became the most successful and important of the fledgling science fiction small presses. Eshbach acquiring the stories, A.J. Donnell as illustrator, Lyman Houck (an accountant friend and fellow Mason) as bookkeeper, and Herb MacGregor shipping the books. 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.

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