One Gun Book publisher that is still very much alive is Wolfe Publishing of Prescott, Arizona...
Wolfe is best known for their reprints of out-of-copyright books in the 1980s, such as Bogardus's
Field, Cover and Trap Shooting (1874). I just checked their website and it doesn't seem that they publish anything but 3 rifle-related magazines now; book publishing isn't mentioned, and their Store has just a few old titles. Other publishers no longer in the shotgunning genre are Lyons Press (Nick is retired; Jed still works there), and Stackpole, which recently reprinted Peter Johnson's 1961 classic:
Parker: America's Finest Shotgun. Given the number of Peter's 1st-second & 3rd printings available on the Internet for usually less than $10, I think Stackpole made a mistake...well, two mistakes: I pitched them for my most recent book,
Parker Guns: Shooting Flying and they declined. And herein lies the crux:
There is much adoo about "print on demand" publishing, which, in it's simplest form, involves sending such like these very words to the printer. But there is a quantum difference when more than text is involved. Add pictures and 4-color presses and captions in italics and composition involving blending images into the text block and the process transcends simple sentence structure, spell check, paragraphing, and page count. I will wager to say that my
Parker Guns: Shooting Flying cost Collector Books a small fortune and, unless Tom Cruise options it for movie rights (Wink! wink!), is gonna be their record losing project for all time. I guess Stackpole passing on the book wasn't such a bad "mistake" after all. I wish it were otherwise, but books--without regard to content, production quality, and overall merit--just aren't selling. Alas! EDM
