David Riley And The Curse Of Beyond Beyond, debut issue April/May 1995
: Cover: Martin McKenna * Before we take a look at Beyond in any kind of detail, by way of introduction, here is the result of an interview i accidentally found myself conducting with David A. Riley last year, a version of which may still possibly appear in Paperback Fanatic at a later date. I hope you find this story as fascinating and ultimately uplifting as i did. *.
The Origins of 'Beyond' A few years ago I might not have felt as comfortable going over this, since after it fell to pieces it was painful looking back on the experience, especially when I realised what disastrous mistakes I had made (or been led into making) and which had been so avoidable, though, of course, hindsight is a great thing. If only... ha ha!
I think I had always had an urge to publish something, especially a magazine such as Beyond. The only thing lacking was the cash and the time. Then, in 1994, my current job at British Aerospace in Preston, where I had worked for close on 20 years, was going to be handed over to an outside company (American Express, as it happens) and I was offered a choice of either redundancy or moving to a job at Warton Aerodrome. As I didn't welcome the idea of driving the distance necessary each day to Warton (probably an hour and a half travel each way, through some heavy traffic), I chose redundancy. I discussed this with my wife, who was running her own catering business at the time, and we decided to have a go at producing a professional magazine. Although we knew it was unlikely to provide much of an income, we had my wife's business to fall back on and, apart from our small mortgage, no other debts at the time. So we decided to take the gamble.
I discussed this with several other people, who volunteered to help, including the artists Jim Pitts and Martin McKenna, both of whom lived locally then. I also had contacts with a good number of writers and editors, built up over the years, who I could call on for contributions for the first issue.
From the start we (Linden, my wife, who was co-editor, and an astute and very perceptive reader of our slush pile!) decided that the magazine had to be as professional as we could make it. I had something like £12,000 in redundancy pay that I could put into the project. On top of that my grandmother voluntarily handed over another £1000 towards it, and I was able to get an interest free loan from British Aerospace towards it too.
Getting it together: The Technological details I think the first issue took us about 6 months and involved an amazing number of changes before we settled on that format. The first issue was printed off an original twice its size, which I printed and pasted from what was little more than an electric typewriter. I can't , offhand, remember the name of the machine, though it did have some limited recording facility on floppy discs.
Issue two and three were printed off a PC (the first I ever owned), using a laser printer. These went to the printer, who scanned, then printed them off professionally for us. All the illustrations had to be pasted onto a separate set of sheets, that were otherwise blank. Though laborious, it was great fun, especially with the PCs wide choice of fonts, etc.
With regard the stories, most were first read by my wife, Linden, who sorted out potential acceptances from the rest. We would then both go through the better stories together, discussing them, before making final decisions. Choosing which to go into each issue was quite a difficult, drawn out job, as we wanted it as well balanced as we could get.
The Content There was a heavy horror presence. The fantasy/SF element was really more for show, as horror was going through a period of unacceptability at the time. Or so it seemed to me. Fantasy and SF were doing particularly well - genres I have also always had an interest in, though much less so since then, strangely enough. I hardly ever read fantasy anymore and the thought of reading one of those mammoth fantasy trilogies is enough to put me off reading altogether! Oh for the days of Michael Moorcock, who when he wasn't ashamed to bring out a 120 page rollicking novel! Oddly, I tend towards crime fiction more often these days or historicals by people like Simon Scarrow, perhaps because these are often nearer to true horror than many so-called horror novels, crime in particular.
I did, actually, intend Beyond genuinely to be more SF and fantasy than horror, but you can never really stray all that far from your roots. In fact, number four would have contained even more, including an absolutely brilliant story - and quite a long one too - by John Brunner. Not being able to publish that, which I accepted off him not long before his death, is one of my biggest regrets. John would have become one of the mainstays of the magazine if it - and he - had gone on. Only four days before his death I met him at the Preston SF Group meeting where he told me he had something new for me which he would give me on Saturday at the World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow. Even when I arrived there I knew something was wrong. It didn't take me long to find out. At the first event I went to, Samuel L. Delaney mentioned John's death, from a stroke, the day before. That affected me quite strongly, not only because we had been slowly build up a good relationship between us, but because this was the third death surrounding the magazine. Not long before the first issue came out, one of our main contributors, and someone whose work I had been keen to use in it, Karl Wagner died. In issue two, we had a lengthy interview with Roger Zelazny, who died too. Lin and I had begun, half jokingly, to refer to this as the curse of Beyond. If only our contributors had known what risks they were taking!
Strangely enough, the BFS in 1995, at a time when I could have done with it's help through Fantasycon, when a table would have been very useful in the dealers room for it, was going through a bad patch and almost collapsed. As a result this was one of the very few years when there was no convention. Sod's Law, I suppose.
Bastard Distributors! We contacted a number of printers for quotes, settling on a firm that could offer the best cooperation in working on the project. I also contacted a couple of distribution companies, finally arranging a meeting with Diamond Distribution in London, who facilitated our wholesale distribution nationwide through WH Smiths, John Menzies and some twenty or more other wholesalers
It was as a result of the initial orders from WH Smiths, etc that we finally reached a print run for issue one of 16,000 copies, appreciating that this was certainly far too high, but necessary if we were to break into the market. Unfortunately, it was the low returns initially that perhaps prompted Diamond to suggest a similar print run for issue two. On a bi-monthly schedule, and with returns going on for up to three months, it was not apparent till too late just how bad these would be, with those on issue two being far higher than issue one. By the time this became apparent, we had already printed 14,000 copies of issue 3. A more realistic figure would have probably been about 5,000, and with a change from returnable distribution to fixed orders. The latter might have forced us to reduce our print run even more, but it would have reduced our printers bill considerably, and perhaps left us with enough funds to keep going.
Our other mistake was over the name of our distribution company. I didn't realise then that there were two using the name Diamond. At the time there were hundreds of independent shops throughout the UK specialising in horror, SF and fantasy, and these mostly relied upon Diamond for their deliveries - except it was a different Diamond to the one we used. If I had known this, I would have made greater efforts to get direct sales to these places. They could easily have made a significant difference. As it was the only places that contacted me direct and provided us with good, regular sales were Andromeda Books in Birmingham and Murder One.
Another mistake I made was in assuming we could make up for some of our costs through advertising. Publishers, though, I discovered, didn't want to pay for adverts, but offered instead to send up copious numbers of review copies instead. Though these didn't help then, the vast numbers of books we received did, eventually, some years later help provide us with substantial stocks to start up our bookshop, so we did eventually benefit to a degree financially from this experience!
Advertising was pretty much a dead loss, and most we published were free, usually to organisations I supported like the BFS.
The best thing we finally discovered about advertising, was that some publishers, like Gollancz, would exchange an ad in the magazine for the free use of their artwork, which is how I got the cover for issue 3 for nothing. Previous covers had cost £300 a time. Another wrinkle I could have done with learning earlier!
The End of Beyond I've no problem sharing any of that. It was a strange, exciting and deeply satisfying experience most of the time, till the day I realised the whole thing was about to collapse. Strangely enough that did come suddenly. I had telephoned the distribution company to see how things were going, when I got the latest sets of returns. It was obvious to me then, with a sinking feeling, that this was it. The balance had tipped far too far. A bit like being on the bridge of the Titanic when you found out just how long the tear was.
We did get a fourth issue ready for the printed, together with most of the illustrations. I still have it, in fact. But the cost of printing far too many copies and having disastrous returns, meant that by issue three, we weren't even able to pay the printer - who a year or so later wrote off what we still owed. In hindsight, I realise now we should have radically reduced the print run after issue 1, but returns can still come back up to three months after publication (and in practice even longer than that). We were very badly advised by our distribution company (Diamond), and by not being more realistic ourselves.
Still, we survived. And it was one hell of an experience. Just wish it could have lasted longer .... My only regret is not being able to go on further. Issue four would have been the best yet. It had some fabulous stories, many of them by lesser known writers, and some brilliant artwork. From issue 3 I had come to an arrangement with Gollancz that, in exchange for a free full page advert for their books in the magazine, I could have a choice of artwork from any of their forthcoming books for the front cover free. Issue 3's artwork came under that arrangement, with the free ad due out in issue 4. Up till then I had been paying £300 for cover artwork..
To be honest, it's been good to discuss some of these things - and if any of it helps anyone else who may be thinking of going down the same road I did, then all to the good.
*My thanks to Mr. Riley! You can catch up with David's recent adventures at:
David A. Riley*