Merriam Press is fully owned and operated by Ray Merriam. Merriam Press was started in 1988 when the previous business, International Graphics Corp., was dissolved and my two business partners decided to go their separate ways. While Merriam Press was an entirely new business, it was a continuation of what I had been doing since 1968.
I actually started the business in January 1968 when I started publishing a small World War II history magazine, originally called World War II Magazine.
It was not very successful and had to be downgraded to a newsletter until 1974 when I started a more commercial attempt at a World War II history magazine, called World War Enthusiast 1939-1945. The company at that time was called Graphics House Ltd. (GHL).
Yes, the name was not the best. I was a fan of Air Enthusiast (now Air International) and Air Combat 1939-1945 (the one published by Eagle Publications in New Jersey; after they folded they sold it to Challenge Publications in California and it became a modern military airpower magazine).
By late 1974 the magazine was doing fairly well, and I acquired two business partners, Peter Frandsen and William "Bill" Auerbach.
In early 1975 we started hearing from people who were not crazy about the name of the magazine. They basically said, "I am not enthusiastic about war!" Point taken, we changed the name to WW2 Journal with Volume 2 Number 3 and with the next issue we went from 5.5 x 8.5 inch to 8.5 x 11 inch format. Sales steadily increased and Bill Dean Books Ltd (of Skybooks International in NYC) started distributing the magazine to hobby shops.
In 1976 we decided to change the format to cover all 20th century military history (and even earlier periods if such material were received from our contributors, who numbered in the dozens and included some very well known names).
In 1977 we incorporated the business and changed the name to International Graphics Corporation (IGC).
The magazine was named The Military Journal. Even the Squadron Shops started carrying the magazine and we were also selling to hobby shops that Bill Dean didn't reach.
But with our switch to general military history—even though the bulk of our coverage was still World War II—about half of our original subscribers who were carried over from the WW2 Journal subscription list did not renew to the new magazine when their subscription ran out.
As a result, by 1981 the magazine was failing. The last issue published was Number 12 (actually Volume 2 Number 6).
We had started publishing booklets in 1979. The first was Messerschmitts Over Spain. This was "Military Journal Special Number 1". The Specials were intended to be used for those manuscripts we received that were simply too long for the magazine. We had run a few lengthy articles in some issues, some of which ran for four and five issues and readers complained that was too long to read an entire article.
That Special sold out its 1,000-copy print run in 13 months. But the timing was perfect. Heller had just released a model kit of the very model of the Bf 109 that served in Spain, which was the first model kit produced of the Bf 109B. We probably could have sold another thousand copies, but the magazine was already starting to falter and the profit from that first Special had to be used to keep printing the magazine.
A second Special was printed in 1981. This was actually the third Special, The 4th Marines and Soochow Creek. We printed 2,000 copies of that; 400 copies were defective and retruned to the printer for credit. Just as well because in the spring of 2007 I still had over 400 copies left and I had to throw away most of those when I had to move into a small apartment after selling the house I had been living in for 35 years (long story).
Because that second printed Special did so poorly, we never did any further booklets or books in large quantities. That's when I started using print on demand methods, although the "printing" was done on a photocopier.
Later the Specials were called "Military Monographs".
We tried doing another small magazine again in the mid-1980s: Weapons and Warfare Monthly. It lasted not quite two years.
In mid-1988 the two partners decided to go their own way. I started the business as a sole proprietorship again under the name Merriam Press.
I also started using the business name World War II Historical Society, since that helped to tell prospective customers that I published material on World War II. But since I had some material on sibjects other than World War II, those were published by the Merriam Press.
In 1997 I started up my business web site to help sell my books. I also wanted to accept credit cards but to keep using two business names would mean I would need two separate accounts to accept credit cards. I couldn't afford that, nor would it have gone over well with customers who, if they ordered books from both "divisions" of my company, would get two separate charges for a single order. So the World War II Historical Society was dropped.
At about the same time I started printing the books directly to a laser printer and even added hardcover as well as softcover binding. The books were starting to look more professional as a result. But there was still some resistance from bookstores and even some authors who were not too found of the large format and the not quite professional binding.
In late 2005, due to some developments in my personal situation, I had to find ways of doing things that would be easier for me. I came across a print on demand service that produced high-quality paperback and hardcover books that looked as good as (and in some cases better than) any produced by a big commercial publisher.
Today many titles I publish are being handled by Ingram for distribution to online booksellers such as Amazon, B&N, Books-A-Million and others, as well as making them available for purchase by stores.