Fandom House
Founded in June, 1937 by James V. Taurasi, Fandom House was his publishing house. Fandom House seems to have been more real than most fannish publishing houses. Like the others, it published fanzines, though Taurasi affected that they were of a kind with the prozines.
It was not always named Fandom House. It began as Cosmic Publications (which see) and by 1945 had gone through the names Allied Publications, Fantasy News Publishing Company, Fantasy Times Publishing Company, and Flushing-Taurasi Publishing Company before going back to Cosmic Publications which he kept until 1948 when he settled on Fandom House.
The switch to Fandom House was triggered by the attempted merger of the monthly Fantasy Times with Will Sykora's Fantasy News with Fantasy News being weekly and Fantasy Times being a monthly recap. This fell through, but Taurasi kept Fandom House.
Since Fantasy Times was the Locus of its day, it seems clear that Fandom House, while still essentially a fannish publishing house, was easily the largest of them.
Fandom House publications included:
- Cosmic Tales Quarterly
- Fantasy Times
- Helios
- D'Journal
- Cosmic Tales
- Science Fiction Fan
- The Tinplate Magazine
- Science Fiction Times Magazine
Fancy 2 reports (under Legal Matters) that "Taurasi was threatened in '56 by Random House, which alleged that JVT's use of the name "Fandom House" in publishing Fantasy Times constituted unfair competition. Tho somewhat flattered, Jas decided not to fight it, having learned that simply bringing the case to court would rock him $300." Not only did he use the name (which he probably could have gotten away with), but for a time he used a logo which looked suspiciously like Random House's.
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