| Home | Books and Story Papers | Greyfriars Gallery | Television and Radio | Ephemera | Hamilton | Acknowledgements | Links |
Howard Baker Club volumes were available only by
mail order direct from the publisher. Buyers were encouraged to sign a bond
which would commit them to buying a set number of volumes, payable in advance.
If they signed the bond and paid up they were entitled to free P&P and regular
copies of the Greyfriars Gazette.
The Greyfriars Gazette provided up to date information on Howard Baker's publishing plans. The Gazettes were supplied free to bond holders.
Some HB catalogues are available below-
Two Greyfriars Book Club catalogues are available. The first catalogue contains details of the contents of the GBC volumes available at the time. The second catalogue is of interest as it contains details of the volumes that were planned for the 1912 issues but were never actually published due to the original issues being unavailable.
To increase sales HB also produced some of the story papers in single unbound format. You can see two of the 'specials' singles catalogues below.
Anyone familiar with Howard Baker press will be familiar with the Wimbledon address of 27A Arterberry Road as it appeared on most of his publications. This wasn't a warehouse address as you might expect but Baker's own home. You can see a photo of the building here.
Howard Baker died suddenly at the age of 65 on February 13th 1991 at his home/office in Wimbledon. The other shareholders were unwilling to continue the business so HB press was put up for sale. The only interest shown by potential buyers was in the substantial stock of books. Unfortunately nobody was interested in buying the business as a going concern so the dream of eventually reprinting all the Magnets died with Bill. After Bill's death his business partner sent out a letter to people who had previously bought books from HB advising them of this, you can read it here.
An obituary was published in The Times on 16th Feb 1991, You can read it here.
