I’ve always been a fan of Loompanics Unlimited, the publisher of such great titles as The Outlaw’s Bible and Understanding U.S. Identity Documents. Before there was a public internet, Loompanics made good on the notion that information wants to be free, publishing information and ideas that no other book publisher would touch.
Loompanics is perhaps the only publisher in business for thirty years that has a disclaimer like, “Loompanics Unlimited cannot be responsible for any shipment of books seized by any government body. ”
So I am sad to hear that Loompanics will be going out of business. Although publisher Mike Hoy says that sales have slowed, his main motivation to shutter this labor of love is retirement. Right now he’s having a half-off everything going-out-of-business sale — so stock up.
As I mentioned before, I was first exposed to Loompanics buying a copy of the aforementioned Outlaw’s Bible at a short-lived Anarchist bookstore in Paterson, NJ around 1991. It was not the sort of thing a suburban Jersey kid could easily get his hands on back then, and I was glad Loompanics existed.
It would be great if Hoy could release the Loompanics catalog into the public domain, though I suppose that would take getting the permission of all his authors, many of whom write under pseudonyms. Alternately, perhaps someone could buy the rights from Hoy to either keep the books in print, publish them with an on-demand system, or make them available electronically.
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