Clarification on the status of Classic/Chevron Publications

[Dave Wadman]

Fellow discussion board members, in order to clarify the current status of Classic/Chevron Publishing, Robert Forsyth has asked me to post the following:

If I may risk boring you with a little bit of history. Eddie Creek, Arthur Bentley and I set up Classic Publications in 1995 and in 2003 (by which time Arthur had retired), for various reasons, we sold the rights to the name 'Classic Publications' to Ian Allan Publishing (IAP) who had approached us. This resulted in a perfect arrangement of convenience: IAP wished to make a return to aviation publishing in a major way, adding the Classic imprint to Midland operation which they had already acquired. However, they were committed to maintaining the content and style of the books we had produced when we were functioning as an independent publisher. As such they wished to retain and contract the Classic team (ie myself, Eddie, Colin Woodman and Martin Pegg) to work on all Classic titles. Since 2003, Eddie and I have therefore functioned as Chevron Publishing - a fully independent book production company, producing aviation books for the likes of IAP and Hikoki Publications.

The team now comprises myself, Eddie, Mark Nelson (who has joined us on the design and production side) and my wife, Sally, together with an associate illustration specialist, Tim Brown.

In the last couple of months, IAP have taken the decision to cease operating the Classic Publications imprint with a view, as far as we understand, for Midland Publishing to be the main aviation publishing imprint. We had little knowledge of this internal decision and no involvement in it. We - that is to say the original 'Classic team' here at Chevron ­ will still be working on books for IAP but they will bear the Midland imprint.

You may rest assured that within the parameters we are given to work by our client publishers, we will always strive to continue to offer the levels of content and quality which we have produced in the past.

As I say, our website, may offer an insight into what we do.

Thanks for your kind interest.

Best regards

Robert Forsyth

Chevron Publishing Limited

www.chevronpublishing.co.uk