Fender Tucker Makes a Book

Fender Tucker started life in Louisiana, and grew up in New Mexico, where his first career was playing guitar in bar bands. He then took on the duties of editing Loadstar, a Commodore disk magazine, in Shreveport, Louisiana.

When he turned that project over to another Commodore enthusiast, he started Ramble House, a small business producing books, mostly reproductions of long out of print mysteries and other "pulp fiction," whose small cult following keeps the company going. He started with books by the now unknown but prolific Harry Stephen Keeler, and as of 2009 the company was offering over 350 titles, and had produced around 4,800 individual books. Most of the finished books are now produced by print-on-demand printers, Lulu.com and CreateSpace.com, but a few are still printed and hand bound by Fender himself. Total sales are around 12,000 books.

My grandson Mikie and I visited Fender and his wife Judi in Mississippi in 2009, during which time he demonstrated the manual book-making process.

--Dick Estel