Love Independent Booksellers!

Yes, with reference to Hannah’s comment, News from Nowhere in Liverpool is stocking HerStoria, and also Gay’s the Word in London WC1. We are hoping more independents will stock us soon and we plan a ‘Where you can buy HerStoria’ page on our web.

I’ve been reminding myself recently how important the independents are … they offer so much more than the homogenized big chains, and are so much more innovative. Launching HerStoria would have been so much more difficult without them!

Women, business and the post office

‘Just your luck to launch a new magazine in the middle of the biggest economic crisis in 100 years !’  This is a remark  made to me quite often (mostly in jest! ). Despite this, as ever with women’s business initiatives, at HerStoria optimism and hard work  are our touchstones. Obviously we need HerStoria to be financially secure, but our aim is to fly the flag for women’s history, not to rival Rupert Murdoch!

The problems of the economy were brought to the front of my mind today when I received a letter from Royal Mail detailing their annual price increase. From 6 April 2009 postage costs are rising from between 8-12%, something which has a major impact on us as HerStoria is a mainly subscription magazine. (We’re NOT going to put our rates up however!) 

Post in the past

Our post comes very late in the day. I’m always surprised by what seems the relative efficiency of postal deliveries in the 19c and early 20c. I remember doing archive  research on the vast correspondence of a married couple living at that time. They wrote to each other 2 or 3 times a day (sometimes  from abroad)  and seemed always to receive the mail the next day (or even that day!). I’m sure there are many historical reasons for this seeming contrast, but you cannot fail to admire the Victorians for their efficient systems. The couple I researched often used ready-franked half-penny postcards, an innovation introduced in 1870 which extended the famous ’penny post’  which had been in use since 1840.  I wish it were so simple now!  

Women and the Post Office

It was around that time (1873) that women were first permitted to work as clerks in the Post Office, under supervision, as part of an experiment in the Returned Letter Office. The number of women employed in the Post Office increased dramatically when it took over the management of the telegraph system. Many women became telegraph operators at the end of  the 19c; as early as 1853 the International and Electric Telegraph Company had introduced  a staff of young women, supervised by a ‘matron’, who quickly replaced most of the men. The job was seen as routine but not too arduous – ideal for women who were also cheaper to employ.

In 1875, as women’s employment grew, the Post Office imposed a ‘marriage bar’ which meant that married women were ineligible for appointment and that single female employees had to resign if they married.  This ban was not removed until 1946, over 70 years later. In today’s recession there are reports that women sometimes face an ‘unofficial’ marriage bar, not hired because employers’  fear they may take maternity leave and be eligible for maternity benefits. (Wasn’t this the gist of Alan Sugar’s recent complaint against working women of childbearing age and grumble that maternity rights had  ’gone too far’ ?) 

The 19c and 21c -  as an historian of the 19c I am often struck by the parellels, and left wondering who were the most advanced?!

Launching HerStoria – fun and frustration!

Why a women’s history magazine? This was the question always asked about my plans for HerStoria. Some people were bewildered about what women’s history actually was, thinking it just biographies of  ‘great women’. Of course, we know that it’s far more than that. Women’s history explores the past from a different angle, going new places and often upending the history that we thought we knew along the way.

I get frustrated with the male bias of top-selling history magazines, with their emphasis on military battles and great men. When I looked to see the lead in current issues of BBC History and History Today, I found that the first was Wellington (with a portrait and mock battle on the cover) and the latter was headlined ‘Hadrian and the Limits of Empire’. These magazines are wonderful history and great for people who want to read that kind of thing. But please, there must be room for one magazine that looks at history from the women’s view???

Trying to get HerStoria available in the shops is frustrating…..
We’ve put our all, financially and emotionally, into launching HerStoria. It has been a steep learning curve, especially investigating how to get the magazine into the shops besides the men’s history mags. I don’t think this is going to happen soon and we’ll be subscription only for a while. WH Smiths and Borders in the UK charge (in some cases) up to thousands of pounds just to grant a magazine shelf space. In addition, they only do business with wholesalers (who only take on mags that are going to sell in high volumes) and wholesalers only deal with distributors, and of course they all want their cut of the cover price……fair enough, just business at work. But in the rush to maximise profits, small publishers with a magazine that differs from tried and tested formats get pushed out —no wonder many magazines look the same today and are full of adverts instead of copy!

Oh dear, this blog is turning into a rant ! I’ve missed out how much fun it has been getting HerStoria launched, and how wonderful all the contributors have been, and how much I have learned from them. So many people, too, have been really generous with their time and advice in helping to publicise the magazine, for which I’m immensely grateful. It has also been gratifying how many men are interest in HerStoria. But then, HerStoria is a women’s history magazine, not a women’s magazine ……