Allan Kozinn / New York Times


Maybe you thought the publishing world had exploited every bit of information about the Beatles, useful and trivial, in the Himalayan stack of books published since the group’s heyday in the 1960s: biographies both straight and gossipy, musical analyses, chronologies, as well as Beatles-themed novels.

Guess again. Now, if mainstream publishers reject their work as too specialized, even the most Beatles-obsessed authors are finding audiences for their books by publishing them themselves.

But don’t even think the phrase “vanity press.” Many of these self-published books are lavishly produced and packed with original research that makes them invaluable to Beatles scholars and collectors, and some have been startlingly successful through online sales.

“Everything I read seemed to suggest that self-publication would be a good idea,” says John C. Winn, the author of “Way Beyond Compare,” “That Magic Feeling” and “Lifting Latches,” a self-published series that offers annotated source information about all the Beatles’ known audio and video recordings, including interviews. Some authors report surprisingly brisk sales.


Published in August, “Recording the Beatles,” a 540-page study of the equipment and techniques used to make the Beatles’ recordings, has sold out its first run of 3,000 copies at $100 apiece. The authors, Kevin Ryan and Brian Kehew, have a second printing on order and plan a less expensive edition in 2007.

Bruce Spizer, a lawyer in New Orleans, began his work as a do-it-yourself Beatles author with a study of the fraught legal relationship between EMI, the Beatles’ British record label, and Vee-Jay, which licensed the group’s early recordings. He has published four sequels to “The Beatles Records on Vee-Jay.” A final installment, “The Beatles Swan Song,” is due in March. He has also published “The Beatles Are Coming!,” about the band’s first visit to America, in February 1964.

All told, Spizer says, he has sold 37,000 copies of his six books, which have brought in more than $1 million since the first was published in 1998.

“I could do this full time,” Spizer says. “But I’m keeping my day job. I like to say that as a tax attorney, I make $210 an hour, and as a Beatles publisher, I make $2.10 an hour.”