The Enid Blyton Society

Hi everyone! I just wanted to ask if Sunny Stories is still being printed? I know that no newer magazines will be available, but surely the old ones are being reprinted?

Tony has reprinted twelve of the very early ones (Sunny Stories for Little Folks) as Society booklets - they're available from the Society shop. Otherwise, the only way to get these magazines is to buy old editions second-hand. The early magazines just had one or two longish stories running all the way through them, but over time they included letters from Enid, letters from readers, puzzles, colouring competitions, picture strips, etc.

Doesn't Hodder or any other publisher reprint her magazines? It would be very difficult to get the second-hand ones.

Anita has just explained, that the only way to get these magazines, Farwa, is buying them second-hand, if the publishers were still publishing them, then Anita would have said so.

I think Hodder would have a job getting hold of all the original copies themselves! And imagine if they did, and decided to release the whole lot. That's 250 Sunny Stories for Little Folks, 552 Sunny Stories and 162 issues of Enid Blyton's Magazine - 964 magazines altogether. Let's say they priced them at £5 each. Anyone fancy shelling out £4820?! Another way would be for Hodder to release a few at a time over a number of years, but would people stick with it to the end?

It would be great to have the whole lot as pdf scans.
Probably wouldn't take up too much space at the right resolution either!

Much as I would love for these magazines to be republished, I doubt it would be financially practical for anyone to do so. As Tony has found, not all of them have sold in the forum shops, and we are pretty dedicated fans. There might be a few more people out there who would buy them if they were available to the general public, but I don't know whether they would want to commit themselves to £4,820. I worked it out, that's 18 and a half years if they released one a week. Would people be prepared to buy one every week, if not, it's 37 years issued fortnightly, or about 80 years if they came out once a month. Sadly I don't think I'll be here to finish collecting them all that way!

Maybe another way would be to release them one year at a time, but in book form, for say about £25 - £30. In the mean time, I'll just gratefully order any re-prints Tony decides to publish.

The other problem with cost would be who owns the original copies. If they are fairly scare and worth a lot, would an owner be happy for a publisher to take a copy, and make a profit out of selling re-prints? The owner might want to charge tens of thousands or take a sizeable chunk of the profits.

I would think they would be of little commercial value in today's market. We must just be so pleased that we can see excerpts in the Cave.

I agree with Pete's suggestion wholeheartedly!

The problem I can see with that suggestion, goes back to who owns the copies that would appear as a PDF? Presumably someone has paid a considerable sum of money for the really old magazines, and would they be willing for us all to look at them for nothing?

I see copies of Sunny Stories and Enid Blyton Magazine occasionally at book fairs. The ones I have seen were selling for 50p so it is possible to buy the odd one here and there. They aren't going to be in very good condition though.

Wow, 50p each - I hope you've been buying them all up!

I bought a copy of the Enid Blyton Magazine for 50p recently, Vol 6 Number 21. It was published in 1958 and is quite grubby but intact. Some of the Sunny Stories were in poor condition, torn and ripped with rusty staples. I don't know if you ever go to book fairs, Katharine, but if you do it usually pays to look at dealers who have collections of old comics. They can often be found amongst them.

No, I've never been to a book fair. I had details about one in Suffolk, but none of them close enough for me to get to comfortably on my own. I did hope we could combine a family day out with a trip to one, but it never seemed to fit in with other commitments. There's one in Long Melford in October which is about 50 minutes away, but not sure if I can persuade the family to let me have to car for a day so I can potentially buy yet more books.

even second hand Sunny Stories can be quite expensive! I think the cheapest I paid for one was about £4 but maybe they can be found cheaper. Even these werent the really early ones ( my earliest is 1941). Because they were throw-away items to many people, they werent often kept as books would be. It's nice to own one or two though, especially if they contain an episode of a well-known book. In my opinion 'Enid Blyton's Magazine' is far superior, though I only have about three of them.