The poorest selling specialist magazine

The poorest selling specialist magazine ever was Lever-Arch Folder Fanciers Quarterly, a magazine that promised, “an in-depth and enthusiastic quarterly overview of the erotic side of office stationary.” It ran for fifteen minutes in June 1965, and only 17 copies reached the shops. The publisher, Orange Hotchkiss ltd., issued a statement saying, “We apologise to anyone offended by the magazine, please be assured it was only ever put into print due to an administrative error, and we cancelled it as soon as one of our technicians realised what was happening.” Despite this, one of the 17 copies recently sold on eBay for £72.22 to a collector in Mozambique.

S. Rothstein newsagents, one of the few shops which received a copy of Lever-Arch Folder Fanciers Quarterly. The proprietor has always refused to speak of the magazine, and when her son, Oscar, took over the business in 1979, he suggested that Orange Hotchkiss ltd. had forced his mother to sign some form of gagging agreement, possibly in return for paying for his university fees. Photograph by sludgegulper.

©2012 James Mathurin