Repartee Magazine
Following the success of Rose’s House during the 80s, I decided to go ahead with my ideas for a decent magazine for the trans community. Around that time, there were a few American magazines available in sex shops but they were very fetishistic and rather pornographic. There were also a couple of British magazines which seemed to consist mainly of erotic fantasies and photos of readers displaying their knickers! On the other hand, there were the rather pain newsletter produced by groups like the Beaumont Society which were restricted to members only. I felt there was a real need for a good magazine for our community that was pitched somewhere between these extremes and would be on open sale for everyone.
By the end of the 80s, I had become vice-president of the BS and was writing a regular column in its then Beaumont Bulletin. I did present proposals a couple of times for a better quality publication for the Society that would also be available for sale to non-members. This would not only be good for T-girls in the wider trans community, but would also likely attract more members to the Society. But because of the commercial nature that this would entail, my proposals were rejected.
Advances of home-computing technology during the 80’s meant that by the end of the decade I felt I could realise my dream of producing my own magazine. So if the BS would not listen to my proposals for a better magazine and the reasons why one was needed, I would do it myself. But I thought it best to resign from the BS as I thought it would be regarded as a conflict of interests.
The first issue of Repartee appeared in September 1989, exactly 10 years after acquiring Rose’s House. I had to keep costs down so it was all produced by myself using a business quality photo-copier to print the inside pages. It was a bit before desktop publishing was available for home computers but I wrote a basic programme on my Acorn computer which allowed me to produced justified text (that’s the right side of columns in a straight line) on my daisy-wheel printer. Also I wanted to have lots of photos included right from the start and in order to get them to be copied successfully the photos had to be ‘screened’ (that’s given a dot-pattern like in old newsprint). I had acquired equipment to do that. It was then all cut and paste (literally – not like you do on computers these days!). I got a batch of covers printed on card when I took a short printing course at a local community print-shop. I printed enough which I hoped would last me several issues and I’d just overprint the actual issue with my photo-copier. Also, I had colour right from the start by sticking on the cover colour laser prints from Staples. To keep costs down I got 100 laser prints with 8 photos per A4 sheet. With one photo per magazine, I hoped it would keep me going for 8 issues as I assumed 100 copies of the magazine would be all I could expect to sell initially.
The first issue soon sold out! I had to do a reprint and the colour prints on the cover were exhausted after only a few issues. Subsequently over the years I sold many times the original target number as back issues (without the stuck-on colour photo) until I stopped producing the photo-copied issues because of the effort involved. It was all hugely labour intensive but I did have the help of Cathy (my girl friend who had joined me in 1989) and Michelle (a lodger).
For issue number 5 (it was being produced quarterly then) the magazine had grown to attract a distributor who’d get Repartee into shops throughout the UK. I used a professional printer for a new full-colour cover and also had the black and white content pages printed. This continued through to number 15 when we got an American distributor which gave us a huge increase in circulation. They required the magazine to become A4 format and we had to move to a larger printer but we still assembled the pages, stitched (stapled) and trimmed the magazines. I didn’t get the magazine fully finished by the printer until a few issues after that when the US distributor significantly increased his quota.
The pressure of producing the magazine virtually single handed was enormous and began to take over my life completely. It partly lead to my break-up with Cathy in 1994. I’d also moved into larger premises and eventually had to cease all the services Rose’s House provided. The interval between issues of the magazine had become stretched from quarterly to up to five months.
Fortunately, in 1998, I entered into a business partnership with Bella Jay who took over the administrative side of running the magazine membership and eventually editorship of the magazine itself. In its heyday, we even got a graphic designer to give the magazine a make-over. Towards the end, I just gave the mag a final once-over before sending it to the printers, which enabled me to get something of my life back as I eased into retirement.
Gradually the demand for Repartee began to diminish with the growing dominance of the internet making the need for a printed magazine less relevant. This combined with growing competition from other trans groups following with their own magazines, made Repartee no longer able to sustain sufficient income for Bella Jay (which was a full-time job). I had not been drawing any income from the mag for several years so in 2016 we had to cease publication. For a couple of years after I tried to keep Repartee alive as an online magazine but the task of keeping it updated was just not worth the effort as I simply wanted to enjoy my retirement and do other things!
Martine Rose