Aaron A. Wyn (May 22, 1898 – November 3, 1967), born Aaron Weinstein, was an American publisher.
Wyn's father was Jacob Weinstein, born in 1864 in Russia. His mother, Rebecca Weinstein, was born in 1865 in Russia. The Weinsteins married in 1883 in Russia and had four children, two of whom died young. The family came to America in 1891, where Jacob worked as a cigar packer. Six more children were born in New York City. Jacob became a naturalized alien citizen in 1913.
After graduating in June 1916 from public high school in the Bronx, Aaron took on the name "Aaron A. Wyn, and it was under this name that he enrolled as a Freshman at City College of New York (C.C.N.Y.) in the fall of 1916.
Wyn did not finish college, but in 1919 he got work as a proof reader in the printing industry. By 1930 he was editing
pulp magazine
Pulp magazines (also referred to as "the pulps") were inexpensive fiction magazines that were published from 1896 to the late 1950s. The term "pulp" derives from the cheap wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed. In contrast, magazine ...
s for
Harold Hersey's
Magazine Publishers, in associates with Warren A. Angel. When Hersey departed the company in the summer of 1929, Wyn, after a brief interlude from Harold S. Goldsmith, took charge of the company. Hersey's swastika logo was dropped to be replaced by an ace of spades playing card symbol.
Wyn's company took on the brand names
Ace Magazines
Ace Magazines was a comic book and pulp-magazine publishing company headed by Aaron A. Wyn and his wife Rose Wyn. The Wyns had been publishing pulp fiction under the Periodical House and A. A. Wyn's Magazine Publishers names since 1928, and p ...
, Periodical House, and A. A. Wyn's Magazine Publishers. Assisted by his wife,
Rose Schiffman Wyn, whom he had married in 1926, he produced titles such as ''
Detective-Dragnet'' (later changed to ''
Ten Detective Aces''), ''
Western Trails'', ''
Secret Agent X'', and ''
Love Fiction Monthly''.
Wyn also published comics between 1940 and 1956 under the
Ace Comics
''Ace Comics'' was a comic book series published by David McKay Publications between 1937 and 1949 — starting just before the Golden Age of Comic Books. The title reprinted syndicated newspaper strips owned by King Features Syndicate, followi ...
name. Some of these were edited by Rose Wyn. Titles included ''Super-Mystery Comics,'' ''Four Favorites,'' ''Crime Must Pay the Penalty,'' and ''Baffling Mysteries''.
Wyn branched out into book publishing in 1945. He founded
Ace Books
Ace Books is a publisher of science fiction (SF) and fantasy books founded in New York City in 1952 by Aaron A. Wyn. It began as a genre publisher of mysteries and westerns, and soon branched out into other genres, publishing its first scienc ...
, which specialized in genre
paperback books, in 1952.
Wyn was famous for paying his authors as little as he could get away with, which prompted
David McDaniel to encode a comment on Wyn into one of his ''
The Man from U.N.C.L.E.'' novelizations, ''The Monster Wheel Affair''. The first letters of each chapter's title in the book's table of contents, when lined up, spell out "A.A. Wyn is a tightwad".
[Heitland, ''The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Book'', p. 161.]
Wyn remained an observant
Jew all of his life. In 1966 he contributed $50,000 to the New York Federation of Reformed Synagogues in support of a Counseling Center for Teenage Drug Addicts.
References
External links
* http://www.pulpartists.com/Wyn.html
* Heitland, Jon. (1987). ''The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Book: The Behind-The-Scenes Story of a Television Classic''. New York: St. Martin's Press. .
*
Tuck, Donald H. (1978). ''The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Volume 2'', 471, Chicago: Advent: Publishers, Inc. .
*
American pulp magazine publishers (people)
American paperback book publishers (people)
1898 births
1967 deaths
{{US-publish-bio-stub