The advent of digital printing technology has transformed the world of short run, niche publishing. This quiet revolution has left Doctor Who fans spoilt for choice…

FEATURE BY STEVE O’BRIEN

The desire to catalogue, critique, examine and explain Doctor Who has been the motive force of fandom since its infancy. Back then it was fanzines that were the go-to place for a forensic examination of bourgeois liberalism in the Pertwee era or a 1,000- word analysis on the merits of Season 18.

But not many people make fanzines anymore, and for the cost of a wellproduced fan mag you can now make yourself a kosher book – with a spine and everything. So welcome to the world of the independent Doctor Who publisher. This is where titles too esoteric, too strange or too subversive for the likes of BBC Books, Panini and Titan live.

For too long, the only Doctor Who life stories out there were either by or about the big hitters – William Hartnell, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker. Marquee names that booksellers could trust to shift units. The idea of a Kit Pedler or John Nathan-Turner biography one day being marketable would have sounded preposterous 20 years ago. But here we are, living in a time when we can devour the memoirs of Bob Baker and Robert Banks Stewart or buy tomes dedicated to Verity Lambert, Robert Holmes and Matthew Waterhouse.

Although Miwk was initially set up to publish the gloriously irreverent Blake’s 7 guide Maximum Power, it was with its headline-grabbing biography, JN-T: The Life & Scandalous Times of John Nathan- Turner, that it made its name. Talking of names, Miwk itself “comes from when Rob Hammond and I were recording the ‘Oh Mummy’ soundtrack for the Pyramids of Mars DVD,” says co-founder Matt West. “He got to this word ‘milk’ and for some reason it just made us laugh.”

Michael Seely’s biography of Doctor Who director Douglas Camfield was published by Miwk in 2017.

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