Tom Swift Jr

Welcome, friends of Tom Swift!

Tom Swift copyrights are currently owned by Simon & Schuster, the same folks who publish Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and other similar teen book series. Tom Swift, however, is geared toward boys interested in science, and maybe as a result has a less wide-ranging appeal than other teen series. There are relatively few of us geeks. :-) Please Google Tom Swift for links to sites with more information than this meager page.

The links below are some of the things I've been working on related to the Tom Swift Jr series, published from 1954 through 1971 and long out of print. The challenge for fans is that Simon & Schuster doesn't seem inclined to publish a collectors' edition of the books, sadly understandable if their studies show lack of substantial fan base. That leaves it up to the fans to preserve the books as best they can. I have converted all 33 of my paper books to ebooks (mobi, epub and pdf) building off the work of other fans who painstakingly scanned in their books, OCR'd and corrected them. I need to finish scanning illustrations to enjoy a full set of illustrated Tom Swift, Jr. ebooks!

The challenge to sharing is that only two of the 33 books in the series are in public domain, "Visitor from Planet X" and "Electronic Hydrolung." Contact Simon & Schuster to express your interest. Maybe a collectors' edition is a (remote!) possibility after all if enough speak up.

• The first 16 volumes of Tom Swift Jr had one of the best endpapers ever. Here is a step by step digital restoration.
• Creation of e-books using LaTeX

Endpapers vols. 1-16

Endpapers vols. 17-33