OMPA
The Rise and Fall of the First UK APA
Rob Hansen

ISBN 978-1-916508-46-0 (trade paperback)
ISBN 978-1-916508-47-7 (ebook)

Ansible Editions, November 2026

Cover photo: OMPA members at CYTRICON II (1956): Arthur Thomson (UK), Jan Jansen (Belgium), Anne Steul (Germany), Ellis Mills (US) and Cathy Youden (non-OMPAn). Photographer: John Roles.

The trade paperback OMPA: The Rise and Fall of the First UK APA is released in November 2026 simultaneously with the ebook. 185 pages; 77,000 words. All proceeds from sales go to the TransAtlantic Fan Fund.

The Off-Trails Magazine Publishers Association was a British APA or Amateur Press Association founded in 1954, taking its cue from such US examples as FAPA (Fantasy Amateur Press Association, 1937-current) and SAPS (Spectator Amateur Press Society, 1947-current). How it worked, to quote from Fancyclopedia:

Typically, each member of an apa produces a fanzine and sends an appropriate number of copies to an Official Editor who collates and (usually) staples one copy of each zine together, adding covers, an Official Organ and a ToC [Table of Contents], and sends out the collection of zines, called a mailing, to each member.

Many fans of note, both British and from overseas, contributed to OMPA in its heyday, and much high-quality fan writing appeared in its pages. Rob Hansen’s history of the organization is enlivened with quotations and additional between-chapters bonus selections of such good stuff.

OMPA in its heyday was a vibrant fannish culture with people clamouring to get in. It remains the first and only APA to have run a national convention: OMPAcon, the 1973 UK Eastercon. How did it come to fizzle out so quietly in the later 1970s? Rob explores just why.

Rob Hansen's OMPA Statistics Page