Publication Identification

Field	Information
Country	United States
Publisher	Fancy Publications, Inc. (premiere issue).  Later documented publishers: I-5 Publishing, LLC; Lumina Media LLC; Pet360 Media Group; Living World Media, Inc.
Publisher address	Pending research update
Magazine title	REPTILES
Publication status	Active.  Current subscription information states six issues per year.
Publication run	Began October 1993.  Represented issues extend through July/August 2024.  The complete future run remains ongoing.
Editor	Phillip Samuelson (original editor represented in the collection).  Later issue specific editors: Pending research update.
Printer	Pending research update
ISSN	1068-1965
Language	English
Publication type	Specialist reptile and amphibian keeping, breeding, husbandry, conservation, behavior, and natural history magazine
Publication frequency	Bimonthly at launch, monthly beginning December 1994, and bimonthly again by 2017.  Current subscription: six issues annually.

Preservation Significance

REPTILES is unusually valuable within the preservation project because the collection documents the title across more than three decades, from its premiere issue in October 1993 through 2024.  The surviving issues show changes in editorial design, husbandry advice, breeding culture, veterinary emphasis, conservation reporting, public attitudes toward reptiles, and the commercial reptile hobby over time.

The run is also significant because it preserves major publication transitions rather than only isolated issues.  Early issues document the Fancy Publications era.  Later issues preserve the change to I-5 Publishing, the short 2017 sequence involving Lumina Media LLC and Pet360 Media Group, and the subsequent Living World Media period.  The November 2000 cover is especially useful documentary evidence because it explicitly announces that REPTILES was “Now Incorporating The Vivarium Magazine.”  This provides direct physical evidence of the absorption of another reptile periodical into the title.

Several issues have independent historical importance.  The October 2002 issue celebrates the magazine’s tenth anniversary.  The November/December 2023 issue marks thirty years of REPTILES.  The May/June 2024 issue is a memorial edition for Brian Barczyk, a highly visible modern reptile educator, breeder, entrepreneur, and media personality whose work reached a large international audience.  Preserving that issue documents not only the magazine itself, but the way the reptile community publicly remembered one of its best known contemporary figures.

The breadth of the surviving covers also records changing subject priorities.  Snakes dominate much of the represented material, including pythons, boas, colubrids, vipers, rattlesnakes, hognose snakes, kingsnakes, anacondas, and venomous species.  Other issues document turtles, tortoises, lizards, amphibians, veterinary medicine, field research, conservation, captive breeding, morph development, enclosure design, behavior, enrichment, and reptile related careers.  Taken together, the issues form a long running primary source record of the modern reptile hobby in North America.