20 Years of Tankograd!
Tankograd Publishing - Verlag Jochen Vollert can in October 2017 celebrate 20 Years of Tankograd Publications.
How it all began - Despite being a German company and publishing almost all titles bi-lingual English/German or full English these days, it might wonder that Tankograd was launched in October 1997 as a private venture to provide the enthusiasts of Soviet and Warsaw Pact vehicles with a magazine in English language. "The Tankograd Gazette 01" was born, xerocopied, with 24 pages and a print-run of 50 only. Unexpectedly the whole project took off on itself, with a further 700 "Gazette 01" to be sold in the following years in England and worldwide. Further milestones of Tankograd history followed.
Today we can look back with pride on no less than 374 Tankograd publications (as of September 2017)!
The truth behind Tankograd - Tankograd Publishing - Verlag Jochen Vollert prides itself in the unusual. While many of our competitors in the market go mainstream with "Tigers" and "Panthers" only, we go for those titles, left behind on the background on swift profit. It might well be that our print-runs are often not comparable to bigger titles. Our fans, however, appreciate subjects like "British Trucks in Wehrmacht Service" or "Soviet Tracked Tractors in Red Army and Wehrmacht Service". Over the years, Tankograd itself created a small market for publications about vehicles, on which hitherto barely anything was known before. Off to new horizons! I think it is honest to say, that this path is difficult and not paved with vast profits.
The future of Tankograd - Looking back on ten years of hard work, often harsh times, but also often big success, it boils down for me to that: Nothing would have been achieved without hard work, an amazing number of authors who are willing to write in the low-fee range to keep things going and naturally our readers. Without the readers, the enthusiasts who buy our products, we would not even be here today. I strongly hope we will be able to keep up the good work in producing excellent research on interesting vehicles at an affordable price. If you, dear reader, are with us, we will carry on publishing great books!
Jochen Vollert - Editor-in-Chief, Publisher