Collectors Guide Publishing Inc., was created in 1984 by Robert Godwin when he penned his very first Illustrated Collectors Guide to Led Zeppelin. That first edition sold out in a very short period of time and a family publishing business was born. Its new editions and updates have been in print ever since. In the 1980’s Robert was considered to be the world’s foremost authority on Led Zeppelin, one of the world’s biggest selling rock bands. The mold was set and CGP, as it became known, became one of North America’s foremost rock music book publishers. CGP for a while was a peripheral part of a much larger group of companies that Rob and his brother Richard owned and controlled. These companies included several record labels as well as the nation’s largest import music distribution company. The company went from strength to strength as published books about some of Rock’s greatest artists such as The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix and many others. CGP became renowned as one of the world’s foremost rock music book publishers.

Richard and Robert Godwin with Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin

You might ask at this point how this led to the establishment of one of the world’s foremost Space book publishers, namely Apogee Books which is an imprint of CGP. It’s an interesting question with a far more interesting answer:

Robert’s brother Richard had been a space aficionado since the age of seven, growing up in the UK, watching the Mercury astronauts and the Apollo moon landings. He had become heavily involved in US space advocacy groups since immigrating to the USA in 1987. He has sat on the board of Directors of the Space Frontier Foundation and is currently on the board of the National Space Society; both well known and respected space advocacy groups. In 1998 during one of the many space conferences that Richard helped organize in Los Angeles, he had asked his brother if he would like to come to LA for a long weekend to attend a dinner honoring some astronauts. Rob, being somewhat of a space geek himself, was intrigued by the chance to meet with some childhood heroes.

Much to his amazement, on his first evening in LA, Rob found himself enjoying dinner with some pretty famous people. The person sat to his immediate left was Buzz Aldrin, the pilot of the Apollo 11 mission and one of the first men to walk on the moon. On the other side of the table was Apollo 7 astronaut Walt Cunningham as well as the author and screenwriter of Tom Hanks’ epic TV miniseries “From The Earth To The Moon,” Andy Chaikin. Rob sat in silent awe as he listened to the dinner conversation of these amazing characters. Rob had just received his after dinner coffee and had not said a word all evening, when Buzz turned to him and asked, “So what do you do for a living?”

Rob replied that he was a book publisher. (At this point CGP probably had in excess of 30 titles in print, all either music or memorabilia books.) Buzz immediately asked if Rob could produce a special commemorative book or magazine for some friends of his who were having a get-together to commemorate theirs and mankind’s first trip to the moon—the flight of Apollo 8. What do you say when someone like Buzz Aldrin asks you something like that? Well to Rob’s eternal credit he said, “Sure no problem!”

(From left) Robert Godwin, Buzz Aldrin, Richard Godwin

The next morning during breakfast with best selling author Andy Chaikin he discussed Buzz’s proposal. Rob asked Andy about the original NASA press kits. He already knew how rare they were, (selling on eBay for over $100). Andy said it was a good idea to make them available to a new generation but he also suggested adding the internal NASA mission reports, a series of documents, which would put some substance behind the general media information of the press kit.

OK, so now the weekend is over, Rob is back in Toronto and thinking about what he can do to ensure that Buzz is not disappointed. He called his usual printer and asked them when would he need to deliver the finished manuscript to have finished product back in time for the celebration. The answer was disappointing; they gave him just four days. Rob put the phone down thinking that this time he had bitten off more than he could chew.

He contacted NASA and began a dialogue, which has since blossomed into a full working relationship. Soon the material was in-hand thanks to some persistence and thanks to Chaikin’s advocacy.

Rob looked intensely at the material, and then made a momentous decision that ultimately changed Collector’s Guide Publishing forever. He phoned his wife from the office: “Hon, don’t expect me home for the next three days, I’m going to be busy!”

He worked for 72 hours straight and produced the manuscript for our first space book, “Apollo 8: The NASA Mission Reports”. Upon completion it was sent immediately to the printers.

Like clockwork, two days before the anniversary celebration at the Museum of Science & Industry in Chicago, the books arrived at CGP’s warehouse in Burlington, Ontario. Rob packed them into his car and set off for Chicago. Being the first week in December it was not a good time of year to be driving from Toronto to Chicago. Pretty soon Rob found himself in a blizzard and had to get off the road and stay for the night. It was the first time he had had time to think since completing the project. He wondered how he could make the book more interesting if it was not just to be a one-off for this one important night. How could he make the book a more attractive commercial offering?

Prior to our first space book the company had produced several music books, which included a bonus CD of music or radio interviews with the relevant artist. CGP had made an exclusive deal with a radio station in Toronto to be able to reproduce on-air interviews with some of the biggest artists of the day. Adding the disc into the back of the books had been a major value add-on to the book and had boosted sales considerably. With some books exclusive music CD’s had been added, the Pink Floyd Encyclopedia was a prime example of how well this approach had worked.

OK, but what are you going to put in the back of a space book? It only took a few moments of thought to figure that out. Add video from the flight, perhaps interviews with the astronauts, photographs. The medium of CD ROM was making great strides at the time and it was cheap and cost effective. We decided that if the first book sold well, we would add more material and a CD ROM to the second edition of the Apollo 8 book.

The evening with the crew of Apollo 8, Jim Lovell, Frank Borman and Bill Anders was a great success. Jim Lovell commented about the book: ”It was about time somebody put some substance in one of these!” We were ecstatic not only about meeting these true American heroes, but the book went on to sell out within a few weeks. When we asked Buzz if he liked the finished product, he remarked that he was very pleased with it and,  “oh yes, did we know that the Apollo 9 anniversary was coming up in a couple of months?” We told Buzz that we got the message and a whole new part of our business was born.

Since that time Apogee has produced over 100 different space titles, all of which are still in print. NASA has become ever more helpful in giving us unfettered access to their archives. Some of the material for the Apollo 11 flight was still classified, it was only finally declassified for one of our books, the results are most interesting. We took the CD ROMs and enhanced them even more, taking advantage of every new technology improvement that came along. Our moon landing volumes include interactive pan and zoom panoramas of all of the moon bases with hot spots explaining what each object is within the field of view. Something that had never been done before.

Recently we moved into the DVD and DVD ROM fields and produced some stunning video of the Apollo 11 mission that has never been seen before. You’ll have to buy the book to see what I mean!

To conclude, the CD’s in the back of our books are not copies of what you will find in the book itself. They contain a panoply of extra material that adds enormously to the value of the total purchase. The book sells the CD and the CD sells the book, they work well together.

The company’s main offices and warehouse are located in Burlington Ontario Canada and a sales and marketing office is located in Naperville Illinois USA.