Our story begins in 2011, Herpetoculture House Digital Reptile Magazine was born of a need to give the reptile industry a magazine not over run by advertisement and/or governed by a large disconnected corporation. I wanted to develop a magazine tuned to both mobile & desktop technologies of all makes and models. Creating a new product always entails expense which is usually passed on to the consumer. Here we have kept the costs to the very bare minimum necessary to produce a quality product. We have now brought together the fields of herpetology, herpetoculture, conservation, reptile veterinary care, beginners guidance, field herping, invertebrates, and venomous species into one singular magazine the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the halcyon days of Vivarium Magazine. Before I launched this grandiose project, I spoke with hundreds of herpetoculturists in the industry. I asked if they would even be interested in an electronic reptile magazine which didn’t offer advertising, instead offering a business card size advertisement in the back of the magazine for those who wrote articles. Everyone we spoke with was excited about this new take on herpetoculture publishing. We would/are buck(ing) the system of all the ‘regular eBook retailers’ offering books only available on their devices. I would forego dealing with DRM & the rest of it to offer our magazine as a downloadable PDF file accessible by ANY device capable of running Adobe Acrobat Reader. Dismissing DRM doesn’t mean we’re not copyrighted, just that we trust our customers to respect us enough to not share our work. For those unfamiliar with DRM or Digital Rights Management it’s a technology which allows a company to lock their products to one single type of device such as a Kindle, Nook, or other such electronic reading device. For more on this please see Cory Doctorow’s piece on Digital Rights Management.

Doing so allows us to offer the highest quality reptile magazine comprised of world renown authors, editors, and you our very audience. Tweet: “It’s you who write the in-depth captive care and informative articles that our industry so desperately needs.” http://ctt.ec/guyoO+

Our first year, we looked pretty rough around the edges with graphics, layout, etc. That is until I met Kevin Oskow our Creative Director. Kevin revolutionized the entire feeling and meaning of Herpetoculture House with his design work. At that same time I purchased a MacBook Pro (affiliate link) & discovered what numerous people had been telling me all along. ‘Mac was the only way to go when desktop publishing.’ They weren’t kidding, we changed the entire design of the magazine with the Herpetoculture House Magazine 2011 Annual. Ever since,  with our increasing talent pool of authors and designers we’re now creating a completely green (no trees killed here) digital reptile magazine featuring the most content per issue of any other paper or digital reptile publication in circulation today. 2012 saw further changes for us as a magazine. We introduced new regular appearing columns. Tales & Trails is authored by the incredible field herper Melissa Coakley who travels the world searching for reptiles and more! Herpetoculture 101 by Lillie Nyte takes readers step by virtual step through the adventures of first time ownership of reptiles. Ask the Vet by Dr. McCormack a practicing exotic veterinarian based in the United Kingdom answers readers questions as well as offers advice regarding veterinary care. Ron Tremper (yes that Ron Tremper) writes The Tremper Insider where he shares his inordinate amount of herpetological knowledge with our readers every other month. Jim Shivers is our travelling reporter so to speak, he writes our Reptile Journal column. He attends as many shows as he possibly can every year and reports back us with reviews and news about all the reptile shows.

On top of all of this, we offer feature articles written by both herpetologists and herpetoculturists which opens a broad discourse of varying ideas & options of how to not only care for our captive companions but also, to conserve the various reptiles, amphibians, and invertebrates of the world. All of our articles are initially peer-reviewed by a group of fellow herpetologists & herpetoculturists for accuracy of data,  then they are finally reviewed by Dr. Robert G Sprackland or one of our assistant editors. If you are interested in submitting work to Herpetoculture House Magazine please see our submission guidelines.