Specialty Press was founded in the 1980s as an aviation book publisher. In addition to publishing, over the years it has been the US distributor for many US and UK publishers such as AIRTime, Airlife Publishing, Crecy Publications, Flight Recorder Publications, Midland Publishing, Hikoki Publications, Steve Ginter Publications, and others. The focus of Specialty Press's publishing and distribution efforts are on topics dealing with aviation history, high-performance aircraft of all types, air combat, aircraft modeling, and a layman's technical look at a range of aircraft types.