After the first few years of Dannay reprinted stories he had gathered for his own personal collection of mysteries while slowly adding previously unpublished stories by both famous and unknown authors, " EQMM "began accepting novels from the general public in 1948. As another effort to expand the variety of materials of the magazines, during Dannay's editorship, Department of First Stories was established in 1949, which aims at publishing works from new writers and fostering new talent. Dannay himself published more than 500 first stories by first-time writers, and many of them, including Stanley Ellin and David Morrell, grew to become famous writers. In 1953, "EQMM" bought Black Mask Magazine, and turned it into a special department which “features harder-edged works of crime, noir, and private-eye writers.” (Black Mask ceased to exist in "EQMM" in the 1970s but was reinstated in 2008 and continues to run today. )