Imagine Publishing
The Bournemouth house that rescued Retro Gamer from the receivers
Incorporated in February 2005 and publishing from Richmond Hill in Bournemouth, Imagine bought Retro Gamer out of Live Publishing's collapse that October and ran it for eleven years, until Future acquired the company in 2016.
Imagine Publishing was a specialist magazine house in Bournemouth, incorporated on 23 February 2005 and publishing from Richmond House, 33 Richmond Hill. Its first appearance in this library is a masthead, and it introduces itself:
Thank you for supporting Imagine Publishing — a new independent specialist magazine publisher where quality, innovation and excellence are paramount.
That notice runs in Retro Gamer issue 19, and the reason it is there is that the magazine had very nearly stopped.
Fast facts
- Incorporated: 23 February 2005; the operating board — Damian Butt, Steven Boyd, Mark Kendrick, Hareesh Dhand and Clifford Jakes — appointed 14 May 2005.
- Address: Richmond House, 33 Richmond Hill, Bournemouth, Dorset BH2 6EQ.
- Registered number: 05374037.
- Acquired Retro Gamer: October 2005, from Live Publishing’s receivers.
- Acquired by: Future, October 2016.
- Dissolved: 20 March 2018.
Buying a magazine out of a collapse
Retro Gamer launched in January 2004 under Live Publishing of Nantwich, and Live’s name is on the masthead through issue 18. In August 2005 the company went under. Its founding editor Martyn Carroll set out what that looked like from the inside in the magazine’s own fiftieth issue:
Live didn’t have enough cash to print the finished issue 19, so the pages just sat there, waiting to be uploaded. […] Live was bankrupt and the receivers had been called in. […] The only good came in October 2005, when Imagine Publishing announced that it had acquired the magazine from the receivers.
Freelancers went unpaid, subscribers lost issues they had bought, and the staff lost their jobs. What Imagine bought was a title with a completed issue that had never been printed and a readership of roughly eight thousand. Issue 19 is the first Imagine issue, and the break in the masthead is exactly the break in the company.
Why this Vault cares
Retro Gamer is one of the most-cited publications in this library. Its developer interviews and making-of features are, for a great many British games, the only place a first-hand account was ever recorded — and every one of those from issue 19 to 2016 was published by Imagine. When an entry here rests on a Retro Gamer piece, this is the house that commissioned it.
Imagine ran far more than one title, across technology, photography, film and history, but that is the part of its output the Vault draws on.
Absorbed into Future
The end is legible in the public record without needing a press report. On 21 October 2016 three serving directors of Future Publishing Limited — Zillah Byng-Thorne, Penelope Ladkin-Brand and Oliver Foster — were appointed to Imagine’s board. Three weeks later, on 11 November 2016, the registered office moved from Richmond Hill in Bournemouth to Quay House, The Ambury, Bath: Future’s own address.
The founders left over the following months, the last of them on 1 January 2017, and the company was dissolved on 20 March 2018. Retro Gamer continues under Future, which is why a masthead from 2005 and a masthead from today name different publishers for the same magazine.
Not the other Imagine
Two unrelated companies in this Vault carry the name, and a third thing does as well:
| Name | What it is |
|---|---|
| Imagine Publishing | this entry — Bournemouth magazine house, 2005–2016 |
| Imagine Software | Liverpool games publisher, 1982–1984; the label was bought by Ocean |
| Imagine | Impulse’s 3D modelling and rendering package for the Amiga |
Nothing connects them but the word.