In the autumn of 2005 Retro Gamer had a finished issue that nobody could afford to print. Its publisher, Live Publishing, had gone bankrupt, and the pages of issue 19 sat on a computer waiting to be sent to the printers. Imagine Publishing, a company then only a few months old, bought the magazine from the receivers that October, printed the issue, and published Retro Gamer for the next eleven years. Many of the magazine’s developer interviews and “making of” features were published under its name.
Fast facts
- Incorporated: 23 February 2005, as Imagine Publishing Limited, company number 05374037.
- Founders: Damian Butt (managing director), Steven Boyd (finance director) and Mark Kendrick (creative director), directors from 14 May 2005.
- Address: Richmond House, 33 Richmond Hill, Bournemouth.
- Bought Retro Gamer: October 2005, from Live Publishing’s receivers.
- Bought by: Future, completed 21 October 2016.
- Company dissolved: 20 March 2018.
Paragon people
Imagine’s founders came from Bournemouth’s earlier games-magazine house, Paragon Publishing. Damian Butt had written for Paragon’s 64 Magazine in the late 1990s and was editorial director of its PowerStation in 2003. Mark Kendrick’s career went back further: introducing himself in Retro Gamer 19, he wrote that it had “been 20 years since I first worked on the legendary Crash and Zzap!64”. Butt, for his part, was glad “to be able to secure its future. It also means I can write about Elite a lot.”
Retro Gamer out of the wreck
Retro Gamer was launched by Live Publishing in 2004, and Live’s name is on it up to issue 18. Its founding editor, Martyn Carroll, looked back on the collapse in issue 50. Sales had been sliding. UK sales levelled off at about 8,000 copies by issue 9, fell to 5,144 for issue 14, and “barely lifted above the 6,000 mark” after that. After the Classic Gaming Expo in August 2005 things fell apart:
Live didn’t have enough cash to print the finished issue 19, so the pages just sat there, waiting to be uploaded.
Soon afterwards Carroll and his deputy were told to clear their desks: “Live was bankrupt and the receivers had been called in.”
“In the end there were no winners,” Carroll wrote. Freelancers went unpaid, subscribers lost issues they had paid for, and the staff lost their jobs. “The only good came in October 2005, when Imagine Publishing announced that it had acquired the magazine from the receivers.”
Issue 19 duly appeared with a new masthead: “Thank you for supporting Imagine Publishing — a new independent specialist magazine publisher where quality, innovation and excellence are paramount.” Simon Phillips was editor in chief and Darran Jones deputy editor, and Carroll stayed on as a contributor.
Growing a stable
Early in 2006 Imagine took on a group of former Paragon titles, among them gamesTM, Play, PowerStation, X360 and Digital Photographer, after their publisher Highbury House went into liquidation. It kept adding titles: SciFiNow in 2007, How It Works and 3D Artist in 2009, All About Space in 2012 and All About History in 2013. It also published “bookazines”, one-off books sold like magazines. By 2016 it had 19 periodicals and about 300 bookazines, from Bournemouth.
Bought by Future
In June 2016 Future, which had started with Amstrad Action in 1985, agreed to buy Imagine for £14.2 million, paid in new Future shares. Future’s chief executive, Zillah Byng-Thorne, called it “a unique opportunity to acquire a market leading knowledge, science and technology content business”. The deal was completed on 21 October 2016, when Byng-Thorne and another Future director, Penny Ladkin-Brand, joined Imagine’s board. In November the company’s registered office moved from Richmond Hill to Future’s address in Bath. Damian Butt, the last of the three founders still on the board, resigned on 1 January 2017, and the company was dissolved in March 2018. Future continued to publish Retro Gamer.
Not the other Imagine
Imagine Software was a Liverpool games publisher, wound up in 1984, whose name Ocean later bought. Imagine was a 3D modelling and rendering program for the Amiga. Neither has any connection with Imagine Publishing.
Sources
- Companies House, Imagine Publishing Limited, company 05374037: incorporation, officers’ appointments and resignations, change of registered office, dissolution.
- Retro Gamer issue 19, 2005: masthead, founders, and staff introductions.
- Retro Gamer issue 50, 2008: Martyn Carroll’s history of the magazine’s first years (sales figures; Live’s collapse; the October 2005 acquisition).
- 64 Magazine issue 25, April 1999: Damian Butt as a contributor; Paragon Publishing, Bournemouth.
- PowerStation issue 91, September 2003: masthead (Editorial Director: Damian Butt).
- “Future acquires Imagine Publishing”, InPublishing, 24 June 2016 (web, secondary): price, portfolio, Byng-Thorne quote.
- Wikipedia, “Imagine Publishing” (web, secondary): the 2006 purchase of former Paragon titles from Highbury House; later launches.