Marshall Cavendish sold knowledge by the week. Its part-works were magazines that came out one part at a time from the newsagent, each part numbered and paged to follow on from the last, so that a reader who kept them all and bought the binders ended up with a set of books. In 1984 the company applied the idea to home computers. INPUT, “a Marshall Cavendish computer course in weekly parts”, ran for 52 weeks and taught programming on the Spectrum, the Commodore 64, the BBC Micro and Electron and the Dragon 32 side by side. The same year it agreed to buy a series of games from Liverpool’s Imagine Software to go with the course, a deal reported to be worth millions. It fell apart within months and played its part in Imagine’s collapse.
Fast facts
- Company: Marshall Cavendish Limited, London, incorporated on 19 June 1967. Its part-works were sold by Marshall Cavendish Partworks Ltd, and readers’ orders went to Marshall Cavendish Services in Hove, Sussex.
- Computing part-work: INPUT, 52 weekly parts in 1984 and 1985, 95p a part at launch.
- Abroad: INPUT was licensed to Editora Nova Cultural in Brazil and lent its illustrations to Ediciones Forum’s INPUT Commodore in Spain.
- Owner: Times Publishing, of Singapore; Wikipedia dates the purchase to 1980.
- Now: Marshall Cavendish International (Asia), a general book publisher, and Marshall Cavendish Education, both in the Times Publishing group.
Part-works
A part-work was cheap to start and expensive to finish. The first part of INPUT cost 95p, binders were extra, and a reader who stayed the course paid for all 52 parts. In return the parts built into a single course of more than 1,600 numbered pages, with an index in the last part. Marshall Cavendish had been selling serious subjects this way for years. Its History of the Second World War, edited by Sir Basil Liddell Hart, was still being cited in COMPUTE! in 1982 as a source for a wargame review, in the American edition of 1973–74, and the games writer Tim Hartnell borrowed board games from R. C. Bell’s The Board Game Book, published by Marshall Cavendish in London in 1979.
INPUT
INPUT began in 1984. Its first part opened with a football analogy: you could learn every skill before stepping on the pitch, “but you would learn slowly - and have very little fun in the process”. So the course began with a guessing game, and from there worked through BASIC, machine code, games programming and practical applications, with each machine’s version of a listing marked by its own symbol. The back cover of each part sold the next one under the slogan “Learn programming – for fun and the future”. The 52nd part closed the course with an index to the other 51 and a note to readers: “Whether you have typed in all the programs yet or not, you will still want to keep INPUT as a source of reference material for the future.” Later printings, at £1.00 a part, carried copyright dates up to 1987. The full story of the course is in the INPUT entry.
The Imagine deal
INPUT was meant to come with software. Bruce Everiss, Imagine’s operations director, later called the deal Imagine’s “mistake number five”: “the Marshall Cavendish project to produce 26 games across five machines — this was worth as much as £11 million to Imagine over two years.” CRASH reported that the contracts were signed early in 1984, and that Marshall Cavendish “became disenchanted by the lack of progress on their games. They had already paid out a lot of money and seem to have been unhappy with the quality of what was ready. They pulled out and wanted their money back.” Sinclair User reported in May 1984 that Imagine had been due to produce 30 programs and that Marshall Cavendish had rejected them, and in August that the publisher had demanded the repayment of a £200,000 advance. CRASH put the advance at a quarter of a million pounds.
Imagine was wound up that summer. Of the games it had been writing, Retro Gamer notes that only Pedro was published, under Imagine’s own name, for the Spectrum, Commodore 64, BBC Micro, Electron and Dragon: the same five machines INPUT taught. INPUT went on without tapes, as a course of listings that readers typed in themselves.
After the part-works
Marshall Cavendish’s British part-work company, Marshall Cavendish Partworks Ltd, was registered in 1982 and dissolved in 2011, according to Companies House. The company that held INPUT’s copyright, Marshall Cavendish Limited, is still registered in London as a book and periodical publisher. The name is now best known in Singapore, where Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) publishes general books, among them the CultureShock! travel series, and Marshall Cavendish Education publishes school materials; both describe themselves as members of the Times Publishing Group.
Sources
- INPUT, part 1 (Marshall Cavendish Partworks, 1984): “A Marshall Cavendish computer course in weekly parts”; 95p; binders from Marshall Cavendish Services, Hove; the football analogy; the machines covered.
- INPUT, parts 47 and 52: the back-cover slogan; the index to parts 1–51 and the closing note; Marshall Cavendish Partworks Ltd; reprints at £1.00 dated up to 1987.
- INPUT, Brazilian edition (Editora Nova Cultural, São Paulo, 1986) and INPUT Commodore issue 1, September 1985 (Ediciones Forum, Madrid): mastheads crediting Marshall Cavendish.
- COMPUTE! issue 21, February 1982, p. 94: wargame review citing History of the Second World War, edited by Sir Basil Liddell Hart (Marshall Cavendish USA, 1973–1974).
- Tim Hartnell, Tim Hartnell’s Second Giant Book of Computer Games (1985), pp. 332 and 434: R. C. Bell, The Board Game Book (Marshall Cavendish, London, 1979).
- Sinclair User issue 26, May 1984, news: Imagine’s 30 programs rejected by Marshall Cavendish for Input.
- Personal Computer Games issue 6, May 1984, p. 16: the collapse of Imagine’s agreement with Marshall Cavendish.
- Sinclair User issue 29, August 1984, news: the £200,000 advance.
- CRASH issue 8, September 1984, p. 4: Marshall Cavendish “prepared to front a quarter of a million pounds to develop games for their Input magazine”.
- Your Computer, November 1984, p. 77: Bruce Everiss on Imagine’s mistakes (“26 games across five machines”, “as much as £11 million”).
- Roger Kean, “The Biggest Commercial Break of Them All”, CRASH issue 12, Christmas Special 1984–85, p. 61: the contracts early in 1984 and Marshall Cavendish pulling out.
- Retro Gamer issue 47, 2008, p. 18: Pedro the only one of the games published.
- Companies House, Marshall Cavendish Limited (00908793), incorporated 19 June 1967, active; Marshall Cavendish Partworks Limited (01648302), incorporated 5 July 1982, dissolved 1 March 2011 (web, public record). https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/00908793
- Marshall Cavendish International (Asia), “Our story” (web, secondary): a member of Times Publishing Group, sister company to Marshall Cavendish Education; CultureShock!. https://www.marshallcavendish.com/our-story
- “Marshall Cavendish”, Wikipedia (web, secondary): founding by Norman Marshall and Patrick Cavendish, given as 1968; Times Publishing’s purchase in 1980. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Cavendish