Category: Uncategorized

Sitting in a warehouse, somewhere in England, are the last unpublished Highbury issues of Digital Photographer, XBox Monthly and Web Developer. No one wants them. So there they lay, collecting dust. How sad.

Does this mean Imagine isn’t going to carry on publishing these titles? There are good reasons why Imagine wouldn’t want to – and probably wouldn’t be able to – ship these particular issues of the mags, including copyright, branding, currency, ad revenue and so on. So we shouldn’t necessarily read too much into this. But if you want copies of those mags, I might be able to put you in touch with a man who can help out…

Well, the reason for Imagine’s silence seems to be that it’s still in consultation with the former Highbury staff about which magazines it’s going to continue and whom it’s going to offer jobs to.

At the moment (according to unconfirmed reports from my sources), Tuesday or Wednesday next week looks like the end of the consultation period, and it’s likely only 50% of the magazines are going to survive. The sad corollary is that only 50% of Highbury’s staff are going to be offered jobs. Some have already decided they’re going to look for jobs elsewhere anyway and some are being told they’re too valuable to head off into the sunset and would they like a job now? Certainly, some of the key mags from Highbury are already up and running with some ex-Highbury staff.

The only ones we definitely and absolutely know for sure are going to continue are iCreate, Web Designer and games™. Play and one of the Xbox 360 magazines are liable to have survived as well, but we’ve not had that confirmed.

As for the previous list of titles that Imagine’s receptionist claimed were surviving, it’s entirely possible that she actually gave a list of titles that weren’t going to survive, since it looks like Digital Creative Arts and Web Developer won’t be weathering this particular storm. That doesn’t leave Advanced Photoshop in a particularly good place if that’s the case.

Incidentally, I’ve had another letter from a former Highbury subscriber. The current information deficit clearly isn’t going down well with the general public.

Excellent blog – as a reader since first publication of Digital Photographer I was shocked to see a magazine of such quality disappear without trace… I was referred to your blog via a forum with Digital Camera Magazine and read it avidly! Although you mention the publication in passing, I see no news of any relaunch so if you hear any more about it, I would be interested and will follow your blog when I can (I travel a fair amount).

Just thought it would be nice to thank you for letting the victim subscribers know what’s going on, as nobody else has.

Still nothing more from Imagine about what titles they’re carrying on with, although it looks like Web Developer might be history. I did email MD Damian Butt at the weekend to ask if he’d like to give me a list of the continuing titles so that I could help him get the word out. But so far, I’ve had no reply. Maybe I’ve been spam-filtered. Maybe he’s busy. Maybe he hasn’t decided. Maybe he’s trapped under something heavy.

With none of the Imagine staff, old and new, willing to post the info here (they are kind of busy, I suspect), at this rate, it’s looking like we’re only going to know once the magazines are on the shelves. Oh well.

Continuing our theme of “which ex-Highbury magazines is Imagine going to continue publishing?”, it turns out the receptionist at Imagine may have spoken to soon: Digital Creative Arts may not have a new life after all. I’ll get confirmation of that on Monday, hopefully, along with a fuller list of the rejuvenated titles.

But in the meantime, I can tell you that Windows XP Made Easy is one of the survivors as well. Have a nice weekend!

Which of the hobbies listed on children’s clothier Boden’s customer feedback form is the odd one out? I’ll give you a clue: “Graffiti/Casual Vandalism” is not generally considered a hobby…

Since a lot of people now come here (and link to here) because of the Highbury goodies herein, I’ve set up a ‘Highbury’ category so you can all get your information undiluted by any of my other ramblings. Its URL is /finance/highbury/ if you feel like linking directly.

I’ve not yet created an RSS feed for the category, but there is a feed for the whole blog so you can subscribe to that if you’d prefer.

This letter from Damian Butt to a subscriber of gamesTM was posted to the EuroGamer forum recently:

With regards your worries about gamesTM, have no fear. Imagine Publishing will honour all current and future subscriptions for this title and we are even now working to increase the quality and bring it back to its former glory.

I’m afraid however that we cannot deliver any issues you are missing until the first Imagine issue hits the shelves. This is because we have no control over what has already happened, and there is an issue of gamesTM that has not yet been printed. As such there may be one or two issues missing which were produced while Highbury was going into receivership. As soon as the Imagine issue hits the shelves though you will receive every issue until your subscription runs out or you renew it.

If you are contributor to EuroGamer then please spread the word, though do bear in mind that if people have tried to subscribe in the last few months, the records may well be incomplete and we may not get the names and addresses.

The former chairman of Highbury House has emerged from hiding to explain why he invested so much of his own money in the company before it went bust. Dear old Kelvin has a go at the banks, among other things. I don’t think he’s going to be the last person to wonder exactly what was going through the minds of the bankers, Ernst & Young and everyone else involved before this whole affair is over.

From Romensko:

Three out of 10 bloggers in Norway blog about their mental problems. According to an analysis of 100 Norwegian blogs, conducted by Univero Fishnet, the blog has come to substitute for the old diary, not only in the sense of a serving as a journal, but also as a place to express one’s deepest feelings.

Says analyst Ole Petter Nyhaug to VG Nett (Norwegian language), “It’s frightening what serious problems young people give away in their blogs. For eight out of 10, blogging is a sort of self therapy.”

Not a huge sample size, but interesting nevertheless.

So now we know. The FT quotes Peter Bolton King of the National Association of Estate Agents as revealing that

• “Aspirational pricing” by estate agents had contributed to the stalling of the market last year
• Some estate agents persistently overpriced over the past year.
• They did this solely to get instructions from homeowners

Bloody estate agents. No wonder no one can afford to buy houses any more. That and the buy-to-let and mouseholing crowd.