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Do the magazine publishers have an archive of all their magazines?


magazine_guy7

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This is something Ive been wondering, do the magazing publishers have a physical archive of every issue ever published? I would think they would keep atleast one copy of every issue ever made in a "library" storage room at company headquarters.

What if they one day decide to make an new issue featuring content related to an old issue, they would need the old issue to refer to? Or if they decided to go digital and do what retromags is doing by digitally backing up all their magazines?

Though with many of the magazines going under, what would they do with this archive if they had it? sell it? Or continue to keep it just in case?

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Interesting question.

The answer is it depends on the publisher in question. Newsfield, producers of Zzap!64 etc didn't from what I can tell and so it was quite a relief when they allowed their works to be released by sites like OoPA etc. That or they may have had backups but when they folded Europress who acquired their IP may have junked their stored issues thinking they would never be able to make money of such old products.

By the feel of it the older the company the less likelihood of having backup copies.

Newer releases should in theory be fine. Atomic:MPC for instance had all the physical masters stored and issues 1 - 50 were converted and released on DVD compilation discs. Even then though things can go wrong as they had some sort of issue (fire or water damage) and lost all the advertising content pages for the first 13 issues.

You need to quantify 'magazines going under' a little more explicitly.

Future PLC discontinue magazines all over the place (NGamer, PSM3, Xbox World etc) for various reasons .... not selling enough, too many similar titles in their own stable .... yet they remain in business therefore they would have no reason to sell off their IP in relation to those discontinued titles. They could do but I have never heard of them doing that. If Future PLC the company were to go under however, THAT is a different story. The receivers would likely be looking to sell off any and all IP to recoup potential losses etc. Whether they still have backups of titles like Amstrad Action is the big question.

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on a related note,

I know that everymonth, people come and restock newstands. When there are issues left over from the previous month for some magazines, I beleive the stockers take those issues back. Where are they taking these issues? sending them back to the publishers? there must have been so many gaming magazines that were taken back, I would love to get my hands on them. The reason I think they do this is because I recall there being several times when it was the end of the month and there was a stack of gamepros sitting on the shelf and then the next week, those issues were gone and a stack of the newest issue was sitting in their place. I doubt the stack suddenly sold out right at the last week, the stockers must be taking them away.

Also, if its true that the publishers keep digital backups, what do you guys think it would take to convince them to sell them or distribute copies? This website would really benefit from such backups, there are so many missing issues in the archive. Its not like the publishers are ever going to use them to print out back issues and sell them.

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on a related note,

I know that everymonth, people come and restock newstands. When there are issues left over from the previous month for some magazines, I beleive the stockers take those issues back. Where are they taking these issues? sending them back to the publishers? there must have been so many gaming magazines that were taken back, I would love to get my hands on them. The reason I think they do this is because I recall there being several times when it was the end of the month and there was a stack of gamepros sitting on the shelf and then the next week, those issues were gone and a stack of the newest issue was sitting in their place. I doubt the stack suddenly sold out right at the last week, the stockers must be taking them away.

Also, if its true that the publishers keep digital backups, what do you guys think it would take to convince them to sell them or distribute copies? This website would really benefit from such backups, there are so many missing issues in the archive. Its not like the publishers are ever going to use them to print out back issues and sell them.

they "pulp" them.

the covers are ripped off and returned to the publisher for credit, but the rest of the mag is recycled.

it broke my heart a few years back when i worked at a place that sold books/magazines/etc. Every month, i'd have to pulp all the unsold comic books and music mags.

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they "pulp" them.

the covers are ripped off and returned to the publisher for credit, but the rest of the mag is recycled.

it broke my heart a few years back when i worked at a place that sold books/magazines/etc. Every month, i'd have to pulp all the unsold comic books and music mags.

Been there myself when I worked at Blockbuster many, many years ago. "Breaking your heart" is a good way of putting it, although some places were cool enough to give you what was left of the mag at such point.

Not much good for collectors, but for those who just wanna read the issue...

On the original subject though, Future needs to pull its head out of wherever they stuffed it, and offer complete archives of cancelled magazines, at reasonable prices. Free would be ideal, if they didn't or weren't able to include the ads of the time.

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The only magazine company i know in the USA that releases full unedit magazines is Sandhills Publishing Company. They release all issues every month as pdf for free. And the back catalog i was able to grab goes back to 2004-06.

Sadly they don't go back any further then that for full issues. Here is one collection of computer power user here.

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  • Retromags Curator

Not only that, but you can ask for a subscription and they will give you one. I don't think their magazine is sold on newsstands anymore. I always saw it at the local computer store, and all the copies had "Complimentary Issue" where a barcode would be. The ones they mail me are the same way.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Oh, I actually know the answers for a lot of these, at least in the U.S.

Computer Gaming World: We had one copy each of MOST of the issues, missing a few from the 80s (including #1). They were all donated to the Strong Museum of Play. We had no digital archive.

EGM: We had at least one copy of each issue minus #8 and #12 in the 1UP office. I don't know what happened to them when 1UP was sold to IGN, since that's after I left; either someone (Jeremy Parish?) took them home or they're still at IGN. We didn't have much more as far as the Sendai/Ziff stuff goes...a complete set of GMR I took home, and a few random things here and there, but no Computer Game Review, EGM2, etc. No digital archive of any of these at all, other than what the layout guys who were still around happened to have on their computers (since wiped, I'm sure).

Gamepro: They had at least one of each issue the last time I visited the office. After the magazine died I believe someone took them all home. I didn't see any of the other IDG stuff in their archives, though I believe Kevin Gifford got a good chunk of them when he worked at GamePro way back in the day. Those are all at the Strong now. There's also a digital archive going back to I think 1993 in a friend's possession. He's trying to figure out how to get them out, but keep in mind these aren't like, PDFs, they're layout files with all kinds of incompatibility issues these days.

Game Developer: I worked in this office too! We had at least one of each issue going back to the first one in 1994, and TONS of extras of anything post-2000. They swore they packed and moved a complete archive when they moved offices a couple years ago, but last time I was there, no one could locate the ones from the 90s...hope they weren't lost! Again, though, there's a complete archive at the Strong. There might even be two: I think the office sent one over, and then Kevin's complete collection went there too.

Game Informer: There's a good chance their archive is complete, given that Andy Mac has been there since day one and as far as I know they've never moved offices.

Game Players: A friend of mine took their archive after the mag shut down. It's incomplete. Sadly the uber-rare PC Strategy Guide issues seem to be totally absent from it.

VideoGames & Computer Entertainment: The mostly-complete archive was taken home by a former editor.

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