Highbury (Front, Home, Play, Gardens Monthly, XBM, P2 & others) Subscriber Warning

Mr_Mumble

Highbury House the parent company of Highbury Entertainment & Highbury Lifestyle who publish the following magazines:

Home Cinema Choice
Woodworker
Radio Control Models & Electronics
Front
The Real Homes Magazine
Practical Woodworking
Gardens Monthly
Inspirations For Your Home
Home
What Video Widescreen Entertainment
Pokemon World
Practical Web Projects
Powerstation
Cube
Hotdog
Games TM
Digital Photography Made Easy
iCreate
XBM
Play
Windows XP Made Easy
Digital Photographer
P2
Digital Camera Buyer
PDA Essentials
X360
DVD Next
Go Play

are known to be in trouble:

The Times - !!!!!! publisher shortlisted to buy Highbury House titles (14th January).
The Times - Highbury House titles may raise only £5m (6th January).
The Guardian - End of the Road for Highbury House as it puts titles on sale (6th January).
Independent - Highbury debt pile defeats MacKenzie (23rd December).
The Times - Highbury suspends trading as talks come to standstill (13th December).

While Highbury is unlikely to fold it looks certain the company will be sold for very little money and many titles could be scrapped.

As a current subscriber to one of the magazines (Games TM) I'd usually expect my copy of the magazine on or before publication date, the last publication date was supposed to be 28th December. This issue has still not arrived, despite the magazine appearing in newsagents, late. The tardiness is supposedly down to printing problems. Rumour suggests not paying the printer was the problem! The non-arrival of subscription copy is not just my personal situation; a ten page thread at gamesradar.com shows no other subscriber has received their magazine either.

Of course subscribers pay in advance so Highbury already have our money. In the current situation it is natural for Highbury to sell their new issues to the likes of WHSmith for extra cash and worry about subscribers, and the mass mailing costs, later. :mad:

If any MSEr has a subscription to any of the magazines listed above can they say whether they've received their latest issue and if so was it late?

Mumble, over.

marshallll

I called earlier them about 2 weeks ago when my xbm didn't arrive and they said they were having administration problems. Since then they are always engaged and their website has dissappeared so im just stranded. i wish they could have emailed me and told me what was happening. Now i dont know what to do with 6 months still left on my subscription.

grex9101

yep, i'm a GamesTM subscriber too, last quarterly DirectDebit came off mid Jan....

Bought the latest issue as it's still a good mag, but will be chasing up the DD with my bank under the DD guarantee.

Bun

Highbury bought up perfectly good, profitable small businesses, ran them into the ground due to over-acquisition and have treated their suppliers, staff, freelancers, subscribers, shareholders and advertisers appallingly. :mad:

Highbury went into administration on 20th Jan, and many of the mags are to carry on under new ownership.Highbury Entertainment was bought by Imagine Publishing. Games Tm will more than likely be one of the magazines that Imagine Publishing continue to publish, so you will hopefully not have lost your money. I would think they will be in touch soon, I'm sure you are within your rights to renegotiate your payment etc, although I would be surprised if something wasn't offered anyway to help dispel bad feeling. If Imagine do decide not to publish this (or somebody subscribes to something else) then the blog below may be of help.
Please bear in mind though that the people you will be speaking to are not those who caused the problem, but are doing their best to sort it out.

http://www.the-word-is-not-enough.com/blog/personal/

Bun

grex9101

Bun wrote:

Highbury Entertainment was bought by Imagine Publishing. Games Tm will more than likely be one of the magazines that Imagine Publishing continue to publish, so you will hopefully not have lost your money.

Bun

yep, i think you may be right, imagine have acquired 24 titles from highbury as per the pdf on their main website:

http://www.imagine-publishing.co.uk/

my only concern is that 24 is a lot of titles for such a small specialist publisher, although i'm sure they acquired them for a bargain basement price...

any thoughts?

grex9101

also, according to the managing director of imagine (quoted here):

http://www.eurogamer.net/forum_thread_posts.php?forum_id=1&thread_id=45964&start=60

all titles acquired by imagine will have their subscriptions honoured with the first editions of the imagine published magazines...

so, hopefully all is not lost

Bun

Glad you have not lost out! Imagine will only be publishing about half of the 24 titles they bought. Pre-Highbury, Paragon Publishing was very successful under the same management with many of these same titles. I am sure they will be a darn sight more careful with the business than Highbury was.

grex9101

as long as gamesTM survives, i'll be happy. the only seriuos contender to edge out there. the other multiformat mags are way too childish....