Micro Mart R.I.P.
I was in Morrisons Supermarket today that I saw the last Issue of Micro Mart for sale @ £2.99 . It was sad to see it go . There was an exhortation in the mag to buy this last Issue :it said jokingly to buy it as "it could be worth a fortune on EBay" in the future or similar words to that effect.
I was a subscriber for years and it was a great place for a novice to gain some basic computing skills . I stopped my subscription about 2 years ago . PC development had slowed down by then and I was not getting so much out of it . I expected to return again in a couple of years when PC development picked up a bit . So , in the meantime , I developed a habit of having a quick read of it in a supermarket . I remember doing this awhile ago and saw that they had published one of my letters in the issue I picked up so I felt a bit guilty about cancelling.
But the reason for its demise are fairly easy to understand . Print based titles generally are struggling anyway so it is a tough market to be in . Then there was the death of Felix Dennis the boss/founder of the publishing group awhile back . I did wonder then if it would carry on at that time but it did .Another part of the problem was that it covered a lot of ground and there is "so much stuff out there". I remember an example of this last year occurred when my son did not want the tablet we got him for Christmas and I think this kind of thing is relevant as people are getting too much stuff and some of it they just do not want : they would rather spend the money on a nice meal out instead of paying a subscription for their favourite magazine .Tablets and ebook readers are not quite as "new and exciting" as the ZX Spectrum was in the 1980s so buyers' loyalty to their individual machines has waned a bit because there is just so much of this "tech stuff out there . The "group owner" feeling and loyalty of owning a particular type of micro had long gone "out of the window" and newer tech like the PC was more anonymous . And so when , even that slowed down , I think the mag's readership waned quite a bit.Thus I think it was inevitable , that at some point , this mag would have to shut up shop.
I was a subscriber for years and it was a great place for a novice to gain some basic computing skills . I stopped my subscription about 2 years ago . PC development had slowed down by then and I was not getting so much out of it . I expected to return again in a couple of years when PC development picked up a bit . So , in the meantime , I developed a habit of having a quick read of it in a supermarket . I remember doing this awhile ago and saw that they had published one of my letters in the issue I picked up so I felt a bit guilty about cancelling.
But the reason for its demise are fairly easy to understand . Print based titles generally are struggling anyway so it is a tough market to be in . Then there was the death of Felix Dennis the boss/founder of the publishing group awhile back . I did wonder then if it would carry on at that time but it did .Another part of the problem was that it covered a lot of ground and there is "so much stuff out there". I remember an example of this last year occurred when my son did not want the tablet we got him for Christmas and I think this kind of thing is relevant as people are getting too much stuff and some of it they just do not want : they would rather spend the money on a nice meal out instead of paying a subscription for their favourite magazine .Tablets and ebook readers are not quite as "new and exciting" as the ZX Spectrum was in the 1980s so buyers' loyalty to their individual machines has waned a bit because there is just so much of this "tech stuff out there . The "group owner" feeling and loyalty of owning a particular type of micro had long gone "out of the window" and newer tech like the PC was more anonymous . And so when , even that slowed down , I think the mag's readership waned quite a bit.Thus I think it was inevitable , that at some point , this mag would have to shut up shop.
Comments
I remember first using Micro Mart back in the day to advertise for a C64 programmer to convert the Spectrum title Shove Off for Beyond Belief. There were a couple of replies and the conversion even managed to get a mention in a Commodore magazine although this version is now missing; one of Frank Gasking's "Games That Weren't".
Later on it was a joy discover Shaun Bebbington's weekly retro page, before Retro Gamer magazine started up and the Spectrum began its resurgence. I seem to recall Colin Woodcock taking over on occasion and announcing Cronosoft's arrival with a review of Egghead in Space. Reviews of many other Spectrum games followed over the years as the number of people writing for the machine increased. At some point I even had a couple of articles about writing Spectrum games printed; it's hard to imagine any other publication doing that.
Obviously it's not as sad as losing Your Sinclair was but Micro Mart has been a friend to the Spectrum scene as well as other 8-bit communities over the years. A sad loss.
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Honestly never occurred to me it was still running. I suppose it does seem a bit of hangover from another era. Shame.
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I think it had a bit of an "identity in the market" problem . Was it going to cover everything out there or specialize? It is ,of course , very difficult to cover everything well . Latterly it did a sterling job with the PC as they had good PC writers . But in other areas I do not think it was as good like a lot of the reviews. For instance ,two quite well known Spectrum emulators both got top marks in the reviews they did on them : for me, one of these emulators was great but the other was "not so great" (as I could not get the licence key to work properly with it!) .And also I suspected that it was getting more "advertorial" in style and I did not use the Classifieds . But it was great at publishing readers letters . Also I think the subscription offer was perhaps too good and the shelf price too high, (I think the last issue was £2.99 and I do not think it was a particularly good last effort ). Still it must be hard producing something good when you are being shut down!
Yes this was another part of the Mag's identity difficulty . I suppose we should thank MM for keeping bravely this "micro" usage alive but when the the Mag stopped dealing mainly with Micros it did not "claim and vigorously defend" a new territory / new developments as it's own and the "market" itself appeared to do the work of defining the area of the Mag's remit/area of interest which left it a bit "fuzzy around the edges" particularly as there was so much "tech stuff" out there . Could the mag have fared any better with a different plan ? .
One thing I did notice was the rise of some generic unattributed articles . now this is not necessarily a bad idea . "The Economist" does it as all articles are meant to represent "The Economist's" views but did this idea work for Micro Mart? I think not as some of this content looked a bit unoriginal and to me seemed like just rehashed generic repeats. And this combined with a more "advertorial" style , in the end , meant that any remaining enthusiasm was dimmed a little bit more .
I think it must have decided that the small size of the readership meant that was not viable to go "online only" . This would have helped to get rid of one problem , that of storing the old issues . In the past there had been good content so the mag could be kept and reread but as time went on it became a bit more like a "weekly throwaway" .
The Final Gag
And was the final gag any good? I went like this/along the lines of "Buy this final issue for £2.99 as it could be worth a fortune on Ebay". Well it did fit in with its light hearted and generally good natured style . But you have to remember that it is still possible to get a good Speccy game on Ebay for £2.99 so I did not buy it ! Now which would you rather have , the mag or a good Speccy game?!!!
Micro Mart was one of those mags that I enjoyed flicking through in Sainsburys to see if it was worth buying for the retro section or an article that I was interested in (graphic card round-up, DVD/Blu-Ray software) or when they had the CD covermount software (many many years ago), that was a good disc to save on the dial-up download.
I'm going to miss Micro Mart.
Download the latest version of Bomb Munchies Ver2210 4th July 2020
I think that one of the reasons for the Mags success was that for so long it managed to get the balance of interest between buyers and sellers about right . Doing this over a long period of time is a bit like walking on a high wire or tight rope . Is is very easy to get the balance wrong and fall off . I remember looking at some of it marketing stuff online and thinking that it was all about being influential and SELLING stuff and also that this stuff was very visible to people who cared to look online. If most of the readers start to think that their interest as buyers are not being considered enough then they might be less loyal . This is difficult for a small mag to get right as it needs the advertising revenue . Now that is one hell of a business conundrum!
There's a lot of stuff that could be removed regarding subscriptions and write to us. Probably couldn't be bothered to edit it. The private ads submission page is great though.
Download the latest version of Bomb Munchies Ver2210 4th July 2020