SegaMags, who have been celebrating classic Sega magazines online for well over a decade, as well as selling a variety of classic gaming magazines at video game events, recently transformed into The Gaming Newsagent (sort of.)
Such a change to long-running fixture of retro gaming fandom piqued our interest somewhat here at Retro News, so we decided to catch up with Marc Jowett from SegaMags (and now also from The Gaming Newsagent) to find out why he was making the change.
We wondered where Marc’s interest in Sega magazines began, and how it led to him starting up SegaMags. He explained to us that “during my childhood days, my dad would always pick me up a Sega magazine once a month to read. It was usually random, but I do recall him purchasing me Mega Action, MEGA, and Sega Power back in the day. From the 32-bit era, I started to purchase various magazines and stick with them till the end (Saturn Power, DC-UK, Ngamer to name just three). I used to read them from cover to cover and as I got older, I ventured onto eBay to fill in the gaps in my collection. I then decided to purchase every issue of a UK Sega magazine I didn’t own.”
Marc went on to explain that his lifelong interest in Sega magazines then led him to a forum in which a guy called Matt had posted his own collection, and Marc subsequently used this as a template for his own collection, at which point, Marc realised that he and Matt were both doing the same thing and in 2010, SegaMags was formed as “two blokes collecting Sega magazines”, with SegaMags starting out as Marc and Matt (mainly Matt) selling their duplicate issues, and as those duplicates wound down in 2018, Marc and Matt’s plan was to stop doing it, but Marc recalls a customer telling them that they couldn’t, as everyone loved seeing them at events, so Marc decided to continue, and they eventually purchased stock to turn SegaMags into a business selling retro gaming magazines.
Marc explained that, “to stay viable, I branched into gaming books and have just started selling video game related board games and collectables. All of a sudden, the name doesn’t sound anything like the stuff we sell.”
This leads us to the recent name change. We had wondered if the name change had been prompted by SegaMags expanding beyond its original Sega focus, with Marc confirming that despite the Sega Mags name, most people probably just know him as “a bloke who sells magazines and books anyway.” But he acknowledged that anyone who doesn’t know who he is would look at a gaming event leaflet and assume he just sells Sega magazines. Marc told us that “a friend in the gaming community once referred to me as the “WH Smith of the gaming circuit, ” adding that he thought that they were “probably right.” Marc believes that in selling classic video game magazines at video game shows, he has found a gap in the market, as nobody else does what he does at events, and he wanted to capitalize on this by having a stall that is completely different. Marc says that with The Gaming Newsagent, we can expect “a lot of different gaming books, capsules, key rings, stickers, and of course the trademark retro gaming magazines,” adding that “The Gaming Newsagent essentially allows us to sell anything a Newsagent would, but with a gaming focus (although we may slip a Slush Puppie machine in one day).”
So keep an eye out at video game shows, you might just see Marc Jowett selling retro games magazines and books, perhaps alongside brightly-colored retro crushed ice beverages!
We wondered if the well-established SegaMags brand would live on, even though the magazine selling business has transformed into The Gaming Newsagent, and Marc assured us that it would, telling us that “The brands will be split. SegaMags will go back to its roots on social media. Two guys trying to collect Sega Magazines and posting up Sega magazine articles, and The Gaming Newsagent becomes my business side of things and we already have plans to bring more book publishers on board!”
Sounds like exciting times lie ahead for both SegaMags and The Gaming Newsagent, with both sides of the business set to go from strength to strength.
All images taken from the SegaMags Facebook page, and used with permission.
