Sam Dyer preserves video game history in hardback

Bitmap Books is a video game book publisher with a design-first mindset. This means that Bitmap's founder, creative director, and sole employee Sam Dyer, is all about creating tangible art, as fit for the coffee table and collector's shelf as it is for being read cover-to-cover.

Maintaining this balance of aesthetic strike and informational acuity has defined Bitmap's journey since Dyer started his company in 2014. In the ten years since Bitmap's inception, the discourse surrounding game preservation and physical media has grown. But preserving games wasn't necessarily Dyer's initial goal, he tells us.

"I wouldn't say the company was started with any kind of core mission or end-game in mind," Dyer says. "It was really born out of my passion for craft design and my passion for games. The vision has always been to produce beautiful gaming books that gamers can enjoy – and that can evoke lots of nostalgia."

As he explains Bitmap's evolution, Dyer says he wants to be careful with how his business treats nostalgia. Retro gaming books are all about bringing people back to their happy memories of times past, yet Dyer says there's a fine line between celebration and predation when it comes to taking peoples' money for products that interact with this feeling.

"There's an interesting conversation to be had surrounding the word 'nostalgia.' It's starting to become a bit overused, and it's actually got a few negative connotations, where there are a lot of companies that prey on peoples' nostalgia. Big companies include gaming in their adverts to use as a hook to engage with a certain audience, for example. So, I'm sort of always a bit wary about that phrase. Bitmap began with me just wanting to produce things that I would want to buy. Things that reminded me of childhood."

It turns out that what most reminded Dyer of childhood was the wonder he felt after his parents bought him his first computer: a Commodore 64. Though no one in his family knew about games, he learned how to load, code, and play all on his own. His initial interest in art and graphic design actually stemmed from being fascinated by the load screens of his favourite games. He describes it as "love at first sight."

"There's an interesting conversation to be had surrounding the word 'nostalgia'"

"That said, the weird thing is I never thought of going into game art. I was always more interested in things like desktop publishing, typography, and graphic design. So, that naturally led me down a path that was actually away from games for a fair few years while I was going to art college. Then, like a lot of us do when you get older and start having children, you start looking back to your childhood and all that sort of fun stuff."

Looking back helped Dyer press forward. But it wasn't about doing business at the start. He founded Bitmap because he had been working on a Commodore 64 book in his spare time and needed a platform if he wanted to have any chance at publishing it.

"The first real challenge was around funding," he recalls.

He would eventually turn to Kickstarter, which was having a major moment in the mid-2010s, to secure funding for his first published book. However, he says that a more important aspect of Bitmap's original crowdfunding campaign was to see if there was any interest from a consumer audience in the product he was making.

When Commodore 64: A Visual Compendium was fully-funded, he knew he could make a go at putting premium gaming books into the hands of gamers and collectors alike. Still, Dyer focused much of his energy in the early days of Bitmap's existence on defining and growing his company's audience. Designing and producing the books came more naturally to him, as he worked in graphic design and marketing before pivoting to his entrepreneurial venture.

"I was lucky because I was quite early doors doing video game books, so there was sort of a massive appetite at the time for the thing I was doing. That said, it still took a long time to engage with the various sorts of communities and sharing designs. Obviously, at the time things just built and built and built, and I've got quite a big following now. But that was quite a challenge at the start – when you're a nobody – to try to get people to put their hard-earned money down and to trust you."

As far as sustaining and growing Bitmap's audience since the company's early days, Dyer attributes his success to his ability to deliver a consistent product. Producing books that are well-considered, cohesively designed, and provide good value for customers' money has helped him thrive in the video game publishing niche.

Dyer says that the most helpful takeaway from his experience as far as audience-building for a boutique product goes is that loyalty is often more important than volume. Building a group of loyal customers who keep coming back is what propels Bitmap's momentum forward.

The demographic makeup of that audience makes sense in light of the person Dyer mentions as his ideal target customer: himself.

"It sounds a little stereotypical, but the facts are that Bitmap's main consumers are male and around my age: between 40 and 50 years old," he says. "That sort of ties in with the age when the Commodore 64, Amiga, the Sega Mega Drive, and all [of these], were part of their childhood. It sounds a bit corny, but I am my target customer. And a lot of the time – this sounds really self-indulgent – but I am actually designing these books for myself. I constantly ask myself: 'If I were going to buy this book, would I want that?' I probably speak for a lot of our customer base. Not everyone, obviously, but a good majority. And that's helped me in good stead so far, approaching it like that."

"When you look at why businesses fail, a lot of the time it's because they grow beyond their means... Whereas, I'm more than happy to grow the business slowly"

Bitmap ships its books around the world, but as far as audience-concentration goes, Dyer mentions the UK, Germany, France, and Spain as some notable hotspots. In the last five years, though, the United States has become his biggest market by far.

That's a lot of places to send a lot of different books for one person; because Dyer is Bitmap, taking his company's books from the proposal stage, through the design process, production coordination, and shipping all by himself. While he works with various authors to write the books and calls on a number of freelancers throughout his publishing process, Bitmap is his full time job and then some.

"That's a good thing and a bad thing," Dyer says. "The good side is that I get to control everything. Control the quality. Everything goes past me, so everything's consistent. Also, I can only produce a certain amount of books per year, which is a good thing.

"Because if we were 20 or 30 people, and we were producing a book a month, people would quite quickly get tired of that, and I would, as well. Producing three books a year – which is what we do at the moment – feels like a good amount for me, and it's a good amount for customers. The biggest thing is that people really look forward to when we release a book. It's like a real treat, and I would never want that to become like: 'Oh god, they've just released another book.' It would be time to pack up if that ever became the general feeling."

"A copy of each one of my books is in the British Library, and as far as I'm concerned that's a pretty strong sort of preservation"

It's heartening to hear Dyer's take on the benefits of staying small. The industry is full of countless examples of companies growing beyond their means, which can lead to devastating layoffs and general instability. While capitalist ideologies often make growth seem like an inevitable result of success, Bitmap finds its sweet spot in the processes that helped make the company unique in the first place.

"Some people might say that I've got no ambition, and they could criticise me for not wanting to grow the business. But, when you look at why businesses fail, a lot of the time it's because they grow beyond their means and then it all just sort of goes a bit wrong. Whereas, at the moment, I'm more than happy to grow the business slowly, and do it at my pace, so as to not churn out too many titles and burn myself out."

Bitmap's sustainable business model is a boon to the video game industry and consumers alike – primarily due to the publisher's position as a hub of game preservation.

"It is absolutely all about physical media," Dyer says. "It's one of my biggest passions, being a graphic designer. That's one of the main reasons I want to do Bitmap Books – because I'm a massive champion of stuff. I don't have a hatred of digital at all. But, if I think back to my childhood, all of my fondest memories are around cassette tapes, records, CDs, and video games, so I feel really passionate about that.

"A copy of each one of my books is in the British Library, and as far as I'm concerned that's a pretty strong sort of preservation. It's not just Bitmap doing this, it's other publishers as well. We're doing this job that is the most important way of preserving the history of video games."

Looking toward the future, Dyer wants to expand Bitmap's partnerships with developers and studios to create distinct artefacts that enhance the video game industry's connection to its audience. He sees art as a uniting factor that can help accomplish this goal.

"We do collaborate with game developers and studios, occasionally. What I want to do in the future is become a lot more known for this. Say, for example, a studio does a game, and they're like: 'We need an art book.' I'd love for Bitmap Books to be the go-to company that they approach to produce that art book."

Bitmap's work with the Japanese studio SNK is a blueprint for the execution of Dyer's dream. He's helped SNK publish books on the Neo Geo, in addition to their games Metal Slug and The King of Fighters. Bitmap also has a licensing agreement with Atari for a visual compendium on the Atari 2600 and 7800 and has worked with Sega in the past to produce a book on the Master System. For Dyer, this is just the beginning. Bitmap aspires to be the go-to bookmaker for industry leaders.

"Who knows, maybe one day we could work with Nintendo," he says. "That would be a dream come true to produce books on their IP."