Bitmap Books delivers rich visuals for retro game fans

A love for video game history, multiplied by high-quality printing and design — that’s British publisher Bitmap Books in a nutshell. For 11 years, they’ve been releasing books on retro gaming, a very specific “niche within a niche” of visual books. Detailed studies about the history of certain game genres and series, collections of video game art, and guides to long-ago gaming systems fill these books. What each volume shares is a strong focus on precise and beautiful  design.

The Bitmap Books catalog includes around 40 titles, none considered low cost. In Ukraine, all of these publications would likely be sold as “gift editions.” The visual aspect dominates throughout, and even when the text takes central stage, occupying most of the page space, illustrations, screenshots, pixel art, and other graphic elements still work in close symbiosis with it.

Could these publications have been any different, considering they are dedicated to the history of a medium that relies primarily on visual communication? The founder of the publishing house, Sam Dyer, emphasizes this in his comment for Chytomo:

“Because of my love for game graphics, I always knew that any book would be a visual, opposed to anything too text-heavy, and use my graphic design knowledge and skills to make it as beautiful as I could. Something fans would truly cherish.”

The books are usually not glued but thread-sewn, which guarantees them a longer and more cohesive life cycle. Pleasant surprises often come in the form of metallic inks, ribbon bookmarks, and thick, glossy dust jackets. Some editions come in sturdy slipcases. The publisher’s website also notes that packaging plays a crucial role, with constant improvements being made toward greater durability and environmental friendliness.

At Bitmap Books, their biggest drive is a real passion for games. When working on new projects, the team works hard to do more than expected — they talk with experts in the gaming industry, get access to visual archives from famous studios, and find new facts about game history that no one has heard of before. Simply put, their creative work is more than just gathering information from open sources.

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Asked how ideas for books come about, Dyer says that the sources vary: “This is a mixture of authors coming to us and proposing ideas, and a bank of ideas I have in my head for books I’d like to create. It could also be that there’s an anniversary or a surge of interest in a particular franchise/console.”

Bitmap Books collaborates with various authors and illustrators. The publisher has already worked with several celebrities from the gaming industry, including Mark Cerny, the creator of the classic abstract arcade Marble Madness; pioneers of the point-and-click genre Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert; SNK producer Yasuyuki Oda; and others. In fact, the list could go on.

Working with numerous contributing authors is also standard practice for Bitmap Books. Some of the topics covered in their books are so vast in scale that they’re often too much for just one or two authors to cover. Take “The CRPG Book: A Guide to Computer Role-Playing Games,” for instance — a definitive work for genre enthusiasts. Released in multiple editions, the book features 450 reviews covering the most significant CRPG titles from 1975 to 2019.

Unlike official guidebooks and art books that usually appear with a game’s release or re-release, Bitmap Books enjoys far more creative freedom because most of their projects are independent. At the same time, they also partner with other companies to produce officially licensed editions — for example, with SEGA, SNK, and Atari.

It is notable that the birth of the publishing house was a side effect of the idea for a book. In 2013, Dyer was working as a graphic designer and experiencing burnout. In such a state, as we know, people often desire to try something new. In Dyer’s case, that “new” turned out to be a well-forgotten “old”: he returned to his long-standing interest in video games.

“I started seeing a few gaming books pop up and remember thinking, ‘WOW, I’d love to be able to do something like that!’ It began by just playing around in the evenings and weekends – a way to satisfy my creativity. I started to experiment with designs for a book on the Commodore 64, and after a while, ‘Commodore 64: A Visual Compendium’ started to take shape.”

When Dyer was finally satisfied with the design, he began sharing his work with the gaming community and quickly realized there was genuine interest in such publications. The next step was launching a campaign on Kickstarter.

“This was key to the success, as it allowed me to see how many people would buy the book before investing thousands of pounds in the print. To my amazement, ‘Commodore 64: A Visual Compendium’ raised a staggering £35,594,” Dyer said. Back then he had no idea that it would turn into a publishing house with dozens of titles and an 11-year history, and that the “Visual Compendium” series would go far beyond the Commodore 64.

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According to a report by the UK Publishers Association, the local book industry generated £71 billion in revenue in 2024, despite staffing problems and declining sales in certain sectors. It’s also worth noting that this represents only a small segment of the broader global English-language market, which encompasses publishers from other English-speaking countries as well as readers worldwide. This means that the potential audience for even a niche British publisher extends far beyond the British Isles.

“The USA is our biggest customer. We also have many customers in the EU, Europe, Australia, South America and Asia. Shipping costs are occasionally an issue to international customers, but we’ve always had a strong dedicated international fan base,” Dyer said.

The global English-speaking space is about two billion people. It is under such favorable conditions that ventures like Bitmap Books can emerge, though success is far from guaranteed. Dyer understands this and avoids risky scaling to maintain profitability:

“This isn’t easy, but my core philosophy has always been to stay flexible and not be greedy. I’ve deliberately avoided expanding the company through hiring staff because that would significantly increase costs, and the risks of facing difficulties.”

The rise of digitalization and digital content formats hasn’t eliminated the desire to engage with physical objects. Paper books, canvas paintings, vinyl records, and even cassettes not only persist but are actively making a comeback. For some, this reflects a pushback against the increasingly virtual nature of life. For others, it’s a nostalgic yearning to possess tangible items that carry cultural significance.

It’s ironic that this happens with video games, which are, by nature, primarily software products whose fundamental state is digital. Thanks to the rapid development of the internet over recent decades and the emergence of digital distribution platforms, video games have almost entirely detached from their physical media. Because of this, many people want to collect game cartridges and discs, and this market is still growing strong. Buying a game on a platform like Steam puts it in your virtual library as just another item on a list. But it feels very different when a favorite game comes in a physical copy — with special design and printed materials — that you can show off on a shelf next to your favorite paper books.

As long as gamers still desire to own physical games, there will likewise remain a demand for corresponding books — just like those released by Bitmap Books.

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Images: Bitmap Books

Translation: Iryna Savyuk

Copy editing: Sheri Liguori