Matt Bielby

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Please improve this article if you can. (February 2007)

Matt Bielby in Bath, 2007.

Matt Bielby is the Managing Director and proprietor of Blackfish Publishing, a specialist magazine and internet publishing company based in Bath, UK. He is best known as a magazine editor, launching many successful titles in assorted markets during the 1990s, mostly on the subjects of computer and video games, and film and television. These include Total Film, SFX, and PC Gamer.

Bielby was born in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, in 1965, and spent most of his early life in Bradford, West Yorks, where he attended Bradford Grammar School. Developing an interest in journalism, and magazines in particular, he was film editor of the University of Nottingham student newspaper, Impact, before getting a job at Emap in London in February 1988, as staff writer on Computer and Video Games magazine. By the end of 1988 he was deputy editor of Your Sinclair magazine at Dennis Publishing, also in London, and become editor in early 1989.

In 1990 Bielby moved to Bath, when Your Sinclair^[1] was bought^[2] by Bath-based Future Publishing, and there he became an important part of Future's growth during the 1990s. There, Bielby launched the computer games magazine Amiga Power (1991)^[3], the Nintendo video games magazine Super Play (1992)^[4], the computer games magazine PC Gamer (1993)^[5], the internet magazine .net (1994)^[6], the SF and fantasy magazine SFX (1995)^[7], the movie magazine Total Film (1996)^[8], the computer and video game magazine Arcade (1998), and the video game magazine Official UK PlayStation 2 Magazine (2000). Most of these titles became the best sellers in their particular markets, with the exception of Total Film, which established itself as the No.2 title in its market, after Emap's Empire.

In addition, Bielby spent six months in Greensboro, North Carolina, USA, launching the US edition of PC Gamer (1994)^[9], and some time in Munich, Germany in the late 1990s, helping set up Future's German subsidiary. Further, as Group Senior Editor at the company, he oversaw the launches and relaunches of many other magazines, while in a short stint as an Assistant Publisher he worked on titles such as PC Plus and PC Answers.

Since leaving Future in 2001, Bielby worked as a freelance journalist at assorted companies, including Emap, Future, and Highbury House, usually in the development of new projects. One of these went on to become Zoo (2004), EMAP's weekly men's magazine.

In 2006, Bielby launched his own publishing company, Blackfish Publishing, which currently publishes one title, Death Ray magazine. Death Ray is a science fiction and fantasy title, created as a rival to Future Publishing's market-leading SFX. Bielby repeatedly talks positively about SFX throughout the first issue of Death Ray.