Horus Heresy Book 43 in April

[Phoebus]

You kind off get wrong with the numbers for Witcher 3 DLC. It is much more than 2-3k users at start. Any BL book could only dream to get Wicher 3 DLC numbers on sale.

I'm aware of that. :)

 

I'm saying that's the way the DLC would have to work for it to be a relevant comparison: that CD Project Red would have to release it to only 2-3,000 individuals for a price higher than Witcher 3 itself, and then only make it available to the mass audience over time, with prices and packaging conventions that don't make sense.

[DarkChaplain]

It is easy making the point using CDProjekt RED, who are neither a big development house under a massive publisher (the entire company, including the division hosting GOG, are still very much small-scale and comparable to indie forces, and the budget to make The Witcher 3 was tiny in comparison to even the most bogstandard AAA annual), nor do their market practices typical.

 

And even then, CDPRED released collector's editions of their DLCs in stores, including some bells and whistles like printed Gwent decks, at a markup. Nevermind the strictly limited collector's edition for 150 bucks including more stuff for collectors, just how the limited edition novellas and novels are aimed at fans.

 

Look at Ubisoft, Activision, EA and the likes instead. Launching their games with Premium or Gold editions at x1.5 to x2 prices for the sake of a nebulous season pass without detailed content. The Call of Duty Season Passes alone are priced as highly as a full priced title! And then the individual pieces are 15-20 bucks individiually and you can wait years and years for a proper sale or price drop - you can't even get CoD's first few games below a 50% discount on any Steam sale.

 

DLCs vary in price and amount and content to the point where making a proper point is tricky. Some DLCs cost as much as the average Horus Heresy short story, others can be as big as full-blown expansion packs for 30 bucks. Few, if any, are of as high a quality as The Witcher's Blood and Wine, which is why that one is particularly highly-acclaimed and raking in RPG of the Year awards for 2016 even though it is "just" a DLC.

 

And yet NOW you get The Witcher 3's Game of the Year Edition for the same price as the game originally launched at, including all the DLC, while the base game dropped to 30 bucks and the DLC still sits at 10 and 20 respectively. In sales the GotY even drops down to 30 yet the DLC individually doesn't drop to the point where adding the base game to them wouldn't be more expensive than just buying the GotY.

Other publishers also have low pricetags for their GotY editions while keeping the DLC prices in a weird state. I remember waiting years for Dishonored's story DLCs to drop below 5 bucks a pop while the complete edition was barely 7.

 

Just face it. Early Adopters get shafted a LOT. You pay the launch price, or even an increased one due to artificially low supply. People with patience or simply less money to throw around wait for the next iteration, the pricedrop, or the sale and pick up the same or more at lower rates. It happens in every healthy industry, including literature.

 

In the end you pay for early access, and the enjoyment you get out of an exclusive product, a first edition, or a limited edition, including the neat design and bells 'n whistles. The question to ask yourself when it is so damn obvious that the story will be reprinted down the line with a better pricepoint is simply whether or not you want to pay extra or pay in patience and read it later. The line "everything, in every format, eventually" has been around and restated countless times as far as the Horus Heresy is concerned, and due to consideration for their customers, Black Library even maintains the Mass Market format til the end of the series, even though they have stopped printing those for everything else. The print formats are otherwise simply mirroring what every other publisher on the market does already. Anthologies are an incredibly common thing, as are omnibuses, first editions and re-releases for collector's value, different cover editions and what not.

 

 

Now I can see the complaint about the timeline going all over the place, and I've complained about that before. Vengeful Spirit for example requires pieces from Garro and The Silent War to even get Loken back into the picture, which happened in stories years earlier and one from an event anthology (Legion of One and Luna Mendax), as well as Wolf Hunt for Severian.

I also object to The Eagle's Talon and Iron Corpses being part of Eye of Terra instead of the inevitable Tallarn anthology, put into the proper timeline. Eye of Terra also includes the Aeonid Thiel stories, the last of which, Red-Marked, released only shortly before it in audio after being delayed for ages. Those stories should have been out closer to Imperium Secundus and before Deathfire where Thiel features and we know who survives already. War Without End's The Devine Adoratrice is best enjoyed as a lead-in to Vengeful Spirit as well, as was Daemonology.

 

The placement of short stories and novellas has been a general bugbear of the series for years though. It isn't just a problem because now they're collected in the numbered series. Heck, this has been going on from very early on. Remember Death of a Silversmith, printed in Shadows of Treachery but set before Horus Rising, or Raven's Flight which led into Deliverance Lost? Things have always jumped around and filled in things or anticipated other events.

 

Smoothing out the narrative chronology is actually one of the strong points of the Horus Heresy Omnibuses, like Crusade's End or The Razing of Prospero, or The Last Phoenix. They add in stories from across, even recent ones, and put them into better context.

I am sure that, if Black Library had a chance to go back to restructure the series and make it flow better, they would do it. But as it stands, the problems inherent in the publishing industry have more to do with this than spite or simple greed. The topic is more complex than that.

[Taliesin]

I hate to possibly add fuel to your ire, but all the stories in that one had been released in other anthologies: The Imperial Truth, Sedition's Gate, Blades of the Traitor and Death & Defiance

I'm tracking that, but Blades of the Traitor and Death and Defiance irked me more because they were anthologies available to the mass public! And each cost more than the actual Numbered Entry anthology despite having half the material!

But nobody made anybody buy them! They were expensive so why do it? Why not wait? It

Because he wanted to read them then? Do you really have so little empathy that you simply cannot understand this even if it's been explained 10 times to you? It is *such* an easy idea to grasp, and such a natural inclination if you're a fan of a series, to want to buy a new product once it comes out, as it continues the narrative.

Obviously I know someone wants to read something as soon as it is released (ideally so would I but in my opinion many are too expensive to justify) but they are not forced to buy it on release and make a choice to pay a premium for the chance to do so. Some people then complain about the choice they have made!

So if you've bought a new car, you should never say afterwards, "it's a great car but I wish it hadn't been so expensive"?

In your world, everybody who buys a product should be blissfully happy with it, and shut up.

It is perfectly normal for someone to buy a product, but still have mixed feelings about.

In this case the choice is between getting a product you want, which is great, but you feel bad about the unfortunate pricing policy, which you did not choose yourself, but which Black Library is responsible for. Or not getting the product at all, and wait until it comes out years later. Which is not an acceptable alternative to many readers.

[Phoebus]

2. If I get time (now back to work after Xmas holidays) I will think about some examples. The first that springs to mind is the music industry!

I'm curious to see what you're talking about, but, as with the video games, I don't think the comparison will necessarily bear scrutiny. I mean, to repeat the example I gave with the DLC, it would have to be something similar to a Record Company releasing a Limited Edition album containing 3-4 songs for roughly double the price of a normal release album to only two or three thousand buyers. Said company would then re-release said mini-album - but only in digital format - a year later, at a 50% markup over normal almbum price. Finally, a year or two after initial release, they would re-release the songs as part of a normal album, at normal price.

 

3. Your comment about the the company is IMHO somewhat naive ...

It's really not. I'm not trying to sell anyone on the idea that Black Library shouldn't make a profit, or that they shouldn't seek maximum profit, or that their customer's whim should always be followed. I just disagree with the notion that this practice we're discussing is somehow the norm. I believe that a faster, better way to profit is to deliver a consistently superior product while successfully engaging the customer. Right now, Black Library's emphasis appears to be on redundant sales for marked-up products whose text content too often earns mixed reviews.

 

I'm not trying to bash Black Library. I want them to succeed. I don't, however, think that the way they're going about things right now is particularly good. I think their current model reflects misplaced priorities.

 

You also mention "sales" but what actually matters most (particularly to niche/premium businesses) is not sales per se but profit through the margin they make on their products. And believe me the margin on those Limited Edition Hardbacks, Premium Hardbacks, Standard Hardbacks, eBooks and eShorts is very nice indeed. The smallest margin for BL will be on the MMPB releases.

I don't doubt what you say about the margins at all. I mean, if this wasn't the case, we wouldn't have seen five anthologies released as part of Books 31-40.

 

What I'm getting at, to put it in different terms, is that this was probably the most obvious and least fair way to generate a profit margin.

 

5. So let me flip this around. I get that you and others are cross about another anthology of previously released material coming out as part of the numbered range. But what exactly is it that annoys YOU?

...

Do you begrudge people like me getting to read these stories? Is it really THAT annoying that Joe public, the great unwashed laggards, will also now get to enjoy those stories in a cheaper format (eventually).

To your former point, I've already qualified this numerous times.

 

To your latter, I'm at a loss as to how you would arrive at that conclusion. If anything, to use your words, I have advocated - more than once, actually - that the "Joe public" shouldn't have to be a "great unwashed laggard"; that they should get to enjoy those stories in the cheaper format (that is to say, the Hardback or eBook edition) more or less at the same time as the Limited Edition releases.

 

If your reaction to this previous paragraph boils down to, "But the profits..." then please scroll back up to my response to your third point.

 

Like I have repeatedly said. Stop buying HH for a year.

Ask yourself this: does Black Library want its readers to stop buying Horus Heresy material for a year? How about two years? Of course not.

 

There is a spectrum of choices to be made when it comes to this specific product. On the one end, I have Black Library forcing customers to wait or pay 100% markups for one portion of an eventual anthology. On the other end, I have you advocating that people just not buy stuff for one or two years. Somewhere in the middle is a strategy that doesn't hurt the bottom line or force a customer to choose between a 1-2 year delay or a 100% markup for a fraction of an eventual product.

 

So I am curious... Clearly you hate the HH release strategy. I get that. So what would YOU do differently?

With respect, I think I've answered that question already. :)

[WarriorFish]

I'm not seeing how this is pertinent. Stay on topic please, if you want to discuss BL business methods this is not the place. Thanks.

[DukeLeto69]

 

 

 

 

 

I hate to possibly add fuel to your ire, but all the stories in that one had been released in other anthologies: The Imperial Truth, Sedition's Gate, Blades of the Traitor and Death & Defiance :P

 

I'm tracking that, but Blades of the Traitor and Death and Defiance irked me more because they were anthologies available to the mass public! And each cost more than the actual Numbered Entry anthology despite having half the material! :D

But nobody made anybody buy them! They were expensive so why do it? Why not wait? It

Because he wanted to read them then? Do you really have so little empathy that you simply cannot understand this even if it's been explained 10 times to you? It is *such* an easy idea to grasp, and such a natural inclination if you're a fan of a series, to want to buy a new product once it comes out, as it continues the narrative.

Obviously I know someone wants to read something as soon as it is released (ideally so would I but in my opinion many are too expensive to justify) but they are not forced to buy it on release and make a choice to pay a premium for the chance to do so. Some people then complain about the choice they have made!

 

So if you've bought a new car, you should never say afterwards, "it's a great car but I wish it hadn't been so expensive"? 

In your world, everybody who buys a product should be blissfully happy with it, and shut up.

 

It is perfectly normal for someone to buy a product, but still have mixed feelings about.

 

In this case the choice is between getting a product you want, which is great, but you feel bad about the unfortunate pricing policy, which you did not choose yourself, but which Black Library is responsible for. Or not getting the product at all, and wait until it comes out years later. Which is not an acceptable alternative to many readers.

Sorry but this is becoming a circular argument. Don't buy cars you can't afford! And anyway surely the question you ask yourself is "is the car I bought value for money". If it is not then are you going to buy that make of car again?

[Tymell]

It does feel like all the discussion of anthologies, collections, etc, should be in it's own topic. I think this thread was on the topic of the Shattered Legions book itself for about half the first page :p

[DukeLeto69]

Yep all all fairness that is true Tymell and then some people started complaining that book 43 was an anthology of previously released material and all hell broke loose!

[DukeLeto69]

At the risk of getting this thread closed I will make one final comment to Phoebus...

 

What I am struggling with is people complaining about BL business practices and pricing but still going back for more! It is a bit like drug addicts and alcoholics who know the product they consume is bad for them but still keep coming back for more! BTW I am not advocating anyone stops buying BL product, just suggesting that for those people who do not like the pricing and release strategy they do themselves (and their wallets) a favour, take a break and come back when it is cheaper.

 

Clearly there are many people who appear to be ok with paying premium prices or else they wouldn't shift sufficient quantities to make it worthwhile to BL! GW just published their 6 month figures. Looks like they are doing very well and their margins are increasing!

 

Anyway, the mods have spoken. Let's just agree to disagree and allow others to get this thread back on topic.

[HeritorA]

Some of us do prefer to read stories then they are first released due to several reasons:

1) We read everything (I did read everything from BL to date) and want something new.

2) To better immerse into setting.

Well that is your preference and a matter of choice. I like that too but having given myself the 12 month hiatus I can do so without resorting to paying premium prices.

3) To be able to go to any forum and not be afraid of spoilers

On that one I agree and totally sympathise. If some people are still paying premium prices for initial releases and then discussing on forums then it feels like you are missing out. THAT is something I have had to accept with my approach. Initially I avoided spoilers but now I don't care so much as my memory is pretty crap anyway!

Which goes back to my point on market forces. If nobody (or few enough to stop it being viable) paid the premium prices then GW would have to revisit their approach. As long as you guys continue to feed the beast it will continue to eat

Imagine the feeling then you go to the forum (and you know that were would be spoilers) - but only one/two persons could discuss actual book, cause they bought LE and read it.

Now imagine you wait for some novella - audios to be released as general release, but while that happened - all the world already read it. And even on Google Search you got in search results a full review and discussion for the book right on the first page.

Sign

[Phoebus]

It is easy making the point using CDProjekt RED, who are neither a big development house under a massive publisher (the entire company, including the division hosting GOG, are still very much small-scale and comparable to indie forces, and the budget to make The Witcher 3 was tiny in comparison to even the most bogstandard AAA annual), nor do their market practices typical.

On the one hand, I'd like to point out that you could literally replace "CDProject RED" with "Black Library" with the above statement and it would still be factually correct.

 

On the other hand, and most damning to a defense of Black Library's model, Witcher 3 and the subsequent release of their DLC was a massive success for CDProject RED, commercially as well as critically.

 

Whatever you might think about Witcher 3 or CDProject RED's size as compared to other game companies, my point stands on two levels: no game company releases either whole games, portions thereof, or additional content in the manner Black Library does; and a smaller company was able to garner huge successes by, if anything, being more generous with their product than larger houses.

 

And even then, CDPRED released collector's editions of their DLCs in stores, including some bells and whistles like printed Gwent decks, at a markup. Nevermind the strictly limited collector's edition for 150 bucks including more stuff for collectors, just how the limited edition novellas and novels are aimed at fans.

Again, they did not do so before the release of Witcher 3, nor did they somehow package all this later on as a separate entry in the Witcher series, and this is where the comparison falls apart.

 

Look at Ubisoft, Activision, EA and the likes instead. Launching their games with Premium or Gold editions at x1.5 to x2 prices for the sake of a nebulous season pass without detailed content. The Call of Duty Season Passes alone are priced as highly as a full priced title! And then the individual pieces are 15-20 bucks individiually and you can wait years and years for a proper sale or price drop - you can't even get CoD's first few games below a 50% discount on any Steam sale.

Once more, this is not an appropriate comparison. To begin with, those editions contain the full game. Furthermore, even when those editions are released ahead of the non-premium format, the time between releases is absolutely minimal compared to waiting two years for a novella to be released either in Hardback or eBook format.

 

For the sake of saving time (I confess to being prone to long-winded rants), I'm addressing the above to your follow-on points regarding DLCs and the Game of the Year Edition for Witcher, as well. All of the material you listed was made available to the public to begin with.

 

I also want to make sure that two of the complaints I'm raising don't get confused for the other. I resent Limited Edition Novellas because the buyer either has to pay 100% more than the price of the Hardback edition they will eventually be included in for perhaps 20% of the content; or they have to wait a year to read them on eBook format for 50% more than the price of the eBook edition of the anthology they will be included in; or they have to wait two years to buy the actual anthology. I resent the release timing of the anthologies because, too often, the novellas, short stories, etc., are all from story arcs the narrative has moved on from.

 

To be more clear, I'm not opposed to someone paying "only" $30 for a Hardback edition and getting a bunch of the previously-released short stories, e-shorts, etc., for a nice discount. I'm opposed to the notion that said Hardback needs to come a year or two after those stories were released. That's why I think the argument you raise re: the Game of the Year Edition doesn't work. Everything in that game's edition falls within the spectrum of Witcher 3 storyline. From the smallest side quest to Blood and Wine, it's all contained within that title. It's not like said edition gets released halfway through your playthrough of Witcher 4.

 

And, if anything, the critical and commercial success of the DLC in question only emphasize that focusing on a quality product and trying to do best by a loyal fan base - not exclusivity and marked-up prices - is always going to be the best policy.

 

Other publishers also have low pricetags for their GotY editions while keeping the DLC prices in a weird state. I remember waiting years for Dishonored's story DLCs to drop below 5 bucks a pop while the complete edition was barely 7.

I'm sorry to hear that, but unless the DLC cost more than the game to begin with and/or was only available to a select few customers for a year or two, I don't see how this is either here or there.

 

It happens in every healthy industry, including literature.

This is the sixth or seventh time this has been stated, and I have yet to see an example that actually compares with the actual Limited Edition and delayed-release anthology models Black Library uses.

 

In the end you pay for early access, and the enjoyment you get out of an exclusive product, a first edition, or a limited edition, including the neat design and bells 'n whistles.

I do not begrudge anyone the right to enjoy an exclusive product. I think that "exclusivity" by way of keeping everyone else waiting for 1-2 years is a disingenuously framed concept.

 

The question to ask yourself when it is so damn obvious that the story will be reprinted down the line with a better pricepoint is simply whether or not you want to pay extra or pay in patience and read it later.

And the answer to this is that you're posing what should be a false question based on an unnecessary - unfair, even - premise.

 

The line "everything, in every format, eventually" has been around and restated countless times as far as the Horus Heresy is concerned, and due to consideration for their customers, Black Library even maintains the Mass Market format til the end of the series, even though they have stopped printing those for everything else. The print formats are otherwise simply mirroring what every other publisher on the market does already. Anthologies are an incredibly common thing, as are omnibuses, first editions and re-releases for collector's value, different cover editions and what not.

Pre-coordinated anthologies released as numbered titles in ongoing series, whose material is 1-2 years older than the story being told in preceding titles in the same series, is not an "incredibly common thing." Neither is the Limited Edition Novella concept.

 

Now I can see the complaint about the timeline going all over the place, and I've complained about that before. Vengeful Spirit for example requires pieces from Garro and The Silent War to even get Loken back into the picture, which happened in stories years earlier and one from an event anthology (Legion of One and Luna Mendax), as well as Wolf Hunt for Severian.

Exactly. My feeling is that, rather than focusing on redundant sales and markups, a better effort could be made in coordinating commissions and how various stories are tied in. The obvious answer to this is that it's obviously difficult to get half a dozen human beings in various parts of the world, and with various jobs outside the Heresy besides, to sync their various stories properly. The obvious counter-answer to this is that, if you want to have your cake and eat it too, you best be sure it was made well.

 

That analogy was terrible, so here's a more specific statement. In May 2014's Vengeful Spirit, Mortarion is shown dabbling with sorcery and the daemonic. Less than a year prior, though, in Scars, that same primarch was expressing his disgust for such practices. What happened? Laurie Goulding himself offered, in The First Expedition forums, if I recall correctly, that the answer lay in "Daemonology," a short story by Chris Wraight. Except "Daemonology" was released six months after Vengeful Spirit and wasn't actually released in print until three months after that, and wasn't actually released as part of a Numbered Entry anthology until January 2016.

 

I'm fine with Black Library wanting to sell exclusive, Limited Edition products. I'm fine with Black Library wanting to release various short stories, e-shorts, audio products, etc., independently. I'm fine with Black Library wanting to collect all those stories in collectively cheaper anthologies. What I'm not fine with it when Black Library's priorities mean that the schedule doesn't support how the stories are told. What I'm not fine with is when the choices offered are pay $5 for an eBook five months after the fact or wait 20 months to pay $30 ($16 for the eBook version) for an anthology to get access to a story that makes a key part of another novel make sense.

 

The placement of short stories and novellas has been a general bugbear of the series for years though. It isn't just a problem because now they're collected in the numbered series.

No, but it's only been made worse, and now it's actually part of a calculated strategy to maximize sales/profits.

 

I am sure that, if Black Library had a chance to go back to restructure the series and make it flow better, they would do it.

The larger issue is that no signficant effort appears to have been made to address this issue for the future.

Apologies, WarriorFish... I didn't notice your post prior to my last response...

[HeritorA]

It does feel like all the discussion of anthologies, collections, etc, should be in it's own topic. I think this thread was on the topic of the Shattered Legions book itself for about half the first page

Which in itself is an anthology and second numbered HH 'reprint/refabrished' release of the year.

Yep all all fairness that is true Tymell and then some people started complaining that book 43 was an anthology of previously released material and all hell broke loose!

Instead of giving us another 2016 with lot of amazing stories we again have 2014 with all the fillers, secondary plotlines and rereleases so far. What would you expect? Tymell and 'some people' are totally right