GW Investor Report- Black Library Sales Down

[Knockagh]

Tie in model / book releases has bad history for BL. It can horribly stunt writers creative mojo. The Rob Sanders Mechanicus books remains for me the ultimate example of how GW corporate should never ever stymie writers creativity by asking them to insert new units or characters. It should be the other way round the writers should be dreaming up the characters and units for the model men and background writers to insert into games.

[DarkChaplain]

Even the Beast Arises suffered from that to a degree, with them changing the expected plot halfway through (as changed cover art can attest), away from stuff like Men of Iron and towards bringing in Sisters of Silence and Deathwatch to coincide with the model releases. But I agree, the Mechanicus  release window was the worst in that regard. That was the time of glorified product ad shortstories - they literally commissioned short stories for each relevant unit entry to show off how kewl they were. Thankfully, Fehervari managed to make a pretty good, albeit limited, Fire Caste sequel anyway.... and he went far beyond the commissioned word count to do it, too, as per usual :')

[Carach]

has anyone in these 3 pages perhaps mentioned the fact that Black Library's pricing is ridiculous?

[DarkChaplain]

Only for limited / direct-only stuff, really. Paperbacks in particular are generally no more expensive than any other publisher's in the same format. Especially when ordered via general retailers, the difference - if one exists in the first place - is negligible. The only thing that bugs me is that they pulled up the prices for Omnibus volumes to 20€ in most cases, when they were 5 less about 5 years ago.

[caladancid]

has anyone in these 3 pages perhaps mentioned the fact that Black Library's pricing is ridiculous?

 

 

Only for limited / direct-only stuff, really. Paperbacks in particular are generally no more expensive than any other publisher's in the same format. Especially when ordered via general retailers, the difference - if one exists in the first place - is negligible. The only thing that bugs me is that they pulled up the prices for Omnibus volumes to 20€ in most cases, when they were 5 less about 5 years ago.

 

Haha I know I am apparently the only one who buys the eBooks on this particular forum, but dude- the eBook pricing is outrageous.

 

They routinely sell the 20-30 page shorts for 5 USD.  Full eBooks start at 17 USD (just recently they will go down to 10 USD when the paperback is released).  You would have to look very hard through the Amazon Kindle store to find a publisher with an average price as high as BL.

[DarkChaplain]

Oh, of course, the ebooks ARE ridiculously priced. Especially while the book is only available in print via hardback. Their audiobook pricing isn't great either (though more in line with the general market - and thankfully Audible helps with prices there by dropping 'em to a tenner).

 

I simply consider ebooks to be one of the "direct" products, since Amazon's Kindle store is a relatively recent thing, and... well, Amazon (at least in the UK and sometimes US? Including Audible) actually has sales on novels once in a while. Not that I'd benefit from those, being in Germany, and Amazon/Audible Germany never getting any such sales, but that's neither here nor there.

 

It's pretty clear that BL still maintains a pretty adamant pricing model for digital products (GW is hardly better on the whole), but that's because they can control digital sales much more easily, whereas print has more involved parties, warehousing etc. As a result, you rarely have to pay the list price on them, unless you buy directly from GW/BL.

[Carach]

Only for limited / direct-only stuff, really.

 

 

but not really.

 

They have, for many years now, been well above the prices of Amazon and even my local bookshops.

Their books in general are well above the pricing of any other books I purchase.

Their ebooks (I remember the days ebooks and digital copies of games were "going to cut out the middle man and provide us with cheaper products". Anyone else 'member?) are insane and their audio books are even more so.

 

 

I can perhaps understand the latter because of the costs involved in creating this product. For the former however, you are marking up the product a huge amount because you are not producing anything. It's entirely frickin digital

 

Paperbacks going the way of the dodo in order to throw up prices further. Unless you wait x amount of years after the also annoying LE stuff that is priced at an insane level for some of you whales to gobble up.

 

These are the reasons I have slowed/stopped purchasing from Black Library. 

 

Of course, I also don't care to purchase bolter porn. Though I do understand they have their place - appealing to the younger folk and the like.

 

BL has gone the same way as the model range, at the end of the day - extortionate pricing that is generally justified by the willingness of whales to continue forking out for it. I stopped the model stuff 15 years ago because it simply got absurdly expensive to keep up with... but i did like the universe and i have been with the HH since day one.. but the rising costs since those early days and the actual *difficulty* in getting these novels at a reasonable price means I have really tapered off.

Edited January 27, 2020 by Brother Tyler
Profanity removed

[Rob P]

To clarify my earlier post: It's possible that Black Library sales are down overall. I could make anecdotal arguments as to why I think sales are down, but like Knockagh says in post no 47, there isn't enough information to draw any conclusions.

 

Edit: Slightly more on topic to as where the discussion has gone: I buy my BL books almost exclusively as ebooks from Amazon (purely because it's a tad more convenient than the BL site - where you have to put them through 'send to kindle').

 

I think the novel price is fair, but I do genuinely wonder how many of the individual short stories are sold in the release format (as opposed to when they get thrown together into an anthology).

Edited January 20, 2020 by Rob P

[theSpirea]

I think, and hope, we're going to see the numbers go up once the Horror, and soon Crime, pick up.

 

When it comes to pricing, I would say regular hardcovers are a little bit overpriced, audio-dramas (those around 60 minutes) are way too overpriced. Paperback are fine as I can get them in a regular bookstore and often go on sale. 

[Knockagh]

The fiction or lore aspect of GW is being pushed and invested in massively at the moment. This year we are going to see the marvel/gw collaboration, tv series’s and animations developing. Heck today on community they have up a wonderful orchestra creating a soundtrack to the worlds of Warhammer.

Any notion that GW don’t see the merit (or profit) in expanding and developing the lore is ignoring what they are investing massively in.

People might have issues over directions or formats but expansive and better quality lore is continuing to be core and central to GWs overall strategy and BL obviously will be a massive part of that. I’m happy with that

[Apothecary Vaddon]

theSpirea hit the nail on the head perfectly on page 1. They couldn't market their way out of a wet paper bag at this point and it's pretty embarassing. The only reason I know of any novels coming out is because I look at the 'coming soon' thread here on B&C, an unofficial fan site for WH40k. lmao that's ridiculous. 

 

that and hounding author twitter accounts.

Edited January 20, 2020 by Apothecary Vaddon

[evilmittens]

For a long time, until recently, buying BL books in the US was hard with the exception of ordering directly or going to a GW store.  Barnes and Noble and other retailers had smaller selections at times to buy from.  Lately, it seems, BL seems to be offering more books at Barnes and Noble which may increase sales slightly.  All Seige books and primarchs novels are offered in HB for example. 

[b1soul]

@DarkChaplain

 

"Even the Beast Arises suffered from that to a degree, with them changing the expected plot halfway through (as changed cover art can attest), away from stuff like Men of Iron and towards bringing in Sisters of Silence and Deathwatch to coincide with the model releases."

 

This makes me real upset...would'be been great for the writers to play around with MoI

 

MoI models would definitely sell but would cost more to make, I suppose?

...and no existing MoI rules of course