Black Library and their flaws

[Ubiquitous1984]

2 hours ago, A Melancholic Sanguinity said:

Wow, I guess I spoke too soon about getting a copy. I ordered Dark City together with Twice-Dead King: Ruin. My order arrived today.

No Dark City. It's not even on the packing list of my order. Sent off an email to customer services with pics and receipts and everything, but... yeah.

Vaults of Terra is one of my favorite series in the 40k catalogue. I'd say The Dark City was one of my most anticipated books of the year, but that'd be a lie - BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T TELL CUSTOMERS THE DAMN THING WAS COMING. 

I mean, it was already ridiculous how quickly The Dark City went unavailable. But now even people who bought the bloody book aren't getting it? That's next level. 

That’s really crappy.  There is a collector on the BL Nutters facebook group who did receive a copy, but due to poor packaging it was damaged.  

Another product of the tiny book print runs is that if a mistake is made with an order, they can’t do anything about it other than offering a refund.  No replacements.  

[Sothalor]

That's a good point. The way they're doing print releases leaves them razor thin margins for addressing any issues that crop up from a customer service angle.

And with the way online orders are prioritized now, there's more opportunity for things to go wrong - they're having to deal with who knows how many individual orders to pack and ship to individual addresses each release. Nothing malicious necessary, that's just the nature of the beast. 

[Knockagh]

@ A Melancholic Sanguinity , I’m gutted for you, that would make me very very cross. I’m sure they will do something for you but still a really poor show from GW.

 I’m awaiting the day we get a community release saying that ‘due to environmental stewardship policy we are ceasing paper books and producing digital copies only.’  While in the background you will hear the rumble of the plastic pellet machine.

[Sothalor]

9 hours ago, Knockagh said:

@ A Melancholic Sanguinity , I’m gutted for you, that would make me very very cross. I’m sure they will do something for you but still a really poor show from GW.

 I’m awaiting the day we get a community release saying that ‘due to environmental stewardship policy we are ceasing paper books and producing digital copies only.’  While in the background you will hear the rumble of the plastic pellet machine.

You know, I'm a bit of a neo-luddite who thinks humanity has doomed itself to a new dark age with our cheerful embrace of digital non-ownership, so if something like this happened, I would be irked.

But depending on how it happened, I think I'd actually respect GW a bit more (or "not-respect" them less?) if they actually put out a forthright statement about it - if it was a combination of paper scarcity (something that's been hitting all publishers), shipping costs and scheduling, etc. - and they actually directed people towards the Black Library site, made it clear that it's got the digital formats for their catalogue, and so on. It probably wouldn't hurt to maybe revamp the site, give it more granular and user-friendly breakdowns of series, authors, and such.

 

I want to compare dealing with Black Library releases with my experience backing a book about Chinese domestically-crafted handguns during the Warlord Era (it's a very niche topic). Throughout every step of the process the author and publisher have given updates on their struggles dealing with the incredible demand that printers have been facing, difficulties sourcing the paper they want to print the book on, not being able to print in China because some of the historical materials ran afoul of CCP approval, trying to find printers elsewhere, just a whole bunch of stuff.

Now, granted, this is a very small publisher with a different business model putting out a very different sort of book from BL's standard fare. But just the efforts and communication put into things like updating people on anticipated release dates, or wider industry issues with demand or materials, is such a far cry from the vacuum of information surrounding so many BL releases.

[Lord Nord in Gravis Armour]

17 hours ago, A Melancholic Sanguinity said:

Wow, I guess I spoke too soon about getting a copy. I ordered Dark City together with Twice-Dead King: Ruin. My order arrived today.

No Dark City. It's not even on the packing list of my order. Sent off an email to customer services with pics and receipts and everything, but... yeah.

Vaults of Terra is one of my favorite series in the 40k catalogue. I'd say The Dark City was one of my most anticipated books of the year, but that'd be a lie - BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T TELL CUSTOMERS THE DAMN THING WAS COMING. 

I mean, it was already ridiculous how quickly The Dark City went unavailable. But now even people who bought the bloody book aren't getting it? That's next level. 

That sucks. Especially for it to happen with the long-awaited book three of a great trilogy.

[theSpirea]

Recently saw The Nevernight Chronicle Collector's Edition Box Set by LitJoy and looking at the Warboss megabox for pretty much the same price. GW needs to up their game, their editions look like a joke next to LitJoy. Just to share what other companies can produce for the similar price tag.

[theSpirea]

Here's an interesting post I saw on FB

Quote

 

What’s going on with the availability of BL books?

I’ve just paid a visit to Waterstones in Manchester (I think it’s one of the biggest book stores in UK) and the range has slowly got smaller for years during my semi-frequent visits … but today I was confronted with this, barely two shelves of paperbacks and it’s a very random selection at that. No HH paperbacks whatsoever and a random selection of SoT.

Is this a deliberate move by GW to cajole people to buy directly from them? If so it seems shortsighted due to the lack of general exposure that their books now have in stores, limiting the ability of new fans to get involved.

If it’s an issue with general availability then that’s curious, as lots of other franchises here have a stacked collection!

 

More and more people are noticing it and are not happy about it (based on discussions under these comments).

It really does feel GW is "forcing" people to buy directly and ebooks. It's a bit sad tbh

[Kelborn]

Meanwhile In Germany, you can count yourself lucky if you got a single shelf filled with Warhammer related books. 

One has to wait for years until one gets the chance to purchase a book in their mothers tongue, which is flat out dumb, regardless of BL or other IPs.  

And because of that, your basically years behind and the available books are sporadic in variety. Which leaves you to buy from the Warhammer stores directly as already mentioned. 

Can't find the words for that...

[Ubiquitous1984]

4 hours ago, Kelborn said:

Meanwhile In Germany, you can count yourself lucky if you got a single shelf filled with Warhammer related books. 

One has to wait for years until one gets the chance to purchase a book in their mothers tongue, which is flat out dumb, regardless of BL or other IPs.  

And because of that, your basically years behind and the available books are sporadic in variety. Which leaves you to buy from the Warhammer stores directly as already mentioned. 

Can't find the words for that...

The facebook discussion that the picture is from has similar feedback from an Australian, saying that it's almost impossible to see any BL books in bookstores over there.

[Kenzaburo]

I don't get it either -  at least paperback editions used to be sorta easily available, but the pic posted is somewhat correct. A few years ago Mayer'sche (big book store chain in Germany) used to carry the whole primarch series, the latest few HH releases as well as recent 40k releases. I can't say if the change was caused by the less regular releases in german language. 

I mean, we know that some weird release policy is going on, because ADB said that his SoT novel has been done since last year, I had heard from a source that the releases for the primarch series had been unclear for some time until the series picked up again this year. I don't know, this is all weird. After the troubles at BL during mid-Heresy had been resolved I thought all might change for the better, but printing in China, Covid and maybe internal other stuff must have thrown everything of course. If we look at the SoT series, where they used to do good marketing attempts with those writer's room interviews and the like, they were off to a good start. And then it all petered out and now we can be lucky if Warhammer Community remembers that they can do an interview with 3 quick questions. But I'd also say that we have seen a decline in Warhammer Community's quality and overall strategy for a while - but this might not be the place to discuss that.

[aa.logan]

I think I’m resigned to there being no weekender again this year (the tickets have historically gone on sale in early August), but it would be nice if they communicated the fact that it wasn’t happening. 
 

Communication is key! 

[Ubiquitous1984]

7 minutes ago, aa.logan said:

I think I’m resigned to there being no weekender again this year (the tickets have historically gone on sale in early August), but it would be nice if they communicated the fact that it wasn’t happening. 
 

Communication is key! 

When was the last one … 2019?  Feels like a missed opportunity not running an event now that covid concerns have diminished.  Even if it was a smaller event than in previous years (perhaps a one-day event rather than a whole weekend?)

 

[aa.logan]

2 minutes ago, Ubiquitous1984 said:

When was the last one … 2019?  Feels like a missed opportunity not running an event now that covid concerns have diminished.  Even if it was a smaller event than in previous years (perhaps a one-day event rather than a whole weekend?)

 

This is what I mean; I’ve been assuming that 2020 didn’t have one because of Covid, but maybe they weren’t planning to put one on anyway- there has been no mention of it anywhere- but why not tell people either way? It makes no sense to me.

[Lord_Ikka]

This is pretty depressing reading. I'm not a consumer of hardback or paperback books- I work at night on a computer so ebooks are a life-saver (and the way I've been able to introduce a bunch of people to 40k), but reading through this thread has been severely disappointing. I've seen the lack of books at my local Barnes and Noble, there used to be two full shelves of GW stuff (around forty novels) and now I think I saw maybe seven books when I went in two weeks ago.

I know that BL isn't their main focus, but they have to recognize at some point that BL is one of the main drivers for the expansion of their brand. People who don't want to spend 50 bucks on a squad of models will gladly spend money on books to pass the time. The prices have always been ridiculous, but I didn't realize the stupid way they are now running the print sizes. Wow.

Any hope of change with the new head writer, or is that just going to be something that will effect codices/TT stuff?

On 7/29/2022 at 1:59 PM, A Melancholic Sanguinity said:

I want to compare dealing with Black Library releases with my experience backing a book about Chinese domestically-crafted handguns during the Warlord Era (it's a very niche topic). Throughout every step of the process the author and publisher have given updates on their struggles dealing with the incredible demand that printers have been facing, difficulties sourcing the paper they want to print the book on, not being able to print in China because some of the historical materials ran afoul of CCP approval, trying to find printers elsewhere, just a whole bunch of stuff.

Ian from Forgotten Weapons book? Nice!

[cheywood]

39 minutes ago, Lord_Ikka said:

Any hope of change with the new head writer, or is that just going to be something that will effect codices/TT stuff?

Wade Pryce seems like a great guy, and hopefully his love of Black Library results in some cool studio/author collaborations, but as far as I know he has no control over GW’s business decisions, let alone BL’s.

[Knockagh]

On 8/15/2022 at 7:25 PM, theSpirea said:

Recently saw The Nevernight Chronicle Collector's Edition Box Set by LitJoy and looking at the Warboss megabox for pretty much the same price. GW needs to up their game, their editions look like a joke next to LitJoy. Just to share what other companies can produce for the similar price tag.

That is a lovely looking collection of books. I agree, the warboss box set looks terrible. Like something my 9 year old would want. At £90 it’s pretty pathetic. The Vincula insurgency was a wonderful in world set that properly added value and depth to the setting. I can pay for that, this is just plastic tat. 
GW seem set on putting gaming accessories in with these box sets too. Most hardened BL fans I know rarely if ever play and couldn’t care less about cheaply made dice sets.

[Kenzaburo]

I found the plastic ork teeth to be way more tacky than the dice. I'd rather have a lavish makeover for the book itself with a nice cover and high production values and something like author annotations than this plastic merchandise stuff that has no place or use on my bookshelf (or anywhere else really). Things like that Space Wolf Annulus coaster are better, if you really must add things like these.

BL wants to sell collector's editions as if they were video games. That's where all those cheap give-aways come from. It's as if they haven't realized that the target audience for LE books is, well, book afficionados. I don't need a statue, dice (got plenty of those) or teeth.

[Knockagh]

The plastic teeth are definitely a low point in GW stupidity 

[Taliesin]

On 8/18/2022 at 9:29 AM, aa.logan said:

I think I’m resigned to there being no weekender again this year (the tickets have historically gone on sale in early August), but it would be nice if they communicated the fact that it wasn’t happening. 
 

Communication is key! 

I had been hoping it would take place this year. I personally thought 2021 was an option but surely this year it could be done, with Europe having largely or even fully returned to its pre-covid ways. We assumed that Covid was why they stopped doing it the last 2 years and thats probably true, but why not have it this year? 

Especially as other events have returned from GW. There was a physical Warhammerfest too.

[theSpirea]

Josh Reynolds posted an interesting tweets:

Quote

Ah, Black Library royalties day. Once again, Soul Wars is  the best seller, somehow outstripping the Fulgrim primarchs novel and all three Fabius Bile novels in sales.

Also, Spear of Shadows has started to earn some royalties after a good long while. That pleases me to no end. Thus far, all of my AoS novels, save for Black Pyramid and Dark Harvest, have earned out their advances. And those two aren't far off.

 

[DarkChaplain]

Dark Harvest makes me a little sad. It was such a fantastic novel. Still, they did it dirty by delaying the audiobook for months without saying a thing about it.

Black Pyramid is also notable for not having received an audiobook, despite Plague Garden and the previous Hallowed Knights stories from the Realmgate Wars having had them.

Frankly, I'm still gutted that the Eight Lamentations series got canned with his departure, and it's the reason I haven't read Spear of Shadows yet. Everything AoS he's written has been a delight in one way or another - even when the world was ill-defined and blunt, with obvious model selling aims in the first year, Josh's characters carried the setting. Hard. Gardus of the Steel Soul in particular has been such a big thing, he received a model(!).

 

...man, I wish Josh was going to write for BL again, even if it's just to finish some stories the way he wanted to...

[System Sound]

They definitely lost one of their best writers. Fabius Bile trilogy alone is fantastic. Shame it's not selling as well. 

Surprised to see that AoS sales are picking up though.

[Kelborn]

Compared with 40k or HH, the amount of AoS novels I  direct comparison are a joke.

People, who got all the new ones, go back and read the older ones simply because of the lack of content.

I, myself, went back to older audios because I had caught up on everything new. 

Yes, we did have four new novels in the last two months but still... it's continued to be treated as the unwanted step child, imho.

[byrd9999]

3 hours ago, DarkChaplain said:

Dark Harvest makes me a little sad. It was such a fantastic novel. Still, they did it dirty by delaying the audiobook for months without saying a thing about it.

Black Pyramid is also notable for not having received an audiobook, despite Plague Garden and the previous Hallowed Knights stories from the Realmgate Wars having had them.

Frankly, I'm still gutted that the Eight Lamentations series got canned with his departure, and it's the reason I haven't read Spear of Shadows yet. Everything AoS he's written has been a delight in one way or another - even when the world was ill-defined and blunt, with obvious model selling aims in the first year, Josh's characters carried the setting. Hard. Gardus of the Steel Soul in particular has been such a big thing, he received a model(!).

 

...man, I wish Josh was going to write for BL again, even if it's just to finish some stories the way he wanted to...

I'm not a massive fan of Josh Reynolds' work in 40k, but he is/was the best AOS writer in the BL stable. Something about his characters & tone & setting really clicks with me for AOS.

[byrd9999]

Not wishing to rehash old debates, but is there any way for Josh to return to Black Library? Can we do something to help?

I suspect some bridges may have been burned, but maybe time has healed some wounds...?