Black Library and their flaws

[cheywood]

11 minutes ago, Kelborn said:

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.

At least this year has seen almost double the number of AOS releases as last year, and most of them have been pretty good!

In general BL’s release schedule has been a little more abundant this year.

[Sothalor]

19 minutes ago, Kelborn said:

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.

The AoS novels don't historically sell as well as 40k, a trend observable in how frequently new releases rapidly sell out for the latter whilst hanging around for the former.

There are, of course, multifarious reasons for such.

And this isn't (just) an issue of corporate direction or marketing - consider, for a moment, if you were a professional author who had to, oh put food on the table. There are definite market forces that incentivize producing for one over the other.

[Felix Antipodes]

Must say I’ve never been able to get into the setting, even when the authors have been good.  Just haven’t been able to get my head around the background.

[DarkChaplain]

I don't blame you. The first year in particular was very, very difficult, as basically nothing had been clearly charted until 2nd edition, and even then it was more fundamental stuff about the setting than actual, tangible stuff.

However, I'd still highly recommend the Warhammer Horror novels set in the setting, including Josh's Dark Harvest and Werner's Castle of Blood, or the recent Gothgul Hollow by Anna Stephens.

Frankly, you need pretty much nothing to go into these. They draw their settings well enough, and you get the gist of the (mostly realm-related) terminology the same way you would learn about Scadrial in the original Mistborn trilogy. They're extremely approachable works, as Crime tends to be.

Dark Harvest in particular draws up a really messy, gritty community in the swamps, with their harvest festivals and corruption and all, that feels oppressive and generally dense. Castle of Blood is a character-driven haunted castle survival story and Gothgul Hollow is about a family haunted by some ghastly apparition trying to fulfill some curse, with the protagonist and her father, his priest-friend and a hired hunter try to escape or beat the curse somehow.
Again, the AoS-specific aspects are incredibly negligible - you need never have touched a Battletome.

The short stories are a bit of a different beast, because they have a lot less room to navigate and build their settings, so they have to resort to shorthands.

But the Warhammer Horror novels? Across both settings, I don't think there was one I outright disliked, even though I wasn't particularly fond of Kyme's zombie novel, Sepulturum. But then, I don't like zombies in the first place.

Still, it pisses me off that BL are so unreliable about backing up Warhammer Horror with announcements and shelf-presence. The haywire approach to what gets paperbacks and what is stuck in hardback forever, or until omnibus'd (which has yet to happen for anything besides the Genevieve reprints) has proven frustrating as balls.

[Slave to Darkness]

On 8/30/2022 at 5:57 PM, byrd9999 said:

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...?

I think theres more chance of Dave Mustane rejoining Metallica, or me starting Primaris Ultramarines. 

[Kelborn]

Quick reminder that if you want to talk about AoS novels, etc. please do so via the pm system.

[Noserenda]

Quick note on shelf space, went into Waterstones and Forbidden planet the other day as i had to kill some time in town and both had only half a shelf of random Black library books, mostly Siege of Terra ones and the most recent general releases. The Forbidden planet in particular used to devote an entire bookshelf to GW stuff, which is now general tie ins, though the shelf below is all 40k action figures.

[Sothalor]

My observation about my local retail book store has been that they don't carry new hardcover BL releases - barring maybe Siege of Terra.

They carry a scattered selection of almost entirely trade paperback releases with seemingly little rhyme or reason. And there's more AoS stuff on the shelf than 40K.

It almost makes me suspect that they're just getting sent the dregs of what doesn't sell from GW's own warehouse stock, like a form of trickle-down book distribution. (Note: I am not making a definitive claim that this is the case, just that my local book store gives me that impression. I have no idea what other stocking/selection/distribution/supply chain/logistical issues may play into this state of affairs.)

[Ubiquitous1984]

To be fair I made a rare visit to my local Warhammer store yesterday, and their hardback selection was dire.  I think I saw one copy of Blood of the Emperor and one copy of Outgunned … and that was it.  The rest were an odd mush-mash of paperback books.

Edited September 1, 2022 by Ubiquitous1984

[theSpirea]

It's the same for me. Not that long ago I was able to buy most of the BL books in regular bookstores, now they don't even have paperbacks. FLGS I rarely visit have barely anything (one of the reasons I don't go there anymore since I'm not in interested in the tabletop/miniatures).

Seeing Josh's post Soul Wars is still selling pretty good, it's all/majority must be e-books/audios since even the paperback sold out years ago. It's a bit sad, having the physical copies in bookstores would surely help the sells even more.

[Knockagh]

2 hours ago, Ubiquitous1984 said:

To be fair I made a rare visit to my local Warhammer store yesterday, and their hardback selection was dire.  I think I saw one copy of Blood of the Emperor and one copy of Outgunned … and that was it.  The rest were an odd mush-mash of paperback books.

Finding the same. I was at my local Games Workshop in Belfast last week and was really surprised at how the Black Library section had shrunk. Although I cannot remember when I last bought a BL book in an actual store myself. I was only in because I had bought and painted up a Warmaster Titan over the summer and I wanted a few colours to finish. I looked round while I was in for other titanicus models and there were none. The store manager said they don’t stock them. So it’s not just books that aren’t there. Seemingly if it’s not core 40K or AoS it online purchase only.

[kamedake88]

A little bit of Threadnomancy here as I agree with theSpirea on this being the appropriate thread for this topic. (Please take this with a grain of salt, I do not have time currently to research all of GWs corporate structure and some of what I am talking about may have already happened internally and I am unaware of it)

 

I will start off by saying that in my non-Warhammer life I am an accountant by trade (not a CPA) mind you think more corporate bean counter except the pen that I wield writes out the doom of your company. What I do makes the guys at the IRS quiver a little, think the ordo sinister in that one Heresy novel. So I have experience with the forensics if you will on why companies fail and how.  But I digress. Warhammer as a hobby and whatever holding company owns all the various arms of the hobby is in a fine state to weather the coming economic storm that is going to put the hammer to luxury goods in a way we haven't seen since the 1970s (a topic for another thread on a different forum). In short plastic crack will sell like the drug it is, the hobby tools and paints on the other hand won't which is going to be interesting to see being that paints are a complementary good with substitutes etc but that is basic economics. 

 

On to Black Library, and most of this is a guess but from wider trends in the overall print industry (I'm sitting in a major textbook publishers cafeteria writing this) spells doom for the subsidiary as a separate entity all together. I expect GW sometime next year (mid Q1 after Christmas) to go through a corporate restructuring or at least make the one that is happening currently, if it is, public. While I don't see Forgeworld and Black Library being liquidated ( a messy process with lots of legal fees etc) I don't see their respective product lines staying their own. Now what does this mean for the consumer? Well not much change will be apparent. Pay attention to the copyright page in next years releases and compare the contents to older books. If there is a change in trademark then there is your sign. Which brings me to the actual meat of this topic. 

 

Is Black Library profitable, yes but no. It is in that I guarantee you GW gets its pound of flesh from every book sold but they know the goose that laid the golden egg that was the heresy is coming to an end and all the artificial expansion of Black Library that entailed is going to have to be trimmed to pre-heresy levels. I am old enough to remember when Black Library only put out a dozen or so books a year and that was a banner year.  Also remember the pound during the last 20 years was one of the strongest currencies on earth. No longer and the hatches must be battened down now and I know the board at GW knows this as well. I will leave it to you, whomever reads this, to sus-out the details on this as I don't have much more time to write this post but hey the bright side of this is while we may have a vastly reduced book count what we might get is things of a higher quality. 

[cheywood]

Very interesting analysis. One thing to note is that, internally, GW already tried and failed to merge BL with its publications division some years back. ADB and Abnett have talked about it briefly. Supposedly it wasn’t universally bad, but it was a big factor in why Abnett left for a few years and releases became very connected to whatever the new models were. The renaissance we’ve seen over the past 5-6 years is pretty closely tied to BL getting more independence as I understand it.

 

Edit: personally I think we’ve already seen the biggest change: low print runs and lots of special editions. BL is comparatively low earning and low cost. Why not keep up the output for promotional/relational purposes but maximize profit margins on every sale?

Edited November 14, 2022 by cheywood

[Sothalor]

Could you expand on what you mean by "doom for the subsidiary as a separate entity"? 

 

I'm struggling to see how Black Library is separate from Games Workshop as a corporate entity. All of its products are tie-ins to GW core product lines and brands. Its products are sold through the Games Workshop webstore. It uses the Games Workshop digital infrastructure for marketing and communications (such as it is ).

 

What exactly would be different in your scenario? What are the wider trends in the print industry that you've observed?

[System Sound]

My theory is that due to Brexit and high import fees they cut the prints runs so drastically, since most of the stuff GW and BL printed was from China.

Now we saw that a few recent novels were printed in the UK. Although at poor quality. Maybe this is a sign that they are willing to print in the home turf to lower the costs?

 

While this doesn't explain all of the myriad issues BL has, it would explain the low Print runs. Well that and them probably trying to push the consumer towards ebooks, on witch they probably get a higher profit cut.

[kamedake88]

1 hour ago, Sothalor said:

Could you expand on what you mean by "doom for the subsidiary as a separate entity"? 

 

I'm struggling to see how Black Library is separate from Games Workshop as a corporate entity. All of its products are tie-ins to GW core product lines and brands. Its products are sold through the Games Workshop webstore. It uses the Games Workshop digital infrastructure for marketing and communications (such as it is ).

 

What exactly would be different in your scenario? What are the wider trends in the print industry that you've observed?

 

Absolutely and it's a great question. Please remember that I am approaching this topic as an accountant and not a consumer and as such the reasons are all revenue and tax based, though I am American and have scant knowledge on business law and policy for a company operating on British soil as a British entity, though I do believe they are broadly the same as American businesses.

 

Having a subsidiary is just as it sounds, a business is owning another business, just because infrastructure is shared between the two or more entities doesn't mean they are not separate especially in terms of accounting. GAAP states that I keep the entities separate in their totality and for all intents and purposes they are. Meaning they also incur expenses and revenues apart from GW on the back end. Meaning a novel sold on GW's webstore is still entered into BLs books and not GWs.

 

If I'm on a board of a company and I receive reports that a wing of my business is doing poorly, the last thing I want to hear is, 'okay but everything else is profitable so it can cover for it'. This is a common point of thought and I have seen officers of companies fired on the spot for suggesting as much. (No I am not kidding). It's also terrible for stock price and a multitude of other factors. But here is the kicker covering for the bad part of the business is what has to happen. How does a business facilitate for that? In a variety of ways, merger, acquisition, dissolution sale, lay-offs. Also please note, a business can be profitable and still be doing poorly and we in the economics world have a bunch of formulas and graphs that tell us these things. 

 

As to the wider trends in print media, it's dead and the body looks like it is breathing but really it's maggots. Millennials don't read and Zoomers can't  and for nigh on two decades the print industry as a whole has seen a shrinkage of near on 2/3rds. This has been mollified by eBooks, audiobooks and other things but the future of the written word is niche and cheap. What does that mean from a business and accounting prospective? No to little new investment. What does this mean for Black Library? Sell the suckers that make up my ever shrinking customer base the same book five different ways to cook the books as it were.  Honestly I'm surprised BL hasn't gone into lending money as a way to keep the lights on like every other business in the world. Did you know you can get a loan from state farm? I could write a dissertation on this... actually I might. 

Edited November 14, 2022 by kamedake88

[kamedake88]

2 hours ago, cheywood said:

Very interesting analysis. One thing to note is that, internally, GW already tried and failed to merge BL with its publications division some years back. ADB and Abnett have talked about it briefly. Supposedly it wasn’t universally bad, but it was a big factor in why Abnett left for a few years and releases became very connected to whatever the new models were. The renaissance we’ve seen over the past 5-6 years is pretty closely tied to BL getting more independence as I understand it.

 

Edit: personally I think we’ve already seen the biggest change: low print runs and lots of special editions. BL is comparatively low earning and low cost. Why not keep up the output for promotional/relational purposes but maximize profit margins on every sale?

 

I didn't know GW tried to actually eat Black Library, interesting. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall at those meetings. If it didn't succeed... I'll need to think on this point and I'll get back to you with what I find. 

 

As to the edit portion of your comment. You are thinking as a consumer or a laymen sir and bless you for it because it means you still have a soul. Once you start thinking as a middle manager who has to report to the CEO  and the board then you will get it. See my above post as to why. To summarize though, it's all about growth. Just because something is low cost ( I doubt this to be very honest) and low earning ( this I agree with) doesn't mean it is immune from good business practice.  Bob over there in the GW bull pen has to make sure that line goes up and not by a little or its his ass. 

 

Also remember I am not foretelling the end of novelization or a stop to Warhammer fiction, I am talking about how does GW parent company deal with an subsidiary that may or may not be preforming properly. Special editions and whatever else you can dream up as a sales tactic are all bandaid solutions of the desperate.  The board needs to see growth or else they're going to say what's the point then. 

Edited November 14, 2022 by kamedake88

[Sothalor]

Do you have any idea if subsidiaries would be kept separate in earnings reports to shareholders/investors and the like?

 

The GW annual reports have historically included Forge World and Black Library earnings, and the language in the reports doesn't appear to make any particular distinction between them and "core" operations - Games Workshop just seems to consider it all under their monolith. As I recall, Black Library sales typically comprise one to three percent of GW's annual revenue. It's historically been a tiny portion of GW's revenue.

[kamedake88]

10 minutes ago, Sothalor said:

Do you have any idea if subsidiaries would be kept separate in earnings reports to shareholders/investors and the like?

 

The GW annual reports have historically included Forge World and Black Library earnings, and the language in the reports doesn't appear to make any particular distinction between them and "core" operations - Games Workshop just seems to consider it all under their monolith. As I recall, Black Library sales typically comprise one to three percent of GW's annual revenue. It's historically been a tiny portion of GW's revenue.

 

Another outstanding point. Because GW owns Black Library and Forgeworld, these two entities only need to report to the parent entity legally (in the U.S.) and the parent entity can show the figure of the subsidiaries as assets accounts. Their ledgers are private even to stockholders so we have to trust the veracity of the information they release during their earnings calls etc. Again they are a British company and subject to that nations laws so I don't know what they are actually required to report to the shareholders. I have looked at GW financial statements  edit: earnings reports, and they are run of the mill but I have never put much "stock" in them because they really don't tell me the actual health of the company. I would need to see an Audit report to do that. 

Edited November 14, 2022 by kamedake88

[cheywood]

45 minutes ago, kamedake88 said:

As to the edit portion of your comment. You are thinking as a consumer or a laymen sir and bless you for it because it means you still have a soul. Once you start thinking as a middle manager who has to report to the CEO  and the board then you will get it. See my above post as to why. To summarize though, it's all about growth. Just because something is low cost ( I doubt this to be very honest) and low earning ( this I agree with) doesn't mean it is immune from good business practice.  Bob over there in the GW bull pen has to make sure that line goes up and not by a little or its his ass. 

 

Also remember I am not foretelling the end of novelization or a stop to Warhammer fiction, I am talking about how does GW parent company deal with an subsidiary that may or may not be preforming properly. Special editions and whatever else you can dream up as a sales tactic are all bandaid solutions of the desperate.  The board needs to see growth or else they're going to say what's the point then. 

That all makes sense, even if it comes across a little patronizing. I’ve always understood BL to function more as advertising than a profit source for GW. It represents a pittance of total profits either way, but its creations have a significant impact on the setting from a promotional aspect and represent a good way to generate popular IP for future exploitation in other mediums. The books are ‘advertising that pays for itself’. However I have no idea what thinking holds sway in GW.

Edited November 14, 2022 by cheywood

[kamedake88]

Didn't mean it to sound patronizing and the snark was meant seriously. Sometimes I wish those mired in middle management and officership roles at companies thought like consumers. 

[cheywood]

4 minutes ago, kamedake88 said:

Didn't mean it to sound patronizing and the snark was meant seriously. Sometimes I wish those mired in middle management and officership roles at companies thought like consumers. 

No worries, text can make it hard to read tone! It probably is naive of me to think they’ll keep output the same even if GW does view it more as an advertising arm than a profit source.

Edited November 14, 2022 by cheywood

[chevalierdulys]

First of all thank you for reading the post.

I've been buying BL novels since 2003. I purchased via BL website back in the day then in 2010 or so, I started buying bia bookdepository since the price there was cheaper than BL website (never understood that logic). I am not an account but I have a bit of OCD and even keep the price of the novels in a sheet, with everything related to them. I've got 812 BL novels plus all published by Boxtree so Before-BL was a thing. Most of them paperback  & Masspaperback and like 50 hardcovers. I don't have that many special editions, 4 old ones Aurelian, Iron Warrior, Daenatyos & Bloodhanded. I recently purchased Dark Imperium. Sorry divagating.. I was saying about bookdepository - Umremembered Empire cost me 6.89, Path of Archon 6.59 (when the price tag in BL was 9.99-- but that's beside the point. What I can had of value is this... In the olde days they published like 3 novels per month (almost continuaisly for years then they changed practicse. Focus on special editions, focus on ebooks and now audiobooks. The paper has been neglected. I don't know the volumes but I bet most people wouldn't pay 30€ for audiobook when they can purchase the novel for 12€. And what about ebooks 11€ ? What - Makes no sense. These prices makes no sense. 

 

Well but now I am pissed as I am writing this, maybe it's karma. I bought awakanenings on the 8/11/2022 and was pending until today. As I am writing this they sent me an email saying "Your order has been cancelled - sorry!"

 

Your order has been cancelled, Paulo Sergio. 

Order number xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Order Date: 11/8/2022 
Your order has now been cancelled, and here are the details to keep to hand:
Delivery Address    Delivery Method    Billing Method
Tracked - 9 Working Days Delivery is free for orders totalling more than 50€. This is a tracked service that operates Monday to Friday.     PayPal 
Your order has now been cancelled. Here are the details to keep to hand and we hope you’ll visit us again soon at www.games-workshop.com.
If these details aren’t right, or you have any further questions, please contact our customer services team. Please do not reply to this email, responses sent are not monitored.
Here's what was cancelled:
 

So no explanation, nada. Sorry! What a frag? Men if In my line of work I said to any client that purchased something - We cancelled - Sorry! without any explanation my boss would be on my hears shouting until her veins pop out. Why to treat a costumer. This is bullmanure... 

 

Edit: Just sent an email asking for the reason behind and complaining that's not how you treat your costumers. you know? The people who make possible you have food on the table and continue to produce more games and books? Yeah those pesky unimportant people.

Edited November 14, 2022 by chevalierdulys

[Noserenda]

I may have missed it, but what accounting advantage does GW gain by removing Black library but still producing fiction under its own label exactly?

Working off those annual reports logically it wasnt the Horus Heresy novel series that boosted black library, they are definitely high sellers but the sheer numbers of GW customers are going to be a much more persuasive argument to support more books. If the Heresy series was really supporting the whole of BL they wouldnt end it, just spin off into a Scouring or Great Crusade series and keep the money printer going brrrrt surely?

[Casual Heresy]

15 hours ago, kamedake88 said:

As to the wider trends in print media, it's dead and the body looks like it is breathing but really it's maggots. Millennials don't read and Zoomers can't  and for nigh on two decades the print industry as a whole has seen a shrinkage of near on 2/3rds. This has been mollified by eBooks, audiobooks and other things but the future of the written word is niche and cheap. What does that mean from a business and accounting prospective? No to little new investment. What does this mean for Black Library? Sell the suckers that make up my ever shrinking customer base the same book five different ways to cook the books as it were.  Honestly I'm surprised BL hasn't gone into lending money as a way to keep the lights on like every other business in the world. Did you know you can get a loan from state farm? I could write a dissertation on this... actually I might. 

 

As someone working in publishing just now, I would dispute this (at least for the UK). Print is nowhere near dead, as Nielsen's 2022 first-half market report showing record breaking print sales, attests to. Profits are always low in publishing due to low margins (thanks Amazon), but while ebook sales have generally stagnated over the past few years, print sales have actually grown.

 

BL has all the same problems as any other publisher right now (low margins on book sales, sky-high paper prices, etc), but it has always struggled to engage with the wider industry its actually part of.  They keep trying to sell books as GW does models, which works on us as collectors invested in the IP, but dosen't get them a wider audience of people. 

 

You are probably right in regards to GW needing to see growth. I think BL has continually shot itself in the foot, by only using GW stores as its primary market. Their initial sales on a title are always low because hardbacks are exclusive to GW shops in most cases. They aren't really developing a secondary market in bookshops and among audiences that don't play the games. They don't engage with the wider industry through external reviews or previews in things like the Bookseller, which is vital for other publishers as a source of free (or low cost) advertising (the closest I've seen is First Wall popping up in the top 50 one week, which is based on sales data, not anything BL did). It's a vicious cycle that has led us to where we are now.