Dark hunters - umbra susmus

[Martin]

I have a copy of paul kearneys book dark hunters -umbra sumus. 
i have been told it’s quite rare. 
does anybody the forum know how much it’s worth

[Nagashsnee]

Wrong place for this sort of thing, there are some great FB based BL sale groups tho that will give you appraisals. 

[Ubiquitous1984]

Please DO NOT list it on the facebook group black library sales.  It's full of scalpers and sharks who will low ball you.

 

Please visit Black Library Nutters on facebook who recently sold a copy of the same book for a four-figure sum.

 

I have send you a PM with further details.  

[aa.logan]

More pertinently, is it any good?

[Ubiquitous1984]

4 hours ago, aa.logan said:

More pertinently, is it any good?

Liam, who has a copy on Black Library Nutters has read it and his opinion was it’s not very good.  I believe there is a .pdf version floating around if you are so inclined.  

[kamedake88]

I liked it for what it was. But it reads like the military book it was plagiarized from hence why I liked it.  

[aa.logan]

It was one of the Henry Zhou books that was withdrawn because of plagiarism, no? I quite enjoyed what he was doing with that trilogy.

 

the Dark Hunter book(s) were pulled due to a competing name/prior copyright claim to ‘Dark Hunters’ or some such.

 

Never thought to seek it out, maybe I will one day- it’s quite the curio

Edited March 20, 2023 by aa.logan

[cheywood]

17 minutes ago, kamedake88 said:

I liked it for what it was. But it reads like the military book it was plagiarized from hence why I liked it.  

That’s Henry Zhou you’re thinking of. Kearney’s never been accused of plagiarism as far as I know. As @aa.logan said Dark Hunters was pulled because Sherrilyn Kenyon, a popular writer of paranormal romance, had a long running series called ‘Dark Hunter’ and threatened to sue. The whole thing seems kind of ridiculous given how generic the titles are. Funnily enough, a family member gave me one of her books as a Christmas present long ago. It was a portal fantasy I believe, but most of the word count was dedicated to an entirely different sort of fantasizing. I don’t think I made it more than a couple chapters.

[DarkChaplain]

3 hours ago, Ubiquitous1984 said:

Liam, who has a copy on Black Library Nutters has read it and his opinion was it’s not very good.  I believe there is a .pdf version floating around if you are so inclined.  

 

Not even a PDF, but the proper ebook release (epub and mobi) got out somehow back in the day!

 

Putting on my tinfoil hat, I would not be surprised if it was an actually staff or author leak, because they knew they wouldn't be able to sell it anymore and were not going to risk the lawsuit (which they'd have obviously won, with how ridiculously frivolous the claim was in the first place - but it's money they'd have to put forward first). They wrote the whole thing off and while it's never going to be confirmed one way or another, I can see them deliberately turning a blind eye to whoever decided to unleash it into the wilds.

 

But yeah, it exists, it's out there, and that means it's neither necessary to spend four digits on one of the few print copies in circulations, and it will never actually be lost to the warp as a work in the overall (black) library. In a sense, it's abandonware.

[Martin]

I was contacted by one of the moderators from black library nutters. He said there were only 5 known copis of the book so that makes mine number 6. Still dont know if i should sell it

[kamedake88]

5 hours ago, aa.logan said:

It was one of the Henry Zhou books that was withdrawn because of plagiarism, no? I quite enjoyed what he was doing with that trilogy.

 

the Dark Hunter book(s) were pulled due to a competing name/prior copyright claim to ‘Dark Hunters’ or some such.

 

Never thought to seek it out, maybe I will one day- it’s quite the curio

 

5 hours ago, cheywood said:

That’s Henry Zhou you’re thinking of. Kearney’s never been accused of plagiarism as far as I know. As @aa.logan said Dark Hunters was pulled because Sherrilyn Kenyon, a popular writer of paranormal romance, had a long running series called ‘Dark Hunter’ and threatened to sue. The whole thing seems kind of ridiculous given how generic the titles are. Funnily enough, a family member gave me one of her books as a Christmas present long ago. It was a portal fantasy I believe, but most of the word count was dedicated to an entirely different sort of fantasizing. I don’t think I made it more than a couple chapters.

 

Ah, apologies, I've read nearing on four hundred BL books and works over the years and some the vagaries are becoming just that.

[Ubiquitous1984]

9 hours ago, Martin said:

I was contacted by one of the moderators from black library nutters. He said there were only 5 known copis of the book so that makes mine number 6. Still dont know if i should sell it

It's the most prized 40k book for the whale collectors.  So whatever you decide to do, you're sitting pretty!  

[Nineswords]

On 3/20/2023 at 3:58 PM, aa.logan said:

More pertinently, is it any good?

 

It's a great read, yeah. Wish I had gotten my hands on a physical copy when it came out.

[Nagashsnee]

Why did they just not re name the book and put it out as a ebook or something?

[phandaal]

On 3/20/2023 at 7:24 PM, DarkChaplain said:

they knew they wouldn't be able to sell it anymore and were not going to risk the lawsuit (which they'd have obviously won, with how ridiculously frivolous the claim was in the first place - but it's money they'd have to put forward first).

 

Some years back I looked this up out of curiosity. Not sure GW actually would have won this lawsuit. The author of those Dark Hunter novels has a massive following and has written dozens of books and short stories for her series... could have ended up eating away GW's profits for the novel and maybe exposing GW to more lawsuits for other names.

[Dumah]

On 3/20/2023 at 11:58 AM, aa.logan said:

More pertinently, is it any good?

 

I have to be honest: I found it straight-up painful to read. I don't think he really got Space Marines and his unfamiliarity with the setting at large was glaring.

[System Sound]

10 hours ago, Nagashsnee said:

Why did they just not re name the book and put it out as a ebook or something?

Probably a full rewritte would have to be done. Since the Chapter in question were the Dark Hunters. The name that copyright dispute was about.

[DarkChaplain]

The Dark Hunters have never disappeared from fluff and have existed for 20 years. Kenyon's first (dreadful) first Dark Hunter novel came around in 2009 iirc. That's already after they had a Codex showcasing in 5th edition and even that was years after they'd been in How to Paint Space Marines as one of the many Chapters included.

 

They've also been featured again in the White Scars Codex Supplement in 2019, 4 years after Umbra Sumus was canned.

 

At the end of the day, the dispute had even less leg to stand on than GW trying to have "Spot the Space Marine" pulled. They're neither in the same genre, nor do they have the same audience, nor is it an exact match in series title. On top of that, it's two utterly generic words strung together, something that would be extremely difficult to defend in instances like these. There's also no intent of copying the existing brand or trying to confuse customers that could ever be sufficiently proven in court.

 

Copyright law is a tad more complex than what is generally assumed, but a lot of claims being made wouldn't hold up under scrutiny and are just used to cow the other side, or automatically handled by companies like Google who comply with DMCA not on a case-by-case basis, but by turning the burden of proof onto the accused, rather than the accuser having to hand in proper paperwork. It's why Youtube has been such a disaster for years and years when it comes to copyright strikes. Companies will wash their hands of the subject if they can, and the accused rarely has the competence, time or indeed money to go up against it - and "copyright trolls" know it. They've even made a business out of that.

 

I'm not even sure this case would even have qualified as a "copyright dispute" in the first place, rather than a trademark one. Which would have been even less stable in court.

 

GW just decided to give up on it and write it off. The advance likely wasn't large enough to bother with it further, it was the first book in an intended series (with only one or two short stories published beforehand (which are still part of the ebooks of their respective anthologies, btw) and it'd have tied up the legal team for a while. Full production doesn't appear to have started at the time, unless they literally threw hundreds or thousands of copies into the recycler.

 

It was also back in 2015, the dawn of a dark time that I think many of us remember, when the focus at BL clearly wasn't on authors and creative exploits, but on their books being an extension of the marketing department. Many stories at the time were direct tie-ins to model releases with little to no substance in themselves, unless the authors went ahead and bent the rules a little (like Fehervari did with Vanguard, for example, which was also far beyond the commissioned word count; it was almost closer to a novella than a short). Most releases at the time were either finishing what the authors had started or anthologies/omnibuses iirc, or model tie-ins. Many high-profile authors dropped off around that time, with some having commented on that era.

 

Not hard to believe that GW/BL at the time weren't up for fighting a legal battle over a freelance author's first full-length work for them (even if he's written novels before BL). The process could've dragged for a while and bound resources that far outstripped the income generated by a novel about a so-far barely covered Chapter. Had it been Abnett, though, or AD-B? I'm pretty certain they'd have made the effort, with how many sales they tend to pull in.

[aa.logan]

3 hours ago, DarkChaplain said:

 

 

Full production doesn't appear to have started at the time, unless they literally threw hundreds or thousands of copies into the recycler.

Actually, I think it may have been a case of that. I was searching through my emails the other day looking to confirm the number of Weekender editions printed of the Heresy graphic novel when I saw this in an old BL newsletter (4th February, 2015)- featuring a link to an interview with the author and promotion for the book which they still seemed intent on releasing in the next 2 days…

 

 

Further research (searching my old emails) reveals this from a fortnight earlier- they were going *big* on the book, billing them as “your new favourite chapter” and releasing audiobook as well as hardback and ebook versions, so a fair bit of investment there-

Edited March 23, 2023 by aa.logan

[chevalierdulys]

But why not changing the name of the chapter and be done with it? They had spent the money on the author (and probably printing novels) it's kind of strange... my question is even another.. how can anyone copyright a name like? Everytime of names have been talk and spoken in all millions of books that exist. Every kind of mix names exists, inclduing dark angels (this is so banal) how can anyone say I copyrite dark hunters you can't use that? makes no sense lol Imagine Tolkien saying ok, I am copyrighting orcs, elves, eldar dwarves etc ( I know he didn't invented the names but.. you know what I mean) It's almost comical

[Dzirhan]

On 3/21/2023 at 9:37 AM, Martin said:

I was contacted by one of the moderators from black library nutters. He said there were only 5 known copis of the book so that makes mine number 6. Still dont know if i should sell it

Not sure if there are only five known copies, I picked up my copy off the shelf just after it was supposed to come out at a game shop in Singapore and I doubt the store then had only just the one copy I bought before I got there 

 

Edited March 23, 2023 by Dzirhan

[Felix Antipodes]

I guess GW/BL’s reasons for binning this instead of fighting the dubious copyright/trademark claim will remain a mystery (at least until someone involved in this retires and writes their memoirs) but I’m mystified that a company as famously litigious as GW rolled over and took the hit.  Was this before or after the Chapterhouse decision?  If after it may explain their reticence to return to the courts.

 

If it came down to trademark issue on the Dark Hunters name, BL could have removed it from the cover dress and still used it within the novel, without issue.  I feel @DarkChaplain may have the right of it and the author’s standing within the BL stable of creatives at the time was the reason.  This would not have been the case if it was Abnett or one of their other cash cows.  I wonder what the author himself thought of this and is this why we no longer see his work at BL?

[cheywood]

1 hour ago, Felix Antipodes said:

I guess GW/BL’s reasons for binning this instead of fighting the dubious copyright/trademark claim will remain a mystery (at least until someone involved in this retires and writes their memoirs) but I’m mystified that a company as famously litigious as GW rolled over and took the hit.  Was this before or after the Chapterhouse decision?  If after it may explain their reticence to return to the courts.

 

If it came down to trademark issue on the Dark Hunters name, BL could have removed it from the cover dress and still used it within the novel, without issue.  I feel @DarkChaplain may have the right of it and the author’s standing within the BL stable of creatives at the time was the reason.  This would not have been the case if it was Abnett or one of their other cash cows.  I wonder what the author himself thought of this and is this why we no longer see his work at BL?

Kearney published two novels for GW post Dark Hunters debacle, so it can’t have soured the working relationship that much. Supposedly he had more in the pipeline, including the interested titled ‘The Kerensky Diaries’, but that was a while ago and I have no idea as to the current status of his work. 

[Felix Antipodes]

He was also supposed to have a third Calgar novel out in 2018 but that never surfaced either as far as I know (can’t find any record of it anywhere except his wiki bio).  The last story I recall was a short in one of the WH Horror anthologies.

 

He had a few books out before he came to BL, so may be working on his own stuff again.  Last thing I’ve seen by him was in 2019.

 

Slightly off topic side note: Someone once told me that Kearney and Ian St Martin were the same author (one appearing just after the other faded from BL) and I worked under that misapprehension for about six months until I saw a photo/bio of both.  Never believe anything without proof as they say… 

[Ubiquitous1984]

20 hours ago, Dzirhan said:

Not sure if there are only five known copies, I picked up my copy off the shelf just after it was supposed to come out at a game shop in Singapore and I doubt the store then had only just the one copy I bought before I got there 

 

Perhaps you got lucky and the ex-UK retailer broke the release embargo, just before it was pulled entirely?  

 

Do you still have a copy?