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"Saints and Martyrs" - Adepta Sororitas omnibus, containing the novels:

 

  • "The Triumph of Saint Katherine" - by Danie Ware
  • "Celestine: The Living Saint" - by Andy Clark
  • "Ephrael Stern: The Heretic Saint" - by David Annandale

Trade release date: August 1, 2024

 

https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/Saints-and-Martyrs/Danie-Ware/Warhammer-40-000/9781804075364

I think it would be cool if Abbadon got his own HH character novel focused on the events of his youth up until his induction into the legion being a gang leader or whatever and then counterpoise every chapter with a more "current" 30k version of events leading up to him entering the Eye of Terror alone with the Vengeful Spirit. The gist of the book is how his father figures failed him in some way leading to him becoming his own man or trans-human warlord guy.  

Call me a sucker, but I was expecting some sort of reveal after what they said in Sunday’s preview. Not much, just a mention of the Scouring kicking off soon or a preview of Horus’ Primarch novel. Guess WarCom has moved up (down?) in the world of meaningless corporate sales drivel - from inaccurate info to straight up lies.
 

Why promise reveals at all? If they’d just said ‘we have a week of themed articles and two new books to order on Saturday’ I don’t think anyone would’ve been surprised or upset.

1 minute ago, theSpirea said:

Afaik BL Celebration isn't really a time for big (any) reveals. That's the November preview. Celebration is basically dropping half the stuff on pre-order they announced during November's Preview.

 

 

I think the issue is that they said there would be reveals. From the Sunday preview article

 

"every year we celebrate the literary heart of our hobby with a week-long extravaganza of book reveals, author interviews, and tantalising teasers. It’s that time again, and there’s an absolute belter of a Black Library Celebration coming your way."

 

Now most if not all of the folks on here have been around GW/WHC long enough to know the majority of that "absolute belter of a Black Library Celebration" is their standard marketing nonsense and it's probably going to be nothing

 

but

 

when they say there will be book reveals and teasers I don't think it's unrealistic to expect there will be book reveals and teasers. That's not marketing nonsense like the other stuff, that's just straight lying. Now if later today they drop reveals I'll come back and edit this but I don't expect it. GW/BL have been dropping the ball a lot with novels and how they treat it lately, but I feel like promising reveals and then flat-out not doing them is another level.

7 minutes ago, theSpirea said:

Afaik BL Celebration isn't really a time for big (any) reveals. That's the November preview. Celebration is basically dropping half the stuff on pre-order they announced during November's Preview.

 

Like Darkhorse said, they explicitly stated it would be a week of reveals and teases. Without that I wouldn’t have expected anything.

If this was really it then they have certainly completely failed to cash in on even 1% of what they promised in this "Celebration" and definitely the worst and most low key celebration they have done.

Disappointing is all I can say about the ‘Celebration’ we were promised.  Even if the two postponed LE had been released as well it wouldn’t have felt special imho.  In years past this was a must follow event (with its own meet the authors day) but now it’s just a shadow of its past glory.

I’m wondering just how much longer GW persists with the imprint :cry:

Just now, DarkChaplain said:

So.... they apparently accidentally released Ahriman: Undying onto Audible today. Oops.

Between this, the delayed SEs and the changing Fnac release dates I think BL is having some behind the scenes scheduling and shipping issues.

They have two options now: Pull Ahriman: Undying from sale (which has been up for 6 or so hours now at least) or pretend it was always going to be a surprise release for the celebration and hussle to get the ebook and audiobook up on BL's own site, on a weekend, and make a WarCom announcement to try and cover it up.

 

Well, option three exists too: Just don't acknowledge it at all, sit it out, and hope nobody notices.

55 minutes ago, DarkChaplain said:

They have two options now: Pull Ahriman: Undying from sale (which has been up for 6 or so hours now at least) or pretend it was always going to be a surprise release for the celebration and hussle to get the ebook and audiobook up on BL's own site, on a weekend, and make a WarCom announcement to try and cover it up.

 

Well, option three exists too: Just don't acknowledge it at all, sit it out, and hope nobody notices.

If you pop over to Nottingham I imagine you’ll find an office full of people with their fingers in their ears chanting ‘na-na-na-na I can’t hear you’ over and over again.

I do wonder what their long-term plan is for BL. Without sounding like I'm standing on a corner with a "end is near" sign, or jokes about incompetency aside, they are not acting like it is something they intend to continue with long-term in a meaningful way.

 

So do they just intend to ride it out like this? Is there eventually going to be an overhaul of how they do it? Or eventually, are we going to see the "profits are down so we need to cut costs, BL doesn't bring in that much so let's cut that since we are a model company"

 

Lack of clear vision (or at least a shared vision as they do with model roadmaps, not even a coming soon section anymore), botched launches time after time, missing shipping dates, drawdowns of events like this week, etc, do not inspire confidence in them moving forward. Warhammer Fest blew up on them last year and they just decided to apparently not do it anymore (at least for this year), so I wonder if the constant bad press/customer sentiment about many of these book launches ends up leading to something

4 hours ago, cheywood said:

If you pop over to Nottingham I imagine you’ll find an office full of people with their fingers in their ears chanting ‘na-na-na-na I can’t hear you’ over and over again.

You mean Khyme and that one intern?

Interesting to see WarCom state on their pre-order article today that the Deus Encarmine Anniversary Edition is "limited to 2,150 copies." Alongside the announcement that The Art of the Horus Heresy is limited to 6,500 copies, I find it very interesting to find out these numbers; would love to know how many copies of a standard new HB 40K novel they release.

I've got to say, it felt liberating not having to buy the artbook today.  I could focus on my morning chores (picking up my son's birthday cake) without needing to stress about stopping what I was doing to try to buy a book I don't really want or need.

 

Judging by comments on facebook there was a lot of frustrated users who ran into website issues (how are they not resolved yet?!)

 

That said, it doesn't look like many people have actually quit buying physical books in the wake of the volume 3 disaster.  I was shocked that 6500 copies of a pretty mundane artbook sold out so fast.

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