Upcoming BL Stuff 2024

[Roomsky]

Super interesting; it's a good reminder that any forum is basically a small bubble in the face of the larger readership. It is of course a popularity contest, but it's fun to see what people are actually reading. Even if some of the books didn't even come out in 2023. Brooks is a good author in any case, good to see him getting decent exposure.

[neOh (AV)]

22 hours ago, Never_born said:

 

Semi-retired is a good description, yep. After a decade of reviewing, I just don't have the mental energy for it these days. I'm still working on bits and pieces, but mostly interviews and author guest posts, and it is hard to get BL to sign off anything like that. Not impossible - I've got one BL-related author interview in the works - but really difficult, so mostly I just focus on other publishers who actually want to work with bloggers/reviewers.

 

Reading through this thread, I agree with a lot of what's being said about enthusiasm dropping as a direct result of BL making life so difficult for us as readers. I don't want to be too negative, as I've got a lot of time for the authors and the editors, but let's just say that the way BL/GW (i.e. sales and marketing) treat reviewers - and have done over the years - feels very similar. I tried...I really tried to build a relationship with BL and WarCom, but they were so obviously never interested. So these days, when I do put out anything BL-related it's come from the author and me talking, and trying to get BL to sign stuff off. And I'm not super motivated to be going out there and proactively trying to organise things.

 

If there are books (when anything new is finally announced) that you guys are super keen to find out more about, feel free to tag me into the conversations - if I've got the time and energy, I'll see what I can do. Just bear in mind that for every author interview I manage to get off the ground, there's another one that falls by the wayside as BL either block it or just plain ignore it.

Speaking of interviews, I think all is not yet lost. I heard that Wh's ukrainian publisher, Molfar, is planning to do interviews with Dan Abnett and, maybe, some other BL writers (whose books have been translated and published in ukrainian)... So, hope for the best.

[Noserenda]

Dan Abnett is seemingly really up for interviews, or at least he seems to have a lot more floating around than most Authors, though that might be linked to his generally prodigious output!  

[Taliesin]

5 hours ago, Roomsky said:

Super interesting; it's a good reminder that any forum is basically a small bubble in the face of the larger readership. It is of course a popularity contest, but it's fun to see what people are actually reading. Even if some of the books didn't even come out in 2023.

 

All true

 

One thing I wondered about though.....Warcom says they received ten thousands of votes. Really? You're telling me tens of thousands of people voted on this, implying that there are really tens of thousands of people:

 

a) actually reading BL books

b) Bothered enough to be reading that warcom article?

 

I struggle with that idea, I dont know the specifics either but it never ever feels to me that there are "tens of thousands" people reading BL books. Could be the usual Warcom hyperbole of course.

[SteveAntilles]

That's an odd take. Warhammer Community gets like 25-30 million hits per month, and several Black Library books have hit the New York Times best seller list.

[EverythingIsGreat]

58 minutes ago, SteveAntilles said:

That's an odd take. Warhammer Community gets like 25-30 million hits per month, and several Black Library books have hit the New York Times best seller list.

 

Does it seem likely that WarCom gets 1 million hits a day? Not to me.

As for the NYT best seller list (the mass-market paperback fiction list), that was years ago, AFAIK. 

[grailkeeper]

3 minutes ago, EverythingIsGreat said:

 

Does it seem likely that WarCom gets 1 million hits a day? Not to me.

As for the NYT best seller list (the mass-market paperback fiction list), that was years ago, AFAIK. 

There was a post somewhere, possibly by ADB, explaining how it happened and thst fue to changes by BL it was very unlikely to happen again.

[Noserenda]

I heard a couple of years ago there are roughly 100k warhammer 40k fans online. In my experience do some data gathering/marketing over the years getting people to fill in a poll is surprisingly hard but 10's of thousands seems very dooable? 

As for hits, its not quite a garbage metric, its useful in some ways but not for realising how many fans there are, like, i probably click through the WHC a couple of dozen times a week and even visit the awful modern store 10 or so times in that period for reference depending on what im up to. Those hits arent even either, i suspect we are going to see spikes in attention based on releases and popular article types. 

[Felix Antipodes]

I don’t believe there can be any case made wrt WarComm’s hyperbole on numbers considering the average print run is only in the low to mid thousands.  Are these tens of thousands of voters all reading ebooks or their mate’s copy?  I suspect that a lot of these votes were placed sight unseen for a favourite author or ones most often recommended on various sights.

[cheywood]

1 minute ago, Felix Antipodes said:

I don’t believe there can be any case made wrt WarComm’s hyperbole on numbers considering the average print run is only in the low to mid thousands.  Are these tens of thousands of voters all reading ebooks or their mate’s copy?  I suspect that a lot of these votes were placed sight unseen for a favourite author or ones most often recommended on various sights.

Piracy is pretty rampant these days. I imagine a large number of people are reading 40k novels that way, especially with the low print runs.

[Noserenda]

Piracy tends to rise in reaction to access, and for all their sins with dead tree fomo BL have been pretty good at making the ebook and audible versions quickly available at reasonable prices. It definitely exists mind, but i dont think its as big as it has been in the past when the limited books came out far in advance.

[DukeLeto69]

Re NYT Best Seller List, you don’t need to actually sell THAT many copies to get on. It’s also a fudge with estimated volumes extrapolated from a small number of participating retailers. It’s basically a marketing exercise.

[LemartestheLost]

7 hours ago, cheywood said:

Piracy is pretty rampant these days. I imagine a large number of people are reading 40k novels that way, especially with the low print runs.

 

If I had to guess, in order to hit "tens of thousands of votes" (which I think was probably 30k entries at the most) a lot of people had to purchase eBooks/audiobooks due to the low print runs. Finding out how much the rate of piracy has increased for BL books would be hard to ascertain, but logically it has increased and will continue to do so.

 

As to why the Top 3 looks like it does, one also has to figure that the runs for TEATD & The Lion were probably substantially larger than average (if not the largest) considering the Lion's model release/tie in and The End containing arguably the most important moment in all of Warhammer. I know that makes sense and BL typically doesn't, but bear with me. Assuming that's the case, more casual/new hobbyists and fans probably picked up those books than otherwise would have. I reckon that for a lot of people; The Lion was probably one of two or three BL novels that they touched this year. When you combine this fact with the knowledge that this year was of middling quality in regard to other BL releases, and that the majority of people just go along with the flow of traffic ("A PRIMARCH RETURNING??? OH DAMN!!"/"MUH FINAL SHOWDOWN!"), it's easy to see why the winners pulled away. That's not to say The Lion or TEATD are terrible books by any stretch, I'm currently enjoying The Lion for the most part and can see why some folks might vote it #1 regardless, but I think in a different year it only places Top 5.

[Felix Antipodes]

9 hours ago, cheywood said:

Piracy is pretty rampant these days. I imagine a large number of people are reading 40k novels that way, especially with the low print runs.

Is piracy such a big issue though?  I first noticed the squeeze from them with the release of the first Siege LE novel, with it ramping up until the debacle of the last book.  Was it an issue before that or was I just lucky?  (Not being snarky, genuine question).

[Ubiquitous1984]

17 hours ago, Taliesin said:

 

One thing I wondered about though.....Warcom says they received ten thousands of votes. Really? You're telling me tens of thousands of people voted on this, implying that there are really tens of thousands of people:

 

TBF Warhammer40K is pretty big these days, Youtubers like MajorKill and TheRemembrancer have grown massively in a relatively short space of time.  The former has I think 500K subscribers.  It's not inconceivable that 10-20k people placed a vote.  Also, placing a vote doesn't necessarily mean you've read the book!   There are no doubt plenty of DA/Primarch fans who wanted to 'back their faction' in the vote.

[cheywood]

11 hours ago, Noserenda said:

Piracy tends to rise in reaction to access, and for all their sins with dead tree fomo BL have been pretty good at making the ebook and audible versions quickly available at reasonable prices. It definitely exists mind, but i dont think its as big as it has been in the past when the limited books came out far in advance.

I think it’s a consistent problem. From what I know most of the ebooks are put up on various sites within a few days-weeks of release. But without actual numbers you’re right that it’s hard to speak too specifically on the matter. 

 

Why would the LEs affect piracy? I don’t personally pirate anything, but as I understand it the lack of a digital edition means most LEs aren’t posted online until the ‘wide’ release. A few get scanned but most don’t. Is that not the case? 

3 hours ago, Felix Antipodes said:

Is piracy such a big issue though?  I first noticed the squeeze from them with the release of the first Siege LE novel, with it ramping up until the debacle of the last book.  Was it an issue before that or was I just lucky?  (Not being snarky, genuine question).

Squeeze? I’m sorry, I’m not entirely sure what you mean. I’m talking about illegal digital downloading of ebooks. 

Edited March 8 by cheywood

[theSpirea]

I don't think it's possible to measure level of piracy in any accurate way. However, I do believe lack of physical copies might contribute to more people pirating ebooks. This is only my assumption based on a few people around me (not just BL related but other publishers). Some people simply prefer physical copies and if they can't get them, they will not pay for ebooks. For many, there's no difference between getting the ebook from BL or from a different site. 

[cheywood]

Interesting and potentially very exciting news, courtesy of Fnac. Steve Lyons seems to be doing a Siege of Vraks novel, presumably as a continuation of his Death Korps work. It’s dated for July but who really knows these days. Here’s the (google-translated) pitch: 

 

‘Vraks has fallen. The Astra Militarum, to save the planet from the madness of an apostate preacher, mobilizes the troops of Krieg's Death Korps and embarks on a long, hopeless siege. The war will last seventeen years, cost millions of lives and attract the attention of heretics and demons, but the Death Korps must achieve victory at all costs. Centimeter by centimeter, in sweat and blood, the world is taken back from the enemy. It is on Vraks that the soldiers of Krieg forge their reputation as the most relentless fighters in the entire Imperium. It is on Vraks that an officer named Tyborc, who was preparing to die, learns how to live differently. It is on Vraks, finally, that Krieg's Death Korps reaches its limits.’

Tyborc is a prominent character in the Imperial Armour books. I don’t always connect with Lyons as an author, but this is a really compelling piece of source material and I think it could be a fantastic read. And it’s always nice to see another pre gathering storm novel.

Edited March 8 by cheywood

[EverythingIsGreat]

Re: book of the year, all such lists are ultimately marketing tricks. There is an obvious utility as far as the trade is concerned, for a variety of different reasons, but these lists (compiled internally or by specialist services) are obviously non-public. This BL list is even less interesting, as the nominating process is opaque to begin with.

 

Did not vote, but for sheer gumption and presumed size of male reproductive organs I would have picked TEATD (IF and only if the book was nominated in toto, not as 3 fragments). Abnett, but also Kyme and BL,  punted, risking something different. It was mentioned above that TEATD could have been offered as 3 parts in a slipcase, which is more proper imo. Don't want to go of-topic and review the book here, but the story does have three setting-phases: first, another reality is made manifest with attendant narrative dislocations and uncertainty, then the previous reality being upended in an orgy of dissolution, and the final stable phase as the other reality is established as the winner. But publishing the book in 3 parts delineates these phases too concretely.

 

Absent that, Sea of Souls would be a likely choice for me.

Edited March 8 by EverythingIsGreat
typo

[Scribe]

I voted Sea of Souls as a protest/throw away. The list makes me super sad actually lol.

[grailkeeper]

4 hours ago, cheywood said:

Interesting and potentially very exciting news, courtesy of Fnac. Steve Lyons seems to be doing a Siege of Vraks novel, presumably as a continuation of his Death Korps work.

 

I loved Dead men walking when it came out, but his more recent Krieg novel was not as good as my memory of DMW. Maybe its because there's been a lot of stronger novels that came out in the intervening years that raised my expectations of BL quality (ADB and Robert Rath take a Bow).

[Felix Antipodes]

11 hours ago, cheywood said:

I think it’s a consistent problem. From what I know most of the ebooks are put up on various sites within a few days-weeks of release. But without actual numbers you’re right that it’s hard to speak too specifically on the matter. 

 

Why would the LEs affect piracy? I don’t personally pirate anything, but as I understand it the lack of a digital edition means most LEs aren’t posted online until the ‘wide’ release. A few get scanned but most don’t. Is that not the case? 

Squeeze? I’m sorry, I’m not entirely sure what you mean. I’m talking about illegal digital downloading of ebooks. 

Sorry, got the wrong end of the stick.  Thought you were talking about the scalper/print editions not ebooks.

From that perspective, just about every BL is out there on various sites of dubious repute.  I’m not sure that BL can do much about it though.

[DarkChaplain]

Surprise, surprise, another no-show at this week's previews

[Felix Antipodes]

4 hours ago, DarkChaplain said:

Surprise, surprise, another no-show at this week's previews

 

I wonder if they are having issues with their print contractor?  This seems more than a shipping issue, unless they are building up to some sort of big announcement.

[cheywood]

42 minutes ago, Felix Antipodes said:

 

I wonder if they are having issues with their print contractor?  This seems more than a shipping issue, unless they are building up to some sort of big announcement.

Everything with an LE/SE seems to be delayed, excepting The Hollow King. If those LE titles (Vahl and Ahriman) shipped then we’d be looking at basically the same release rate as last year. I think we’re all in the dark as to why.