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EverythingIsGreat Battle-Brother

EverythingIsGreat

Posted
Posted

Some things are clearer than others. I doubt that a novel like The Infinite and the Divine would ever be commissioned if the 5th edition Necron codex had not been decided on, with the related lore changes.

 

I don't know what the decision process is. But it makes sense to me that if the IP the novels are based on is being "afjusted", to slow down releases until the adjustments are more or less set.

wecanhaveallthree Battle-Brother

wecanhaveallthree

Posted
Posted

I'll bang the drum again: the fact that a new faction was released without a tie-in novel was strange, but the fact that faction still hasn't made an appearance in the fluff (excepting one short story where they don't even speak lmao) is so wacky. There was a bit of discussion about the Leagues not having much yet over on 40klore with people talking about, oh, well, y'know - they're still new and things take time and back in the day... but we're in 2024 now. It wasn't just some off-the-cuff decision to release a model line. There is a process to this. And apparently at no point in that process was the idea to commission a tie-in novel floated? And that's the best interpretation of it.

 

Looking at it with even a modicum of fairness, it's incredibly telling how quickly Thorpe took down his social media post about working on a LoV book. It vexes me. There is literally no harm for it to be out in the ether that a book is at least in drafting. Expectations are muted, and it's something for fans to talk about, it at least engages a bit of interest. But here we are, with nothin'.

 

Quote

oh but wechat you fool, you cad, you rake - don't you know there's a votann on the cover of hand of abaddon? don't you have eyes in your head? hmhmhmhm!

 

Let's hope they get a line of dialogue this time!

 

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are you still upset about aximand being in control of the legion in slaves to darkness and only having four(!!!!) lines throughout that entire book

 

YES I AM.

EverythingIsGreat Battle-Brother

EverythingIsGreat

Posted
Posted
4 hours ago, wecanhaveallthree said:

I'll bang the drum again: the fact that a new faction was released without a tie-in novel was strange, but the fact that faction still hasn't made an appearance in the fluff (excepting one short story where they don't even speak lmao) is so wacky. There was a bit of discussion about the Leagues not having much yet over on 40klore with people talking about, oh, well, y'know - they're still new and things take time and back in the day... but we're in 2024 now. It wasn't just some off-the-cuff decision to release a model line. There is a process to this. And apparently at no point in that process was the idea to commission a tie-in novel floated? And that's the best interpretation of it.

 

Considering that BL sales account for 1% or less of total GW turnover, perhaps this is not so surprizing. The fluff is only a part of any faction's presence. Assuming that the IP has been decided (includes the miniatures and how they look, which relate to character descriptions and actions in stories) a bunch of other stuff may bear on it. Limited resources? A more pressing project? Making a faction "fit" in a new edition? Or any other.

cheywood Veteran

cheywood

Posted
Posted (edited)
10 hours ago, EverythingIsGreat said:

Some things are clearer than others. I doubt that a novel like The Infinite and the Divine would ever be commissioned if the 5th edition Necron codex had not been decided on, with the related lore changes.

 

I don't know what the decision process is. But it makes sense to me that if the IP the novels are based on is being "afjusted", to slow down releases until the adjustments are more or less set.

Why would that be the case for 10th when it hasn’t been the case for previous editions? I just don’t see the logic here, especially when there’s explicit proof that finished novels are being delayed. But it sounds like we should agree to disagree. 

Edited by cheywood
cheywood Veteran

cheywood

Posted
Posted (edited)
4 hours ago, System Sound said:

So umm Fnac is selling Ahriman Undying, despite GW not selling it?

 

https://www.fnac.com/livre-numerique/a19421272/John-French-Ahriman-Undying#omnsearchpos=13

I can confirm that the entire ebook is available for download. Just looked it over myself. It’ll probably be up for a few days before they correct the mistake, so grab it this weekend if you want it. Excited to dive in myself. Crazy that this happened with both the audible and Fnac releases. BL clearly is in a little bit of disarray.

 

edit: wanted to add that this is an epub file in adobe select format. I had to download adobe digital editions to make it work. It won’t work on kindle without converting the file type as far as I know.

Edited by cheywood
EverythingIsGreat Battle-Brother

EverythingIsGreat

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, cheywood said:

Why would that be the case for 10th when it hasn’t been the case for previous editions? I just don’t see the logic here, especially when there’s explicit proof that finished novels are being delayed. But it sounds like we should agree to disagree. 

 

? I am not discussing finished novels (rather than announced novels or works in progress) being delayed, since I am not in a position to know whether this is happening or not. There may be several reasons, including but not limited to, intervening IP changes. As for the 10th edition, this is a new beast, with impact comparative to the 8th, which introduced a number of changes across GW's product line, including the literature. I do not know if the commissioning pipeline slowed while the 8th was being "cooked", but it would have made sense. If you say that such slowdown did not happen, then we will have to go with that. 

cheywood Veteran

cheywood

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, EverythingIsGreat said:

 

? I am not discussing finished novels (rather than announced novels or works in progress) being delayed, since I am not in a position to know whether this is happening or not. There may be several reasons, including but not limited to, intervening IP changes. As for the 10th edition, this is a new beast, with impact comparative to the 8th, which introduced a number of changes across GW's product line, including the literature. I do not know if the commissioning pipeline slowed while the 8th was being "cooked", but it would have made sense. If you say that such slowdown did not happen, then we will have to go with that. 

Apologies, maybe I’m not explaining myself well. The way I see it is this: GW has put out numerous editions of the game without slowing down their novel release schedule. There’s nothing special about 10th edition that separates it from the previous 9 editions. Thus there’s not really any reason to believe the lack of novels is related to 10th edition in any way. As a theory it just doesn’t hold up. 
 

On the other hand we have explicit confirmation that GW is delaying finished novels like Morvenn Vahl, Ahriman and presumably Eidolon. That’s a pretty clear, entirely non-speculative explanation for why we’re seeing a dearth of novels right now.

 

Hope that makes sense!

LemartestheLost Battle-Brother

LemartestheLost

Posted
Posted

While scrolling the interwebs this morning, I clicked through eBay to check and see how many copies of Lord of Excess had been grabbed by scalpers. Interestingly enough, as of nearly a full day after release, there are only 2 listings for the book I can find so far, although I'm sure a dozen have already been sold. While it is true that this book has received MINIMAL advertising since it was first announced, and it was written by a very junior BL author, we've seen eBay swamped with other Hardback only releases under similar circumstances. Who knows, maybe the hype just wasn't there for the scalpers on this one and they sat home this weekend. It's also possible that GW might have figured something out in regard to stopping the scumbags. This release would've been the perfect trial run for any new systems/software they're experimenting with. Either way, it's a definite break in the trend of having 40-80 copies listed 15 minutes after preorders go up, and for that I can be thankful. Random outlier release, or the beginning of a new age? I suppose we'll know if they dump a load of LEs on us next month.

 

If you tried to grab the book yesterday, what was your experience, and was there anything different about the process? I'm curious to know!

SkimaskMohawk Venerable Brother

SkimaskMohawk

Posted
Posted

Everyone thought siege of terra wrapping up would lead into a scouring mega series. 

 

No one realized it would be the capstone of black library as a publishing company in addition to being a capstone of the horus heresy series lol. 

theSpirea Veteran

theSpirea

Posted
Posted (edited)

There are still books coming out. I think people are overreacting a bit, expecting BL  to drop a banger every other week. We're three months in and already have seven novels. Maybe the whole LEs really messed up their scheduling (seeing Ahriman Undying being out for weeks already in digital format but no physical copies). Sure, communication would be appreciated, but is anyone really expecting GW to communicate this kind of stuff?

 

Not everyone was expecting GW/BL to immediately announce the next big series after the last SoT novel. Heck, Horus novel is still not out yet.

Edited by theSpirea
cheywood Veteran

cheywood

Posted
Posted
4 minutes ago, theSpirea said:

There are still books coming out. I think people are overreacting a bit, expecting BL  to drop a banger every other week. We're three months in and already have seven novels. Maybe the whole LEs really messed up their scheduling (seeing Ahriman Undying being out for weeks already in digital format but no physical copies). Sure, communication would be appreciated, but is anyone really expecting GW to communicate this kind of stuff?

 

Not everyone was expecting GW/BL to immediately announce the next big series after the last SoT novel. Heck, Horus novel is still not out yet.

People are definitely overreacting. We’d be right on pace with last year were it not for the delayed novels. 

Ubiquitous1984 Battle-Brother

Ubiquitous1984

Posted
Posted

The release schedule may be up to speed, but the lack of a coming soon page as well as almost zero announced novels in the pipeline (with zero major releases announced) is what’s driving the angst.

 

In the recent past you could soothe yourself with knowledge that at the BL Weekender they announced 10+ novels, shown pipelines, new imprints etc.  You could even ask questions of the BL staff and authors!  Or you could simply check out the coming soon page which at least has a few novels to look forward to (if they bothered to update it).

 

These days we are lucky to get two presenters giving a one hour preview of what’s to come, usually headlined by a new model.  I’m pretty sure they’ve released everything from the last preview now?

 

PS - speaking of dead BL websites, who remembers the official siegeofterra website?!

cheywood Veteran

cheywood

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Ubiquitous1984 said:

The release schedule may be up to speed, but the lack of a coming soon page as well as almost zero announced novels in the pipeline (with zero major releases announced) is what’s driving the angst.

 

In the recent past you could soothe yourself with knowledge that at the BL Weekender they announced 10+ novels, shown pipelines, new imprints etc.  You could even ask questions of the BL staff and authors!  Or you could simply check out the coming soon page which at least has a few novels to look forward to (if they bothered to update it).

 

These days we are lucky to get two presenters giving a one hour preview of what’s to come, usually headlined by a new model.  I’m pretty sure they’ve released everything from the last preview now?

 

PS - speaking of dead BL websites, who remembers the official siegeofterra website?!

The lack of information is frustrating. Multiple titles from the preview have yet to be released though - Morvenn Vahl, Ahriman, Eidolon and The Dead Kingdom. 

 

Speaking of which, Fnac has the Dead Kingdom up for preorder on the 13th. That means we’re at 9 novels through 4 months, 12 if you include delayed books. We’d be outpacing last year’s release schedule were it not for the delayed LEs, strange as that sounds.

Kelborn Venerable Brother

Kelborn

Posted
Posted

New releases and books are all fine but (imho) they fall behind translations. 

Talking about another of their IPs here but it's insane how few books are actually translated and how many of the recent releases aren't.

 

It's probably due to lack of demand but damn... I'd love to see some fair/ equal representation in stores.

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