Upcoming BL Stuff 2024

[cheywood]

18 minutes ago, Taliesin said:

Its pretty weird, there are 3 brand new books coming up for pre-order tomorrow and a new edition of Ravenor, and I have not seen a single bit of news or advertising for it on Warcom this week.

I surely expected some kind of article with an interview with for instance Hinks, McNiven or Reid. 

 

It just raises a lot of questions, first of which is, why? Why spend zero attention on it when you have lots of other fluff articles. Especially the Darius Hinks book that comes aside the Codex they are talking about for weeks.

I wouldn’t say that’s out of the ordinary for GW. They did the obligatory mid-week announcement on Warhammer a while back and got mentioned in the Sunday preview this week. Most of the books don’t get any sort of promotion beyond that. Sometimes they do interviews, but not usually. 

[Taliesin]

I know. But with 3 new novels out at the same time, I was expecting something at least.

[Sothalor]

There's probably an element of resource bandwidth allocation going on with which items get WarCom articles; there are a total number of articles per their schedule.

 

And let's be real here; WarCom is advertising. It's 21st century marketing, dressed up in all the gauche "look at us, we're engaging with our customers and active" fluffery.

 

An inevitable aspect of marketing is what kind of return on expenditure you get - which items/services/stuff make you the most when you showcase them to your customer base?

 

Look at the GW financial reports; the Black Library arm comprises a miniscule proportion of the corporation's total annual profits - in the realm of single digit percentages.

 

There's an incentive for the WarCom team to spend their effort on highlighting their miniature releases and hype up anything related to those.

[The Scorpion]

But it's not like there are new minis every week

 

If they are tasked with churning out marketing slop as you say, why not spend 5-10min every 3 months or so to promote whichever book the fellas at BL just cooked?

[theSpirea]

And that's the problem because that's what they currently do. They spend a minimum amount of time to slap together crappy info about upcoming BL novels or do extremely short and not-really-saying-anything interviews for every third or fourth book they publish.

Crime and Horror imprints are the perfect example of how :cuss:ty their marketing team is when it comes to BL. They started these imprints with the goal to attract a wider audience, but the only place they, barely, advertised them was on their WH Community site. Handing out copies to book reviewers? Cooperating with the guy from Track of Words? Absolutely nothing.

Instead, they shut down the Coming Soon section completely, closed the BL Instagram account, had zero communication for months, only to quickly catch up on releases and push them all out at once.

[aa.logan]

Twice Dead King is getting a second LE- definitely faster than Ragnar Blackmane by ADB did- and the Infinite and the Divine LE has resurfaced.

 

Later in the year, apparently. My money is on one of them at least coming before October.

 

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2024/08/14/praise-the-silent-king-two-black-library-necron-special-editions-are-coming-this-year/

Edited August 14 by aa.logan

[skylerboodie]

Severed and Other Stories here is new, right? Hope there's a nonspecial edition release of it, considering I've already bought the original two special editions of the other two volumes. 

 

I know Severed was a novella, are the others three here released / unreleased short stories?

[theSpirea]

Why...

Instead of reprinting that's been out of print for years

 

Cheap cashgrab

[Roomsky]

 

Cheap cashgrab

 

A Black Library release, yes.

[darkhorse0607]

 

Why...

Instead of reprinting that's been out of print for years

 

 

Yeah but then WHC has to go and look at the Wiki to type up a blurb, make the effort to report something wrong about the book, etc

 

It's easier when it's fresh in the mind

[LemartestheLost]

A cash grab perhaps, but I will admit those covers are just gorgeous. This is the standard I expect for limited editions.

[Felix Antipodes]

While these are beautiful editions (especially the box set) I just can’t see me lashing out this sort of cash on books I already own in LE or HB formats.  There are a literal ton of BL (W40K and WFB settings) books from their back catalogue I would prefer to see back in print before something like these, worthy though they may be, of the format.

Edited August 15 by Felix Antipodes

[LemartestheLost]

 

While these are beautiful editions (especially the box set) I just can’t see me lashing out this sort of cash on books I already own in LE or HB formats.  There are a literal ton of BL (W40K and WFB settings) books from their back catalogue I would prefer to see back in print before something like these, worthy though they may be, of the format.

As someone who previously missed out and only has PB’s, it will be extremely hard not to pull the trigger on these.

[aa.logan]

“The box itself is emblazoned with the author’s signature.” Is such strange phrasing, I can’t stop returning to re-read it.

[wecanhaveallthree]

The pages themselves, imprinted with the author's very words...

[DarkChaplain]

Honestly reads a bit like what I'd expect from AI prompts when asking it to give a flowery marketing pitch.

 

....or, on the flipside, a game of Snake Oil, where you're trying to convince the round's buyer that your completely stupid composite mcguffin is the hottest thing since sliced bread, in a comedically overblown way.

Great game, by the way. Too bad my boardgame group never got into it much.

[darkhorse0607]

Morvenn Vahl: Spear of Faith by Jude Reid is the only pre-order for next week. hardback, ebook, audio formats

[cheywood]

I wonder how Jude Reid feels about having two books come out within weeks of each other. I can’t imagine it’ll help her sales overall. 

[LemartestheLost]

 

I wonder how Jude Reid feels about having two books come out within weeks of each other. I can’t imagine it’ll help her sales overall. 

Not only two books, but two Sororitas books. GW has really been firing off both barrels when it comes to Sisters fiction lately.

[Rob P]

Edit: wrong post - oops

Edited August 20 by Rob P

[Taliesin]

I got my hopes up today when I Warcom announce a whole host of Blood Angels novels, possibly reprints I thought.

 

"

Four of these characters are represented on the tabletop by incredible miniatures, and you can learn all about them in Codex Supplement: Blood Angels, but to really get to know them, you’ll need to turn to Black Library, who have shelves stacked with fiction about these superlative sons of Sanguinius. 

 

Well actually no, if we do turn to Black Library, we see these are all out of print. And there is no reprint editions either.

Edited August 22 by Taliesin

[theSpirea]

 

I got my hopes up today when I Warcom announce a whole host of Blood Angels novels, possibly reprints I thought.

 

"

Four of these characters are represented on the tabletop by incredible miniatures, and you can learn all about them in Codex Supplement: Blood Angels, but to really get to know them, you’ll need to turn to Black Library, who have shelves stacked with fiction about these superlative sons of Sanguinius. 

 

Well actually no, if we do turn to Black Library, we see these are all out of print. And there is no reprint editions either.

The fact that they still don't have any information on BL.com stating that they don't sell physical editions and that customers need to go to GW for those is the best example of their incompetence. There are still people posting on Reddit and other forums, confused about why they can see only ebooks and audiobooks on BL.com.

[darkhorse0607]

 

The fact that they still don't have any information on BL.com stating that they don't sell physical editions and that customers need to go to GW for those is the best example of their incompetence. There are still people posting on Reddit and other forums, confused about why they can see only ebooks and audiobooks on BL.com.

 

Tin foil hat though, I wonder if it's incompetence or if it's their business strategy

 

 

How many pick up an e/audiobook after going and trying to get a physical since they're already there versus how many wouldn't even click the link if they knew they couldn't get the physical version in advance?

[byrd9999]

Defo business strategy.

 

No printing delay issues, no warehouse storage costs, no reprint decisions, no piles of unsold stock, bigger margins.

[Felix Antipodes]

In the recent WarComm article boosting WH+, there was a throwaway line about BL author interviews:

 

Delivering a less frenetic but no less illuminating experience, we’ll also be sitting down with some of our most experienced scribes, in exclusive interviews with Black Library authors on the worlds and characters that their books explore.

 

Which means one of the few reasons for a BL fan to follow WarComm is going behind the WH+ paywall.  They used to be few and far between, but at least they were free to read.