Why so expensive?

[Uprising]

I recently decided to downsize my life, so I decided to start selling off my black Library due to falling out of love with 40k lore (Only keeping The lord of Silence and Night lord trilogy).  While comparing prices, I discovered, I have several books that are going for $100 to $200, even a few $300 (looking at you Sythes of the empereor).  Why are these book so expensive?  Is it as simple as supply and demand or something out?  I am surpised to say the least as I don't need the money (Honestly was just going to throw the novels away at first).  

[Roomsky]

Black Library shortprints basically everything, and keeps very few books on their reprint schedule. It's purely scarcity, allowing people to list a lot of out of print items for ridiculous prices. It's one of the reasons scalpers flock to Black Library releases, it prints money if you can find the right buyers.

Honestly you could probably sell a lot of your stuff for half the secondary market price and still make a profit on it. Personally I donate any physical copies I don't want to the local used book store.

[Brian_Sisk]

On 11/23/2025 at 12:47 AM, Uprising said:

I recently decided to downsize my life, so I decided to start selling off my black Library due to falling out of love with 40k lore (Only keeping The lord of Silence and Night lord trilogy).  While comparing prices, I discovered, I have several books that are going for $100 to $200, even a few $300 (looking at you Sythes of the empereor).  Why are these book so expensive?  Is it as simple as supply and demand or something out?  I am surpised to say the least as I don't need the money (Honestly was just going to throw the novels away at first).  

I ran into this exact thing when I started checking prices. Most Black Library novels are printed once or twice and then disappear. Some factions or stories get cult followings, especially Space Marines chapters or niche lore like Scythes of the Emperor. Add in people wanting complete collections and prices jump hard. It’s not that the books are rare like antiques, just artificially scarce because GW doesn’t reprint much. Combine that with nostalgia and completionist collectors and suddenly a paperback is worth a few hundred. Honestly throwing them away would have hurt more than selling them.

[Neil H]

Just be grateful that you have them still.  I have paid for a few over the odds (the latest being Black Book 8) for a few but will not pay silly money for paperbacks!

Neil

[63-19]

theres a lot of books that have released in the past 5 years that i did not buy at launch, and will probably never own because i dont feel like spending hundreds of dollars on them.