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51 minutes ago, Lord Marshal said:

Do they ever change the Reader’s Choice novel range? I mean, some novels are submitted two, three, or even four times, while others that truly deserve a reprint never appear at all. How does this work?

 

Blood of Aenarion, Crossfire and Ulrika are great, no doubts, but can we have some other titles just for a change?

Edited by neOh (AV)
43 minutes ago, neOh (AV) said:

Do they ever change the Reader’s Choice novel range? I mean, some novels are submitted two, three, or even four times, while others that truly deserve a reprint never appear at all. How does this work?

 

Blood of Aenarion, Crossfire and Ulrika are great, no doubts, but can we have some other titles just for a change?

The books have probably already been printed, so they’ll stay on the voting roster until they finally win in 2037.  
 

It’ll be released on the same weekend as the Horus Primarch book.

I was a bit torn on who to vote for this year.  There was no book head and shoulders above the rest.  I wouldn’t mind new material from Cawkwell, Chambers or Farrer but that seems unlikely, so no point reminding BL that they exist by voting for them.  That left it down to French and Guymer, both with unfinished trilogies that need concluding volumes.  In the end I went with Guymer as I really want to see a follow up to his series (and I suspect we will eventually see another Horusian Wars book from French.

 

One can dream…

17 hours ago, Casual Heresy said:

I voted for Gildar rift, partly because I haven't read it, and partly because it's a standalone.

 

I feel for these votes it should all be standalone

A special edition re-release of Rynn's World.

 

bl_rynnsworldse-mar11_cover-7yuap7s9ep.j

bl_rynnsworldse-mar11_deets-3fkizul9ot.j

 

Quote

Stay tuned this week for further reveals from the Black Library Celebration, and beyond for more news on the release date for the Special Edition of Rynn’s World.

 

It's a nice looking edition. Sad that they think just this reveal is enough for a full article.

 

Normally I'd be saying lets wait until BL Celebration is over before writing it off as a disappointing failure. But I won't be saying that this time.

10 minutes ago, Lord Marshal said:

This gets a big ‘who cares?’ from me. Special editions of 15 year old books that weren’t particularly popular when they came out? Black Library really has lost the plot. 

At this point if they had just come out and said "we arent doing a Black Library celebration this year" like the rumors had said, instead of this, I would be less angry.

 

They're lucky I have taken so much flu medicine I barely know what a Black Library is right now

 

 

On a semi-flu related note, I have made a lot of progress in Death Of Integrity, I will gush about it more on the necromancy thread when I'm done, but man it is nice to just have a well written space marine adventure. Yes, yes I know that we have tons of Space Marine books, and not every one of the Battle series was great, but this one is good and kind of refreshing. No primarchs, no super main characters, no "this will be the biggest battle since the Heresy." Just normal marines doing normal marine stuff.  

Edited by darkhorse0607

How nice of them, giving us 1 week a year where they're up to their old standard of reporting on Black Library. It's just like old times!

 

1 hour ago, darkhorse0607 said:

I will gush about it more on the necromancy thread when I'm done, but man it is nice to just have a well written space marine adventure.


Who's gonna tell him?

59 minutes ago, Roomsky said:

Who's gonna tell him?

 

Don't do this to me Roomsky, at least wait until after Black Library Celebration to ruin the book

 

We don't want to damper the celebratory festivities

Edited by darkhorse0607
16 minutes ago, darkhorse0607 said:

 

Don't do this to me Roomsky, at least wait until after Black Library Celebration to ruin the book

 

We don't want to damper the celebratory festivities

At this point, "Suffering builds character" should be a tagline for BL readers...

Where my crying reaction at?

 

I just don't understand what happened to go from a fairly steady ship with Black Library to it becoming an unloved stepchild. Like, they progressively axed things, from weekly Monday shorts over novellas, audio dramas, the early Q1 release on Xmas, the Weekender, BL Celebration, Warhammer Horror & Crime... Countless authors obviously left the sinking ship for one reason or another, including better-paying gigs at Aconyte and co...

 

Like, what happened? Heck, they even flubbed the entire Covid timeframe, where other niche publishers decided to put out ebooks first and deliver prints later, due to the paper shortage and printers being overwhelmed. BL went *hard* on ebooks way back when, they were incredibly pushy with it, and then when that stategy would've been super beneficial to them, during a time when demand for hobby stuff went through the roof while supply of physical media became problematic, they flubbed and delayed releases or canceled them.

 

And now we're off even worse, with them axing their own drm-free ebooks and audiobooks, and forcing them through a terrible phone app, which completely screws PC users (like me, since I gotta run my ebooks through calibre to be properly compatible with my old Kindle Fire, and to debloat them of advertisements and fix their chapter links...) and makes it all another walled garden nobody asked for or needed.

...which they could have known already, since the OLD Black Library audiobook app was a complete and utter failure that nobody used...

 

But seriously, what happened to run it into the ground like this? It's been a steady downward trend for years, and the shuttering of the BL website (which they never did enough to properly maintain or make a decent catalog out of, let alone with decent search tools of the backlog - funny, considering how much money they burned on it with the overhaul way back when...) just screams "sunsetting" to me.

7 minutes ago, theSpirea said:

I'm still confused, the whole Celebration is this time these random articles where they announce some books here and there?

 

Correct! Aren't you having so much fun celebrating????

2 hours ago, darkhorse0607 said:

 

Don't do this to me Roomsky, at least wait until after Black Library Celebration to ruin the book

 

We don't want to damper the celebratory festivities

Nothing wrong with the book, but you might want to go check the Necromancy thread. 

1 hour ago, DarkChaplain said:

Where my crying reaction at?

 

I just don't understand what happened to go from a fairly steady ship with Black Library to it becoming an unloved stepchild. Like, they progressively axed things, from weekly Monday shorts over novellas, audio dramas, the early Q1 release on Xmas, the Weekender, BL Celebration, Warhammer Horror & Crime... Countless authors obviously left the sinking ship for one reason or another, including better-paying gigs at Aconyte and co...

 

Like, what happened? Heck, they even flubbed the entire Covid timeframe, where other niche publishers decided to put out ebooks first and deliver prints later, due to the paper shortage and printers being overwhelmed. BL went *hard* on ebooks way back when, they were incredibly pushy with it, and then when that stategy would've been super beneficial to them, during a time when demand for hobby stuff went through the roof while supply of physical media became problematic, they flubbed and delayed releases or canceled them.

 

And now we're off even worse, with them axing their own drm-free ebooks and audiobooks, and forcing them through a terrible phone app, which completely screws PC users (like me, since I gotta run my ebooks through calibre to be properly compatible with my old Kindle Fire, and to debloat them of advertisements and fix their chapter links...) and makes it all another walled garden nobody asked for or needed.

...which they could have known already, since the OLD Black Library audiobook app was a complete and utter failure that nobody used...

 

But seriously, what happened to run it into the ground like this? It's been a steady downward trend for years, and the shuttering of the BL website (which they never did enough to properly maintain or make a decent catalog out of, let alone with decent search tools of the backlog - funny, considering how much money they burned on it with the overhaul way back when...) just screams "sunsetting" to me.

 

BL is so underhyped now that it's actually possible to pick up a standard hardback a couple days (or weeks!) after they go up for preorder. I'm pretty sure that Apostle has been out for a month now. That's the only "positive" thing that has been a result of the absolute mishandling which only GW seems to be capable of. I'm in complete agreement; it has got to be intentional at this point.

8 hours ago, DarkChaplain said:

But seriously, what happened to run it into the ground like this?

 

Its just a weird situation given the rest of GW

 

In almost every other sector, they push on and flood out stuff whether or not folks want it.

 

More skirmish games? Sure, put out more than they can support

 

License out for every game developer under the sun? Do it, who cares if its iffy 

 

Merchandise? Yolo, who cares that folks dont buy a lot of these overpriced water bottles, put it out anyway, we will sell something 

 

Even Warhammer+. Start with the promise of a ton of animations, then flood it with other random shows. Doesn't matter if they get a ton of viewers, put it out there in the hopes of catching someone

 

But in BLs case, it seems to be almost the opposite. Draw down on coverage, draw down on publishing (debatable by the numbers but it at least feels that way), get rid of the website/make things harder to buy, and largely pretend it doesnt exist.

 

I have said it before, the only time I can remember GW treating a branch of itself like this in recent memory, is the sunsetting with Forgeworld. It still exists (kind of) in the specialist games studio, but they went through the same steps. Draw down on what they produce (through the last chance to buy sagas of 2018-2020), start toning down the social media side, less and less coverage in general, cancel the weekenders, etc, before finally getting rid of Forgworlds website and folding it in. 

 

I honeslty do think that we will eventually see BL, WH+, games, etc rolled into Warhammer Media or something like that so it kind of just fades into the background.

 

I dunno, I would love to be a fly on the wall in those meetings where its discussed, I keep hoping for a leak or something so we at least get word on whats actually going on. Its just weird that they want to push out farther into different media, but at the same time drop the ball so hard on BL.

13 hours ago, cheywood said:

This gets a big ‘who cares?’ from me. Special editions of 15 year old books that weren’t particularly popular when they came out? Black Library really has lost the plot. 

 

I have a feeling we are getting this because Deathwatch won the 2025 Reader’s Choice and this is Parker’s best known work.  It looks like a nice package, but an anthology of all his W40K stuff would have made it more appealing.

 

As for the ‘Celebration’, they have only a few days left to provide information on anything that would make it worth celebrating.  So far, it’s more like a wake… 

7 hours ago, Felix Antipodes said:

 

I have a feeling we are getting this because Deathwatch won the 2025 Reader’s Choice and this is Parker’s best known work.  It looks like a nice package, but an anthology of all his W40K stuff would have made it more appealing.

 

As for the ‘Celebration’, they have only a few days left to provide information on anything that would make it worth celebrating.  So far, it’s more like a wake… 

At this point the most exciting thing to come out of the week is that hint the community team posted on IG or FB about Spears 2, which probably means absolutely nothing. Hopefully the next couple days at least include new books being announced.

 

My crazy idea is that, instead of a Rynn’s World LE no one needs, they should be commissioning that third Deathwatch novel Parker’s mentioned, if he’s even still writing at this point.  

To show the LE reprint of Rynn's World and not use this occasion to show the rumored(for an year at least) new model of Kantor is almost criminal.

 

But what was I thinking, they can't even create a proper celebration no more.

Let's face it though, the BL Celebrations have almost always been underwhelming. Honestly I was surprised it even happened at all this year, so while it's been lacklustre so far at least I didn't have my hopes up about it. And who knows, maybe we'll see some amazing, actually celebratory WarCom posts over the next few days...! (And pigs might fly.)

 

Very much agree with all the previous comments about where BL is these days, and just how little effort GW has put into it for the last few years. Sadly I don't think that's likely to change, given that GW seems content with the BL status quo and doesn't show any desire to actually grow BL and develop its potential. Hey ho. 

I'm mostly flabbergasted we haven't seen Solomon yet, particularly with the Alpha Legion coin for this month.

 

I've never been impressed with the post-Covid BL Celebrations, so the sad drip of reveals doesn't feel that out of the norm (though I could be remembering wrong), but the lack of a model is pretty jarring - especially when we know it's coming. Has me wondering if it'll even be tied to Black Library at all.

 

Edited by Lord Marshal

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