Upcoming BL Stuff 2026

[Felix Antipodes]

10 hours ago, DarkChaplain said:

Just FYI, Omnibuses are NEVER in the Mass-Market Paperback format. That was completely ditched by Black Library a decade ago, with the sole exception being for Horus Heresy releases, often a year after their original release.

 

Omnibuses are TRADE paperbacks, in the standard format. Yes, the font size is often reduced compared to novels, but that depends on how much content they need to squeeze in there with the 600-900 pages they got before the thing falls apart.

 

I'm also not aware of BL ever putting out an omnibus in hardback; even when they do trilogy hardbacks, it's usually box sets with each book being bound separately.

 

Apologies; bad wording on my part.  In my (prejudiced) tiny mind there is only HC or SC so I link trades and paperbacks as the same.

 

I had those early Gaunt’s Ghosts HC Omnibus editions in mind when I voiced my disappointment.  It also seemed a waste of a nice new cover.

 

Time for another session in the pain glove 

[Taliesin]

20 hours ago, Felix Antipodes said:

 

Apologies; bad wording on my part.  In my (prejudiced) tiny mind there is only HC or SC so I link trades and paperbacks as the same.

 

I had those early Gaunt’s Ghosts HC Omnibus editions in mind when I voiced my disappointment.  It also seemed a waste of a nice new cover.

 

Time for another session in the pain glove 

 

Thats alright I consider many of them to be mass market paperbacks as well and not trade paperbacks, they are so small.

I would say the omnibus of Fehervari I have , released this year, is a mass market paperback.

 

The trade paperbacks I have from other publishers are bigger.

Edited Tuesday at 10:38 PM by Taliesin

[DarkChaplain]

10 hours ago, Taliesin said:

 

Thats alright I consider many of them to be mass market paperbacks as well and not trade paperbacks, they are so small.

I would say the omnibus of Fehervari I have , released this year, is a mass market paperback.

 

The trade paperbacks I have from other publishers are bigger.

 

Those terms are industry standards.

 

The other Trade Paperbacks you have from other publishers are a different type of Trade Paperback. Black Library is using what is basically the standard anyway - the B-Format TPB, normed at 129mm x 198mm (or 5+1⁄8 in x 7+3⁄4 in for non-metric xenos folks).

 

"regular", non B-format Trades are normally the same as a previous hardback, same page format, numbering etc, but in a different, softcover binding. Both B-format but especially non-B use higher quality paper than Mass Market Paperbacks - which are flimsy and often have ink bleeding issues as well.

 

The exact dimensions of full-on TPBs differ between markets (UK has them slightly larger than B-formats at 135mm x 216mm, for instance (which is why I have to double-check whenever I order UK editions because they generally have better, more distinct cover art and also often less marketing junk on the cover).

 

Technically you'd also refer to comic trades as TPBs, but they're a different matter yet again.

 

Black Library made the switch from MMPB to B-Format Trades back when they were still publishing Time of Legends set 2 and Warhammer Heroes. I believe the first Horus Heresy book to switch to the trade format - notably the larger British format, not B-format! - was Angel Exterminatus, which was also the first Hardback release for the series; the trade was, as explained above, basically identical to the hardback as a regular Trade Paperback would be. 6-9 months later, the book got the Mass Market Paperback release, skipping over the in-between B-Format that every other non-hardback BL release would switch to (often mid-series at the time, which my shelf has never forgiven them for).

 

tl;dr BL does B-Format TPBs, which are the perfect compromise between compactness, sturdiness and pricing compared to "full-size" trades succeeding a hardcover release, which are often noticeably more expensive than Bs. Unlike MMPBs, B-format spines are much harder to destroy, too, rather than just being something that happens while reading and has to be lived with.

Edited Wednesday at 09:37 AM by DarkChaplain