Identity

[Vivia]

They won't fool us again!

[Athelassan]

I don't think the price rises on the standard fiction have been out of order particularly, certainly not compared to the book market as a whole.

Taking 2009 as a comparator isn't entirely fair since before that BL had held their prices for five years (they went up from £5.99 to £6.99 in 2004). In 2009-10 they went up to £7.99 for the A-formats which was in line with the market standard at the time.

For comparison with other B-format novels, I've grabbed some random recent titles, from all genres, and checked the prices:

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, purchased 2013: RRP £7.99
Dracula Cha Cha Cha, purchased 2012: RRP £7.99
The Perfect Fool, purchased 2013: RRP £10.99
Look to Windward, purchased 2013: RRP £8.99
Alone in Berlin, purchased 2010: RRP £9.99
Ordinary Thunderstorms, purchased 2010, RRP £7.99
Submarine, purchased 2011, RRP £8.99
Essays in Love, purchased 2010, RRP £7.99

All of those are in the B-format that BL use, and as I've mentioned before A-formats are increasingly uncommon (I have only one from the last five years, other than BL books themselves); BL bucked the trend by continuing to use them as long as they did. It looks like BL is pitched around the middle if not towards the lower end of the current price bracket for fiction (non-fiction in the same format tends to be higher).

I really don't think the problem is that the book prices are too high. If anything, BL haven't pushed their prices for the standard paperbacks as high as they might. My issue is with the staggered book release across three formats. I can't think of any other novel line or publisher that does that, and I'm really not sure what it achieves for BL.

Ath

[schaferwhat‽]

pricing of physical books seems fine, though I'd argue that they're flogging the exclusive editions a bit too much for horse corpse sanctity.

It is when they collect an omnibus of the digital index astartes pieces that cost £3.50 each for significantly less than the price of all of them together that it seems a bit wrong. Like they're abusing the customer for trusting them and buying the individual works.

[shadowhawk2008]

pricing of physical books seems fine, though I'd argue that they're flogging the exclusive editions a bit too much for horse corpse sanctity.

I think the discussion is going a bit off-topic right now with all the talk of pricing, but I just want to chime in here to say that I agree with Schafe on this point. They are going all-out with these limited edition books and its a major turn-off. There's not even any artificial exclusivity anymore, given how many books are coming out.

Eh. Whatever. They'll do what they'll do. Everybody follows the scrip.

With regards to the identity, this place has always been one of mixed interest where the unifying factor is that we all love BL books. Whether we discuss the books or do fanfiction or the gaming side, we've always covered a wide range of topics, and that's fine, and that's how it should remain.

Promoting the anthologies is fine and all, but you have to think about just what you are trying to do here. If you really want to make it all official and all, that is, go full professional, then you really should look for a better venue than what exists currently. I see no reason at all why we can't have a specific subforum to discuss the Bolthole anthologies and keep all relevant discussion limited to that space, with the occasional promo stuff on the blog, etc.

This is a place where we, first and foremost, come to chat together and hang out, and despite the fact that so many people of late have been getting published (traditionally or otherwise), it should remain a place where we can all essentially chill out.

I'm sure other people have already said all this before, and in greater detail no doubt, but this is a message that bears repeating.

[schaferwhat‽]

I think it is relevant in so far as we are a fansite in an environment where fandom is hard to maintain. We will always have the IP whichis cool to play with.

[Therion]

Was browsing this thread recently and it reminded me about something.

I find it mildly infuriating how Wh40k fans in Poland were treated by BL. Like, around when this very thread was started, without warning, they withdrawn from publishing deal with local publisher, Fabryka Słów which has published first 5 Horus Heresy books here and moved all their translations inhouse, which of course didn't include Polish.
Horus Rising was published on 2012-06-29. The last published book was Fulgrim on 2013-05-06.

That's 5 novels in a year. It's 2018-07-29, so by now it should be volume 36 - The Path of Heaven.

But it isn't.

The series were picked up again back in 2016 by Copernicus Corporation which used to publish BL books here in the 2000s. But, it started with Descent of the Angels - first 5 tomes are impossible to buy because they are extremely OOP and to make things worse, new books are a the different format.

So, now we're at volume 12 - Thousand Sons, 8 years after it was first published. Thanks, Black Library!

I bought my mother Descent of the Angels, my mother bought Fallen Angels will probably buy some of others, but I don't see myself collecting all of them, even most of them. Especially without first 5.

[Athelassan]

I think it is relevant in so far as we are a fansite in an environment where fandom is hard to maintain. We will always have the IP whichis cool to play with.

With this thread being bumped, I encountered this statement.

Funny how things turn out.

I mean, yes, the WHF IP does still exist. GW didn't come round to my house and pulp all the books pertaining to it. And they appear to have realised that whichever monkey was in charge of things a couple of years ago threw the baby out with the bathwater, and are doing this "world that was" stuff.

But, much like a real baby, there's a limit to the abuse you can inflict and still expect it to be recoverable. The baby's dead.

Ath

[Xisor]

I think it's more than dead, it's now undead. And with that comes all the emotions associated with... disrespecting the dead. Dishonouring memory, mutilating corpses, trial for... murder? Wilful neglect?

I know the hysteria around the death of the setting gets fobbed off a lot (and to an extent: rightly so), but there's a second baby and a second volume of bathwater: being upset that a dearly loved IP was treated abysmally isn't as petty as folk make it out to be. Or perhaps it is a bit... "sad", but futo hell with it: I am and remain sad about it.

----

I eagerly await the reveal in AoS: that AoS stems from one of the bubbles Gotrek, Teclis, and Felix see in Giantslayer, or somesuch. And that the Warhammer World as it is, thrives somewhere. Or is on the cusp of death, but that that weird bit about kidnapping and sacrificing a bucket of named heroes at the outset of the End Times never came to pass. Perhaps Kraka Drak still stands.

[Therion]

lol, I just realised that one major source of lenghty discussions in the past was Lord_Crull arguing with whole forum about Ultramarines in 100 posts long threads XD .