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GW's Black Library Sales are slumping slightly. (A discussion)


shinros

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Even when they've a major event they fail to advertise - its BL week and so far the GW news sites haven't made much noise about the new short stories going out every day nor about the event at the end of the week either. Even the banner at the top of the community page links to an odd place - the storefinder page rather than to a page detailing what's going on at the event, what will be sold and THEN linking the storefinder. 

They've been mentioning BL though, just not highlighting the new short stories, but instead talking about other series. 

 

Just some odd choices. 

I'd also say GW needs to do more of those box and book bundles. I know I only read Dune because I got a copy of it in paperback with the Emperor Battle for Dune game years and years ago. I think if GW put paperback (not hardback) books into a few more boxed sets so that the book was almost a loss-leader concept. Then it might help spark more reading interest. In the digital age they could even do book codes through BL - Buy a Battleforce set and get a book code etc...

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2 hours ago, Overread said:

Just some odd choices. 

I'd also say GW needs to do more of those box and book bundles. I know I only read Dune because I got a copy of it in paperback with the Emperor Battle for Dune game years and years ago. I think if GW put paperback (not hardback) books into a few more boxed sets so that the book was almost a loss-leader concept. Then it might help spark more reading interest. In the digital age they could even do book codes through BL - Buy a Battleforce set and get a book code etc...

This is a great point. There's a wargame called Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago that I preordered a bunch of stuff for, and a book based on it was included as part of the bundle. I would never have thought to buy a book in that setting otherwise, but in the end I read the whole thing. It turned out to not be very good… but if I had enjoyed it, it would've been a great gateway to their other Frostgrave novels. It could totally have made sense to, say, bundle the entire Soul Wars novel in with the current starter set.

(Side note: if you ever feel like Black Library novels are of shaky quality compared to mainstream fantasy stuff, try reading novels put out by other wargaming companies, or even novels based on videogames. It really could be a lot worse...) 

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Honestly, most non-tie-in fantasy is pretty awful too. Sturgeon's Law is in full effect when it comes to literature. I think most BL authors arent worth reading, but the good ones, like Reynolds and ADB, are a better read than 90% of other fantasy/scifi. Other tie-in universes, like Star Wars, are shockingly terrible, even compared to standard BL bolter ******.

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16 hours ago, Overread said:

Even when they've a major event they fail to advertise - its BL week and so far the GW news sites haven't made much noise about the new short stories going out every day nor about the event at the end of the week either. Even the banner at the top of the community page links to an odd place - the storefinder page rather than to a page detailing what's going on at the event, what will be sold and THEN linking the storefinder. 

They've been mentioning BL though, just not highlighting the new short stories, but instead talking about other series. 

 

Just some odd choices. 

I'd also say GW needs to do more of those box and book bundles. I know I only read Dune because I got a copy of it in paperback with the Emperor Battle for Dune game years and years ago. I think if GW put paperback (not hardback) books into a few more boxed sets so that the book was almost a loss-leader concept. Then it might help spark more reading interest. In the digital age they could even do book codes through BL - Buy a Battleforce set and get a book code etc...

Very good point. I'm on the Community page every day, and didn't know anything about the short stories, clicked on the event link at first which led me to the store finder page, which in order let me think huh? and giving up on the whole thing. 

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