Black Library 2016 Subscription

[Erik Setzer]

So, apparently, you can buy the "Black Library 2016 Complete Digital Offer" right now, and it will get you every digital release they make for 2016:

http://www.blacklibrary.com/warhammer-40000/40k-feat/bl-2016-digital-complete.html

Just $1000!

No, I'm not kidding. That's the actual price.

Mind you, this also only applies to the fiction, not Warhammer Digital's releases. From the description: "...every single eBook novel, novella and Quick Read, and every MP3 audiobook and audio drama released in 2016..."

I have to say, if a company can release so much fiction in one year that a thousand dollars is some kind of insane discount, they're churning out a lot of stuff. Which might explain why the quality is so inconsistent.

I guess if you must read or listen to everything they produce, and have the cash up front, it's not a bad plan. But I imagine for pretty much all of us, this is a deal to skip on.

[Mr Mystery]

I guess it's great if you're a fluff nut.

As much as I enjoy Black Library's output, I'm only really into the AoS stuff, and the odd HH Novella.

That. And I really don't have £600 to hand right now!

[Erik Setzer]

It feels weird to me, because for that money I could buy over 200 print novels at full retail, more if they're ebooks, and even more if I go to a used book store, and then I can pick and choose the stories I want. Either the products are massively overpriced, or they're chucking out way too much stuff in the coming year, without regards for consistency in quality.

It just seems so... strange. I keep trying to wrap my head around how someone came up with this idea, and I can't. Even if your company is in dire need of as much cash as possible RIGHT NOW, an idea like this is silly. You're barely going to sell any, and to the average person it comes across horribly, especially with the backlash $50-$60 "season passes" are getting for computer games (where you at least know you're paying for additional content for a game you already own). For someone to actually order this subscription, they'd have to be in love with *all* of GW's fiction (in both settings... HH is just historical 40K), *and* have a good wad of money just lying around. I'm guessing there's not many people out there who match that description. Like, less than a dozen. Not really worth spending money writing up an email campaign for.

[Mr Mystery]

Thing is, this offer didn't cost them anything to put together. Being ebooks, it's just a file they need to assemble from stuff already written.

If it was full of exclusive books, then I'd be worried.

[Asymmetrical Xeno]

I do wonder if there are people out there that can afford things like that and how many of them there are. I'm guessing they must live in better houses than I do and possibly wipe their arses with gold leaf toilet paper.

[Erik Setzer]

Thing is, this offer didn't cost them anything to put together. Being ebooks, it's just a file they need to assemble from stuff already written.

If it was full of exclusive books, then I'd be worried.

Ah, but it *did* cost them something. You're paying someone time to come up with the wording and put together an email. The art team has to create graphics. The email team has to set up the email, distro lists, etc. If they're using a third party to send emails (almost a guarantee), then they're paying at least some small amount for that.

Everything in marketing comes with a cost.

- - - Updated - - -

Also, got my math all mixed up earlier, meant to say over 100 retail price novels, not 200. Not sure how I got it doubled.

Still, that's a lot...

[Mr Mystery]

Pretty much a negligible cost though, compared to landing the odd £600 order.

I dare say if I added up my usual BL purchases over a year, I wouldn't hit the £600. But there's mentalists out there who would appreciate the pretty significant saving on offer.

[WinterIsComing]

Thing is, this offer didn't cost them anything to put together. Being ebooks, it's just a file they need to assemble from stuff already written.

If it was full of exclusive books, then I'd be worried.

Exactly, it doesn't cost them much. Maybe some man hours and a good email campaigning and collaboration tool, which as you can see herel (https://www.1and1.com/microsoft-exchange), cn be pretty cheap. But other than that, nothing they aren't already investing in (internet, email services, man power).

Why anyone would waste time and energy creating a campaign that is only likely to sway a very small amount of people is the same reason why Nigerian scammers keep up their email campaigns saying a rich dead distant relative wants to leave you money. It doesn't cost them, and they will most likely be ignored by 99% of people who are aware that this is ridiculous (or at least I hope so), but the odd chance that they can get that 1% on the hook, then it is worth the investment. Email marketing campaigns are easy and cheap, so any return on investment makes it worth the little bit of work that they put into it.

@Erik Setzer: Obviously to most this seems like an incredibly overpriced "deal" and you're right, hardly anyone will go for it. But even if the "less than a dozen" do.....well the company just made a couple of grand for something that maybe took them a day to put together and about a minute to distribute to a wide mailing list.

[Psychosplodge]

I dare say if I added up my usual BL purchases over a year, I wouldn't hit the £600. .

I might when you consider the price of the hardbacks they release, but I'd want a physical product for that, so I'll carry on with the pay as you go reading model.

[Mr Mystery]

Exactly, it doesn't cost them much. Maybe some man hours and a good email campaigning and collaboration tool, which as you can see herel (https://www.1and1.com/microsoft-exchange), cn be pretty cheap. But other than that, nothing they aren't already investing in (internet, email services, man power).

Why anyone would waste time and energy creating a campaign that is only likely to sway a very small amount of people is the same reason why Nigerian scammers keep up their email campaigns saying a rich dead distant relative wants to leave you money. It doesn't cost them, and they will most likely be ignored by 99% of people who are aware that this is ridiculous (or at least I hope so), but the odd chance that they can get that 1% on the hook, then it is worth the investment. Email marketing campaigns are easy and cheap, so any return on investment makes it worth the little bit of work that they put into it.

@Erik Setzer: Obviously to most this seems like an incredibly overpriced "deal" and you're right, hardly anyone will go for it. But even if the "less than a dozen" do.....well the company just made a couple of grand for something that maybe took them a day to put together and about a minute to distribute to a wide mailing list.

There may even be a saving for BL on every sale. If I'm reading it correctly, you don't get the physical books, just the electronic versions.

This would be a way to get people reading without having to print a copy for them, which is one of the larger costs for a publisher (and indeed why ebooks are so popular for self-published works)

[Erik Setzer]

Emails don't cost "next to nothing." They might not cost much, but they do have a cost.

I've had to deal with enough email marketing, I still work closely with the email guys. Heck, even my job, you could technically say that creating a new targeted content page "doesn't cost much" (until you actually look into it). But then you actually add up the cost.

What other costs would be associated here? Well, first you have to create a new product ID/SKU for the subscription and add it to the database. Then you need to program behavior to auto-deliver products to people who've purchased said ID. You also need to make sure that anyone who's purchased it doesn't get targeted advertising recommending they purchase something they've already effectively purchased, so all those other product IDs have to be told to recognize that particular ID as a prior purchase of that product. All of that takes times and resources. It adds up.

My job is ecommerce. I'm involved in email marketing, web marketing, I work with the guys who run our website, I know the costs associated with this kind of stuff. It's not as negligible as you think.

[WinterIsComing]

They might not cost much

That's precisely out point. We know they have a cost, but the cost is low enough and the ROI is high enough, that makes them effective and worth it. It's not that we think the cost is negligible, it's that we think the campaign is relatively easy and the reward is high enough to make it worth it.

And an email campaign is still cheaper than some of the other options that were mentioned already, like hosting an event, or purchasing ad space. Pros outweigh the cons.

I'm also in a related field and also know many of the costs involved. If done well, it still has a higher ROI.

[Path Walker]

How in all the living realms of hell has this been decided on something to moan about?
The company offers at least half the retail price off in a subscription package if you pay up front, if you have the money and are going to spend that much anyway (and remember, they're the ones with the metrics to see how many people they're targeting) its an insane price.

I spend at least £600 a year on books, easily. Not just GW, granted, because I'm a cultured ****ing man of the world, but I like to read nonsense space marine books too. All in all, with a few books and shorts from them, I'm down with at least £20 a month. I currently spend (and am happy with) £240 but you can easily see how £600 for EVERYTHING is suddenly not actually a bad deal.

And people spend a lot more, I've seen people spend fortune on fluff, there are a lot of collectors, completists and just big fluff fans out there. If you're one of them and spend £50 a month, this is a deal worth thinking about.

With the software they have (that does all the crap Erik is painting as individual laborious tasks) it would take the cost of writing a page of copy, entering in the details to the database and writing up an email, that's not even a days work for a person, its not cheap, no, its certainly not free but for a business will millions in profit a year, they can take the risk, they don't need to sell many of these to have made it worthwhile.

But really, this just shows the stupid lengths some people will to do criticise GW. This isn't the act of a company that needs the money quick (because the £6k they'll make from this isn't much of anything to them), but it's like every company, they want to lock the customer into a deal and get their money before they change their mind and spend it elsewhere, its better for them to have £600 now than risk not having £1200.

[Erik Setzer]

That's precisely out point. We know they have a cost, but the cost is low enough and the ROI is high enough, that makes them effective and worth it. It's not that we think the cost is negligible, it's that we think the campaign is relatively easy and the reward is high enough to make it worth it.

And an email campaign is still cheaper than some of the other options that were mentioned already, like hosting an event, or purchasing ad space. Pros outweigh the cons.

I'm also in a related field and also know many of the costs involved. If done well, it still has a higher ROI.


Yeah, again, see the note about them having to create a new SKU and associate other SKUs with it and code new behavior into the backend, all of which comes with an associated cost. It's more than just an email campaign. The campaign is to advertise. There's other work involved.

I forgot how easy people think working on websites is. I've been sheltered from dealing with clients too long...

[Psychosplodge]

Adding a new item to our database takes all of four minutes, and two of those are because the firm is tight and bought ****ty internet.

[Erik Setzer]

Adding a new item to our database takes all of four minutes, and two of those are because the firm is tight and bought ****ty internet.

Depends on the DB setup. But there's also the tying other SKUs to the new SKU and setting up the behavior to have the store realize when a person already has a book.

Takes a bit more than a couple minutes, and is likely an ongoing process as they almost certainly don't have their whole year's worth of BL SKUs laid out already (and things could change as the year goes on, adding products or pushing some back).

Maybe it's just the mentality I work with and my coworkers and managers work with, but I feel like if you spend any amount of time or money (or both) on something, it should have a really good ROI. There are things BL's doing that have a good chance at ROI. This "deal" is likely not one of them. It'll probably net a slight profit, but that really depends on how many products they're releasing and how cheap they are to produce. The more of a deal it is for the consumer, the less profit G-Dub's getting from it.

[Psychosplodge]

But they're only e-books. Once they've paid to write them the production costs are non-existent. it's not like they're sending everyone a printed copy, so they're almost pure profit.

[Mr Mystery]

Yup.

Me, I like the e-book subscriptions. Got all of Call of Archaon that way, and I'll be doing it again for Bladestorm - because any saving is welcome.

Then consider the (quite possibly intended) side effect....if it's AoS, it ends up on my little background round up. This is shared with BoLS, and really quite popular on the FB AoS group. Sure, most will go 'that's nice' and be about their merry way - but enough will read my ramblings, and pick up a copy themselves - so by selling to me at a discount, the word of mouth can generate additional sales.

There's also something few publishers have that BL need to consider. For 40k and Warhammer, the background is the drug that keeps many playing.

Get me reading all of your output, and the chances of me reading something that sends me down the dark but shockingly well trodden path of starting a new army goes up massively. For instance, I'm currently quite ambivalent toward Eldar, Dark Eldar, IG and Chaos in 40k. But a single story can quickly change that - the novels explore the minutiae in a way a Codex simply can't.

Example? Skitarius and Tech-Priest. Really good reads and give a good insight into the Ad Mech. If you're on the fence, these two will perk up your interest.

So take the small hit on the cheapest part of your operation (e-books), and you stand to make up the difference, and then some, in miniature sales.

[Erik Setzer]

But they're only e-books. Once they've paid to write them the production costs are non-existent. it's not like they're sending everyone a printed copy, so they're almost pure profit.

Eh, it's not that simple, but that's getting a bit off track.

They're definitely working hard to keep it just "pure profit." Lazy bums stopped producing Kindle versions in a lot of cases, and ePubs stink. It was bad enough when they weren't putting in any serious effort, but to just not even put in a cursory effort... meh. Too many of their digital publications are coming out in an inferior format and I have to try to convert them (which ends up even messier) to use them on my device of choice. Cutting corners like that helps them keep a profit running, but it makes for a horrible product. (Still haven't had much luck with the Path to Glory stuff I purchased because of that. Pisses me off that they stopped doing .mobi versions, at least my codices were .mobi.)