Red_Shift Posted March 25, 2019 Share Posted March 25, 2019 (edited) I find the coming soon page to be a useful look ahead and ironically it results in my dropping into the local gw fairly regularly whereas I forget to check the gw site black library section as I find it a bit clunky, especially on my kindle. The coming soon section gave me impetus to keep checking back e.g. I know in May the new deathwatch book will be out so I am on the look out. I reckon they want me to pitch up at gw every Saturday but that just isn't going to happen! Edited March 26, 2019 by Red_Shift Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkChaplain Posted March 25, 2019 Share Posted March 25, 2019 (edited) It's even more frustrating when you're, say, in Germany, and go to a GW store in the city center to pick up one of those nice new books you definitely wanted to have but were direct exclusive.... just to be told they don't even stock WHFB, or direct exclusives, or only do Heresy, or german copies. But you could hop onto the computer and order it into their store and come back next week! Yeah... no. At that point I'll either tally if I got enough for the free shipping and wait the week or two til arrival, pick up the ebook, or wait til the general release and order on Amazon for half the hardback price.... where I can check upcoming releases and preorder THEIR paperbacks too, would you look at that? Deathwatch: Shadowbreaker by Steve Parker (ISBN 978-1781939635), out October 15, in paperback, for $16 or less with the preorder price guarantee. The hide and seek GW/BL are pulling does not incline me to make direct orders any more than their outdated payment method(s) on BL did 10 years ago, not with alternatives like Amazon, bookdepository (read: Amazon) or local bookstores being around. Bottom line: If they don't tell me what is coming out and when it is coming out, I can't get excited and buy the book early, and will likely stumble upon it via Amazon and have already placed an order (and seen the cover) before GW/BL deign to inform me of its existence themselves. By which point I already have a cheaper pricetag in mind and likely won't be cancelling my order anymore, unless early reviews say it is terribad and not worth the paper it is printed on. Edited March 25, 2019 by DarkChaplain Knockagh, Ranwulf, Kelborn and 3 others 6 Back to top Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kelborn Posted March 25, 2019 Share Posted March 25, 2019 Pretty much what DC said. As I'm German (it appears that this holds true to all non-English countries), I get my updates about coming BL releases way earlier with Amazon. Heck, I even get notifications for novels of the same Franchise I haven't read yet. Prices, dates, all kind of format.. BL Webpage feels somewhat obsolete. Heck, even local bookstores got new stuff earlier than the regular English Release Date, for example Spears and Corax. I already know the dates for a handfull of novels before they we're officially announced in BL. They really need to get this going again. The Community Site is a perfectly vessel for all BL related updates. With either an updated/ new homepage or as a sub Service of GW including the posdibility of purchasing the entire range via local GW stores COULD be a way to go with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Knockagh Posted March 25, 2019 Share Posted March 25, 2019 I don’t like the community site for updates. I have tried several times to get them to email me community updates but they never appear. I find it far too busy as usually I’m only looking for BL updates or rule books from FW or GW. I don’t want to hunt through a pile of jack to find them. Not being on Facebook or instagram means I’m totally in the dark now. It’s a shoddy little sales trick they are pulling to try to push impulse buys. No reply to my email yet Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fire Golem Posted March 26, 2019 Share Posted March 26, 2019 I don’t like the community site for updates. I have tried several times to get them to email me community updates but they never appear. I find it far too busy as usually I’m only looking for BL updates or rule books from FW or GW. I don’t want to hunt through a pile of jack to find them. Not being on Facebook or instagram means I’m totally in the dark now. It’s a shoddy little sales trick they are pulling to try to push impulse buys. No reply to my email yet You can filter the community site to just show Black Library news, if you press/hover on the news button at the top it comes up with a filter list, one of which is BL. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Red_Shift Posted March 26, 2019 Share Posted March 26, 2019 It's also useful to be able to quickly find the page with all the upcoming stuff on. Yes I can read through threads here (and I do) and check Amazon but it takes longer. I also can't find out about AoS releases here. I had noticed that the co.ing soon section wasn't accurate recently though, for example cadian honour was a surprise to me as I hadn't seen it listed for March. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Knockagh Posted March 28, 2019 Share Posted March 28, 2019 Reply Hi Peter, Thank you for your email. The "coming soon" section has been removed from our webs store as part of streamlining our site and services. There are no foreseeable plans to reinstate this particular feature however what we recommend is to sign up to the Black Library Newsletter as this alongside the Warhammer Community site, the Black Library Facebook page and the new Black Library Instagram page will keep you up to date on our of our latest news and product details. Kind regards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkChaplain Posted March 28, 2019 Share Posted March 28, 2019 Ah, yes... "Streamlining". EA and Activision did that too, recently, by laying off hundreds of employees. Streamlining is great business speak, innit? Taliesin, DarKnight, Lord Marshal and 1 other 4 Back to top Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Knockagh Posted March 28, 2019 Share Posted March 28, 2019 What annoys me about this is it’s a blatant attempt to try to increase impulse purchases. Which really says they believe the following. ‘We don’t believe our products are good enough to sell themselves based on their quality so we will try to flog you them by a shoddy marketing tactic.’ Books are always announced in advance, right across the industry. I can’t think of any other publishers who do this. GW and BLs relationship with fans achieved an all time low a few years ago because their quality suffered massively and they sold us some utter rubbish running on the coat tails of earlier great quality books. They then performed a seismic turnaround in all areas. While I’m not saying this move heralds a return to those days, the current quality is superb, it’s still a rubbish move that harkens back to a time when I nearly gave up on BL. If BL are having problems shifting great quality books they should perhaps look at other options than annoying their fan base. There ends my rant. Orwell84, DarkChaplain and caladancid 3 Back to top Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fire Golem Posted March 28, 2019 Share Posted March 28, 2019 (edited) Meh. They still announce them early, just in a different place. It’s harder to keep track of, and I don’t know why they’ve done it really, but it’s not the end of the world. Edited March 28, 2019 by fire golem Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cheywood Posted March 28, 2019 Share Posted March 28, 2019 (edited) If they start regularly announcing titles on the Community website or social media losing the coming soon section would be a minor inconvenience, but that’s a big if. At least the event previews will continue presumably. I don’t need to know the exact release date months in advance, but a general sense of what’s coming down the pipe is pretty essential to stoke the fires of anticipation. Edited March 28, 2019 by cheywood Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Red_Shift Posted March 28, 2019 Share Posted March 28, 2019 It's slightly worse for me I think as they have removed new release info from white dwarf, which has advantages but means that there is one less source to potentially give me a heads up about a release. I'm afraid with young kids it's easy for weekends to fly by when things come up! Bit more work for me I guess checking the new releases each month. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
USNCenturion Posted March 29, 2019 Share Posted March 29, 2019 I think Black Library up-charging books with a felt bookmark and hardcover is the more egregious business practice they partake in, but then again, they sell like hot cakes so what do I know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taliesin Posted March 29, 2019 Share Posted March 29, 2019 (edited) Reply Hi Peter, Thank you for your email. The "coming soon" section has been removed from our webs store as part of streamlining our site and services. There are no foreseeable plans to reinstate this particular feature however what we recommend is to sign up to the Black Library Newsletter as this alongside the Warhammer Community site, the Black Library Facebook page and the new Black Library Instagram page will keep you up to date on our of our latest news and product details. Kind regards. I got the exact same reply Meh. They still announce them early, just in a different place. It’s harder to keep track of, and I don’t know why they’ve done it really, but it’s not the end of the world. What they are doing now is really not at all in any way similar to a coming soon section. So its just a net loss, removing that section, its not like you get the info elsewhere. They are trying to direct traffic away to the comminity site mostly, as they explain. That site will probably post some newsworthy stuff about upcoming releases but they are typically vague about when *anything* comes out, not just BL products, and they definitely wont show it 3 months ahead of release. Plus the info will be extremely scattered. Edited March 29, 2019 by Taliesin Felix Antipodes, Tymell, DarkChaplain and 3 others 6 Back to top Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DukeLeto69 Posted March 29, 2019 Share Posted March 29, 2019 (edited) So on a personal note I HATE the fact that BL have removed the coming soon section. I liked a definitive release schedule to get excited about and plan my reading to. For example, knowing when Anarch was coming out meant I knew how to pace myself for a re-read of Warmaster etc. I don't want to decipher a community or newsletter post. I certainly don't want to join Facebook...ever! But in full disclosure...I work in marketing at a very senior level for a very big organisation... There is no way the Head of Marketing at GW would have made this decision without some numbers to back it up. His/her team would have run the web analytics and checked the traffic levels for the coming soon section and I can only deduce that it was lower than we believe. They would have checked how much bounce traffic it generated and how many actual orders and pre-orders it generated. If the coming soon section had been a massive driver of sales they would never have gotten rid of it. GW hired a new Head of Marketing a couple of years back and their impact has been massive and almost universally (until now) positive in the community. They started actively re-engaging and generating great content. Unless that person has now left then I can't see them reversing that decision without good data to back up their choice. But personally I hate losing the coming soon section...doh! Edited March 30, 2019 by DukeLeto69 Knockagh and Roomsky 2 Back to top Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Knockagh Posted March 29, 2019 Share Posted March 29, 2019 (edited) I’m quite sure your right. The decision had to have been made based on data. But unfortunately for analysts, customer satisfaction and a companies relationship with its customer base can’t be measured by data. Sometimes good practice isn’t following the data. That’s where good management decisions are important, looking at trends and making a decision based on the bigger picture. Edited March 29, 2019 by Punishing Pete DukeLeto69 1 Back to top Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkChaplain Posted March 30, 2019 Share Posted March 30, 2019 I would argue it's not quite so clear cut, since you couldn't actually preorder Coming Soon titles anymore for a while - only from the week prior to release. Before, that wasn't a thing, the preorder windows were much wider, but the past year or so, they narrowed them down significantly, which also - again - makes it much easier for customers to say "screw it, Amazon it is" instead - because Amazon has no qualms letting you preorder, at a cheaper price, with a price guarantee, even when the book itself may not be finished yet (see: The House of Night and Chain, listed for the end of October and still going through revisions). If their bounce rates were that high, I'd argue it's got more to do with their narrow order windows, their badly-organized store where books will sometimes not even show up under new releases, or even their system categories. Nevermind their moronic, antiquated refusal to implement any other payment options despite credit card - even while GW and FW sites support both, and have for ages now. Out of all the GW property stores, BL is the least advanced and customer-friendly - which is fatal in a world where Amazon has conquered much of the market and many other retail chains exist that people probably browse anyway. BL has managed to maintain ancient barriers between themselves and their customers for so long, it would seriously surprise me if they hadn't lost a great deal of money by the way of customers simply looking and ordering elsewhere, where they don't have to pay significant shipping costs unless they reach an arbitrary, and ludicrously high, free shipping threshold that amounts to what, 4 paperbacks in a single order? In a world where in most regions you don't pay *any* shipping on book orders via sites like bookdepository or amazon, and get it faster than via BL direct? Frankly, whenever I look at the BL site, I notice how clunky, badly designed and mismanaged it is. They've progressively gotten rid of information on store pages, like ISBN numbers, and for a time they didn't even show author names. With the redesign, they also killed the faction icons book pages used to feature, so fans could at least see "hey, this thing has Eldar in it!", although those were never searchable (when they should have been, a tag system isn't rocket science...). And then you have stuff like books being announced as coming with audio books, including on pre-release banners on the site, just to get none. Inconsistent coverage in audio overall, and the past 5 or so months saw a host of Horus Heresy audiobooks delayed by weeks if not longer - for their flagship series! There've been so many questionable decisions, of which the repeated removal of the Coming Soon section is just the latest of, that I cannot help but consider Black Library a grossly mismanaged. Seeing them pointing people towards Facebook, in 2019, just reinforces that feeling of confusion. Wulfburk, Roomsky, Tymell and 7 others 10 Back to top Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fire Golem Posted March 30, 2019 Share Posted March 30, 2019 At least the community survey is coming up. I haven’t really encountered these issues with the BL site because I generally preorder the new books I want to read badly from GW, or get the eBook, but I’ll definitely be mentioning some of this in my survey response. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DukeLeto69 Posted March 30, 2019 Share Posted March 30, 2019 @PP & @DC good points both. It does indeed strike me as an odd retrograde step when anyone monitoring community reaction would have known how pleased we all were when coming soon came back a year or so ago. As I said I can only deduce from this decision that data indicated it would be a cost effective move and they thought they could offset it with other channels. I don't agree with the decision, it just feels weird. @DC is correct...BL really really need a new website and find ways to encourage fans to pre-order direct rather than go to Amazon. Have to say I am not sure on how authors are remunerated beyond 1) Advance based on previous sales levels. 2) Royalties @ X% of wholesale price earned once advance paid back... But with the massive discounting Amazon do (and argue that they shift volume and reach bigger potential audience to offset lower wholesale price) the authors, I believe, earn less per book sold then they do from direct BL sales. So surely the authors would want BL to find ways to encourage more direct sales? It is all very odd but my point was it simply couldn't just be some random decision with absolutely no logic behind it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Knockagh Posted March 30, 2019 Share Posted March 30, 2019 Back in the bad old days when GW senior managers used to mock their fan base as just people who bought their stuff regardless of how good it was, I would have expected a crummy decision like this but I had hoped those days were behind us. I hope with a couple of good years of customer relations and rocketing share prices behind them they aren’t returning to the arrogance of the past. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Red_Shift Posted March 30, 2019 Share Posted March 30, 2019 To be fair I don't think I've ever ordered direct from the black library site for the reasons DarkChaplain says, and I've bought almost every 40k book they have ever released (I started when they opened up and lagged during the darkest years just before 'new gw' and picked up again when they repented). The coming soon section however did tell me what to look out for and has tended to send me into store or to the website. I try to go into store as its local just to support them; especially as for books I nearly always pay retail anyway. So if they have got rid of it because it didn't generate sales numbers on the black library site they are foolish. The gw site offers free shipping over certain values and free shipping to store so it seems fairly obvious sales will go from there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Felix Antipodes Posted April 1, 2019 Share Posted April 1, 2019 (edited) They must be getting some heavy pushback on this. From Facebook: Quote Looking for the Black Library Coming Soon page? Subscribe to the newsletter instead for your monthly dose of forthcoming releases – the first one will be sent on the 6th of May! Subscribe below, and keep an eye out on Warhammer Community and our social pages for updates: http://bit.ly/BlackLibraryNewsletterSignUpl Unquote Edited April 1, 2019 by Felix Antipodes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Knockagh Posted April 1, 2019 Share Posted April 1, 2019 (edited) I don’t know about the rest of you but my inbox is rammed full of circulars like this. Having to hunt through my inbox every time I want to check a release date isn’t overly appealing. I probably need to set up a Black Library coming soon sub folder and start marking dates on my calendar..... it really shouldn’t be that hard to keep up with a reading hobby, should it?? I reckon the whole thing is an April fool and the section will be back up tomorrow Edited April 1, 2019 by Punishing Pete Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cheywood Posted April 1, 2019 Share Posted April 1, 2019 (edited) I’d rather have the books listed on the webpage still, but having to keyword search my inbox takes a few seconds at most. Overall not really a major change. Stupid of BL not to come out and announce this change the day they eliminated the coming soon section, but maybe they weren’t expecting people to care. Edited April 1, 2019 by cheywood Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mr.crusader Posted April 1, 2019 Share Posted April 1, 2019 They posted the same message on Instagram yesterday but now its not available. Guessing they got lots of negative comments and decided to delete it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now