The Solar War On-Sale and What Happened Next

“First Siege of Terra book sells out in minutes!” As a headline that has a good ring to it, right? It could even have been the line that Black Library took publicly after the £50 Limited Edition hardback of John French’s The Solar War went on sale – and did indeed sell out – this Saturday. As with many a headline, however, while it’s technically accurate it doesn’t entirely do justice to the reality of what happened. In this article I’m taking a look at what happened when the latest Limited Edition hardback went on sale, how Black Library responded and what I would love to see in future.

This is going to be a fairly long post, so please feel free to skip it if you’re not bothered about LE hardbacks. If you were caught up in the confusion on Saturday morning, however, or are generally just interested in this sort of situation, then read on. I hope it comes across that I’ve written this because I really care about what happens with Black Library releases, and because I think it’s possible for BL to do better, rather than because I just want to be critical for the sake of it.

You can also see Black Library’s public comments on what happened and what they’re going to do about it in this Community article, which chimes with some of what I’m talking about here.

Firstly, I want to quickly talk about what I mean by ‘an on-sale’ in the title of this post. In my day job (yep, sadly I have to do a real job as well as writing Track of Words) I’ve worked for quite a few years in the arts industry, specifically on the ticketing side of things. I’ve spent a lot of time involved one way or another in event tickets going on sale, and specifically dealing with situations where there’s a limited supply of tickets and potentially massive customer demand. When I talk about an on-sale I just mean that initial moment when tickets are first made available – or in this case when books are made available. It can be a really tricky situation to manage, but with careful planning it’s possible to handle whatever happens.

Next, it’s worth saying that overall I think Black Library tend to do a good job with the logistical side of releases, by which I mean getting new products live on their website at the right times and available to as many people as possible (especially considering the insane release schedule). There have been ups and downs of course with previous Limited Edition releases, but it’s tricky to find a balance for these things and appeal to the widest number of people, and largely it seems to me that they’ve got it about right. There’s no perfect solution, but I thought the way that BL experimented with things like limited-time releases for some of the previous Heresy LEs was particularly smart, as that allowed them to be a little bit more agile and respond to the demand for each book accordingly.

What happened?

Let’s quickly break down what happened on Saturday morning with The Solar War. As the first book in the Siege of Terra series it was inevitable that this was going to be popular, but as it turned out that’s quite the understatement. It did indeed sell out phenomenally quickly, but not before the demand crashed the Black Library website – the first time that’s happened for ages! As confusion reigned and fans were left frustrated and increasingly unhappy, ccess to the BL site went up and down, supply via the Games Workshop website dwindled and then reappeared, and all the while official Black Library channels remained stubbornly silent (well, mostly…but more on that later).

As far as I’ve been able to see, it looked like The Solar War was well and truly sold out, although according to the latest Community post there were a handful of copies left which will go back on sale later on. On the surface it’s a good thing to sell out – it’s great for John French that so many fans wanted to buy and read his book, it’s a promising sign that there’s such enthusiasm for the Siege of Terra, and it’s obviously good for Black Library overall. It’s also worth bearing in mind that when there’s limited supply and a lot of demand you’re always going to end up with some people disappointed – that’s just the way of it. Things like purchase limits (which I’ll mention later on) can have an impact, but while it can be frustrating for fans it’s simply inevitable that demand will exceed supply.

Look beyond the surface, however, and I think there are several issues with how the process was managed which led to problems that simply didn’t need to happen. For me it mostly boils down to communication, or in this case a worrying lack of communication. Firstly, I’ll say this – when on-sales go big, however much preparation you do there’s a good chance that something’s going to go wrong. You simply can’t plan for every eventuality, and it’s not always possible to get extra server capacity (or any other tech-related resource) just in case you need it, so it’s sensible to prepare for a crisis and make sure you’ve got both contingencies and a comms plan ready in case you need them. If you can respond well to a crisis and own it, then fans or customers will usually be forgiving of the problem itself.

It looked to me as though BL/GW did have contingencies in place – they were certainly able to react relatively quickly when the BL site fell over, and move stock over to the GW site – but what they clearly didn’t have was a comms plan. That is, unless the plan was to say nothing…which isn’t a great plan. It’s clear that the expectation was for this to be a very popular book – just look at the Warhammer Community article announcing the release date, which included this line: “We’re letting you know about this one early, as it’s expected to sell out incredibly fast.” It’s a whole other question whether or not the day before really counts as ‘early’ (short answer: obviously it doesn’t), but there’s no doubt that BL expected this to sell quickly.

Many fans will remember the website crashing for past LE releases such as Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s novella Aurelian. I think it’s fair to say that BL as a whole might be expected to have at least some institutional memories of this happening before, however we don’t know how many (if any) of the relevant people who were working there at the time are still in situ. It’s entirely possible that the people responsible for administering the BL website and its infrastructure now are all new in post since the last website crash…but it’s hard not to imagine they’d at least have the past data to check in advance. Certainly you’d hope that any ecommerce site would do their due diligence before an on-sale like this.

What happened – a timeline

Let’s take a look at a rough timeline of what happened on the day – these are approximate timings, but I was trying to keep a vague eye on when things were happening so they’re roughly right. All times are GMT, and I’m looking at it from a purely UK perspective (i.e. I don’t know what happened with the GW site for other localisations).

• 9am: the BL site starts to slow down, presumably as a great many F5 keys are pressed repeatedly.
• 9.45am: BL.com fully crashes, returning unavailable errors.
• 9.55am: the product page goes live on the UK localisation of GW.com and the book is available to buy.
• 10.05am: UK GW sells out in minutes.
• 10.20am: an automated marketing email from BL is sent to subscribers.
• 10:35am: additional stock is live on GW.com.
• 10:40am: BL.com finally becomes accessible and the book is available to buy…albeit slowly.

I stopped checking times after that, but after a while the product page disappeared from BL.com, before eventually reappearing as sold out. By about midday (possible a little earlier) I think it was sold out on the UK GW site too, and as far as I can see there hasn’t been any change on that since.

It’s worth repeating here – the fact that the BL site crashed isn’t the issue. That’s sort of inevitable really, and something that could in theory have been handled without upsetting fans (too much). The thing that I find surprising and disappointing is that during that on-sale period (i.e. from approximately 9am GMT when the BL site started slowing down to perhaps midday when everything was sold out) the only communication from Black Library of any sort was an automated email featuring a to-buy link which didn’t work and which arrived with subscribers after the book had sold out via the only accessible channel. That was the crucial time when BL could have been managing expectations and reassuring confused, frustrated fans that things weren’t as bad as they seemed.

It’s all about communication

Let’s be honest – that’s not a nice situation for anyone at BL to be in, and it’s the sort of crisis that’s really tough to deal with. I’ve been there myself and it’s horrible dealing with the pressure of figuring out not just what to do but what to say to customers – writing even the simplest of messages suddenly feels like the most stressful task imaginable. It’s not nice at all, and I feel for whoever was working on the website at the time. I was lucky, as I managed to get a copy in the first wave of availability, but I was looking on Twitter and Facebook and there were lots of unhappy fans who could really have done with reassuring.

On the day

The point at which your website starts slowing down in this situation is when it’s crucial to put a clear message out via any available channel to reassure customers, and let people know that you’re aware of the problem and trying to fix it. I know LE hardbacks are really a niche within a niche, but the people trying to buy them are probably BL’s biggest fans. They’re an asset to the business, and you’d think it would be a top priority to keep them happy. BL has several channels of communication available these days – Facebook, Instagram and the Warhammer Community site – but as far as I can see there were no updates, and no information provided. In the Internet age, with endless options for communicating with customers, there’s no real excuse for not talking to your customers.

As I mentioned there’s been a Community post since then which talks a bit about what happened (I’ll talk more about that later), but that was four days after the fact. At the point of on-sale I feel like Black Library lost control of the situation. It was great to see stock reallocated to the GW site so that sales could carry on (and a 30-ish minute turnaround doesn’t seem too shabby), but by that point I was seeing an awful lot of negativity online, with talk turning straight away to eBay scalpers. They lost their fans for a while there, and although I imagine plenty of people did end up getting hold of copies eventually, that sort of negativity is going to linger…which is a real shame considering this should be a positive, exciting moment for everyone involved.

In advance

Part of the problem, in my opinion, was that expectations weren’t set very well in advance. While the LE hardback of The Solar War was actually listed on the BL and GW websites back in December 2018, for some reason it dropped off both sites sometime over the next few weeks and not a word was mentioned about it (including at the Heresy Weekender) until the day before it went on sale. I keep coming back to the line in the Community article about letting us know early about the on-sale.

That’s not early! It’s a £50 book which people have been excited about for months, and anxiously waiting for information about, and we’re given less than 24 hours to prepare? It gives no chance for anyone to save up for an expensive purchase, or arrange things in order to be available in the morning at the right time, so while excitement did immediately ramp up it was unfocused and undirected. To be fair to BL, the Community article did include some timings for the on-sale:

That was useful, especially the line explaining that the book would be available to order on both BL and GW websites, but I think it was too little, too late. If that had gone out two weeks earlier, with reminders posted on Facebook and Instagram in the days running up to the on-sale, then maybe there would have been time to reach all (or at least most of) the fans hoping to buy the book, and maybe everyone would have been clear on what to do. Would that have changed the amount of demand on the servers at 9am to 10am on the Saturday? I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. It would have set expectations, however, and potentially helped calm everyone down a bit. Frankly, it would also have been a courtesy. For better or worse we’re all used to the big new releases showing up on BL’s Coming Soon page months in advance, so it felt unsettling to not have that information about this title.

Games Workshop’s community engagement is so good in general these days, but where was it in this situation – either in advance or on the day? It feels like Games Workshop as a whole have been doing an increasingly great job working with the community recently, and the Warhammer Community team as a whole – while not especially BL-focused – is going from strength to strength. I don’t know how that team is organised, or where responsibilities lie for Black Library-related content, but the lack of communication in context of what we’ve seen so much of late just seems really surprising. It’s been good to see the problem addressed subsequently of course, but I’d have loved to have seen that message coming out much earlier.

What could have been done differently?

I’ve been quite critical throughout this article, but I think it’s important to talk about these sorts of issues and flag up where they’re problematic. I also want to be positive, however, and I believe that Black Library can do a better job next time just by doing a few little things. Remember this is only the first book of eight, so there’s every chance that some or all of the next books in the series will be just as popular as this one. I appreciate that I’m just an armchair commentator in this situation, but for what it’s worth (and to be honest I’ve done this myself, so I do know what I’m talking about to a certain extent) this is what I’d love to see BL do next time:

• Give us more notice. Let us plan for what’s going to happen and get excited over time.
• Make it really clear in advance about on-sale times, available channels etc.
• Talk about the book via as many channels as possible, as often as possible, with reminders as the on-sale date approaches.
• If it goes wrong, own it. Talk to us, let us know what’s happening and what you’re doing about it. Reassure us that it’s under control.
• Also, send a prompt post-mortem update (I appreciate that’s a horrible term, but it’s what we use at work – sorry!) about what happened and why, and just be honest about it. There’s no need to apologise too much, just be open and show that you recognise what’s important and demonstrate a willingness to do better – and send that quickly.

Lastly, it’s clear from talking to loads of people in the community that there’s a real desire to see Black Library set per-customer limits to try and avoid scalpers. For example, this was suggested on the BL Facebook page before The Solar War went on sale:

I know from talking to various fans that people have been writing in to Black Library about this in particular, as it’s understandably a touchy subject. Nobody enjoys having to pay over the odds, and I think everyone (apart from the scalpers themselves, presumably) just wants to see BL demonstrating that they recognise the problem and are trying to make it easier for genuine fans to get the books they want. Happily, it looks like BL are listening – more on that below.

How have Black Library responded?

I’ve focused so far on what happened on the day, but let’s take a slightly longer look at the comments that Black Library have made since then. As I mentioned earlier, this Community article addresses what happened, including a welcome recognition from BL that there were indeed issues plus the steps which are being taken in advance of the next book going on sale. In case you don’t want to read the whole article (although you probably do – it’s really interesting) here’s the relevant section:

It’s great to see BL publicly acknowledging that there was a problem – an earlier iteration of the company might not have done that at all, so credit to them for being prepared to do that. I still think this should have happened earlier, and perhaps gone into a little more detail (perhaps acknowledging the impact of the issues, not just that they happened), but I’m pleased that it has at least happened. What’s particularly pleasing, however, is that steps are being taken to do two things – firstly to avoid the BL site crashing by concentrating sales on the more stable GW site, and secondly to try and mitigate the issue of scalpers. The secondary market is a difficult thing to deal with completely, but any steps towards making sure actual fans get to buy rather than scalpers are worth taking.

Personally I’m not actually sure a one-per-person limit is the way to go in the long term, as there are going to be plenty of people looking to a mate to pick a copy up for them, for example. Being too prescriptive can be damaging as well, so maybe setting a limit of two would have been a good middle ground. That being said, it must be frustrating for everyone – not just fans but authors, BL editorial staff, sales staff and so on – seeing scalpers make ridiculous amounts of money off fans desperate to get hold of books, so a limit of some sort is absolutely the way to go.

It’s really great to see this response from BL, and the steps they’re taking for book two (The Lost and the Damned by Guy Haley) definitely look to be steps in the right direction. Good work BL. If I could ask anything of BL directly, however, it would be to react quicker if this happens again (even just a quick message promising more information in due course), and be even more honest and transparent. Us fans are pretty resilient, and we’ll forgive a lot as long as we feel like we’re being looked after!

Let’s be positive

I don’t want to finish without looking for positives about The Solar War and what happened, and there are definitely some of those here. I mentioned one of them on Twitter shortly after everything sold out:

The sense of community within both the wider Games Workshop fanbase, and specifically Black Library fans, is a big part of why I enjoy working on Track of Words so much. I saw some great examples of people working together, reassuring and supporting each other during the events of the morning, and that was really good to see. Let’s face it, we all just want to enjoy our hobby as much as possible – coming together to help each other out feels totally natural to me.

Not only that, but for those of us who did manage to get copies we’ve got the excitement of getting our hands on the first book of the Siege of Terra very soon! The official line is that delivery is from the 23rd March, but I’ve seen comments online about books start turning up early. I can’t wait to read it myself, and also to hear what other fans think of it. For those who didn’t (for whatever reason) get a copy of the LE hardback, the ebook and the ‘standard’ hardback are due out in May – according to the GW website it’s up for pre-order on the 11th, so there’s less than two months to wait until then. There’s even going to be a few of the LEs available for those who missed out!

Lastly, while I’ve a feeling some of the negativity that the website issues generated will stick around for some time, it’s worth remembering that in the end most of us will remember the book itself far more than we remember any difficulty we had in ordering it. It is, after all, only a book (he types, after having written a LONG article about the ordering process – I’m aware of the irony). Hopefully the next on-sale will go much more smoothly, and hopefully we can all enjoy eight fantastic Siege of Terra novels to bring the Horus Heresy to a fitting conclusion!

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Did you get caught up in the confusion on Saturday morning? I’d love to hear what you’re most looking forward to if you managed to get hold of a copy, or how you’re feeling if you weren’t able to get a copy…or even if you’re not bothered about the LE hardback and are waiting for a different edition. Get in touch in the comments below or via Facebook or Twitter.