3 Wishes for the Black Library Celebration 2022

The annual Black Library Celebration has been running since 2018, an event which in the words of Warhammer Community offers a chance to “celebrate your passion for the fiction of the Warhammer universes”. It’s a great idea in principle, using Games Workshop stores (when they’re not all shut due to Covid) and the Warhammer Community site to bring the Black Library community together – readers, authors, and everyone involved in the community. Every year, however, I find myself disappointed that instead of actually celebrating the breadth of storytelling on offer across BL fiction or the incredible work that goes into writing these stories, this event is basically just an opportunity to release a bunch of new 40k books all on the same day, along with a new Games Workshop miniature of a BL character.

I mean, that’s fine in and of itself; we all like new books, and there are plenty of BL fans who enjoy painting miniatures and gaming. But that’s not a celebration, in my opinion – it’s just a busy week of releases. Obviously Black Library is a business and its objective is always going to be selling more books, but there should be more to an annual celebration than just promoting a handful of new products. To my mind, BL is failing to make the most of the opportunities presented by these events, opportunities to build excitement and engagement in a community that wants to get more involved but has been stung over the last few years by strange decisions over pricing and release schedules, and poor communication.

If you’re interested in my thoughts on some of the previous BL Celebrations, you can check out a couple of my older articles. In 2018 I wrote up my thoughts on the very first BL Celebration as part of my Black Library Weekly article for that week, while the following year I wrote a dedicated article on its second incarnation (I didn’t cover the BL Celebration in 2020 though, as I was away in America for work that weekend). Rather than doing the same sort of retrospective article for the 2021 event, however, I decided that this time around I’m going to talk about a few key things that I personally think the Black Library Celebration should do, and which I’d love to see in next year’s event.

NOTE: I’m going to concentrate mostly on using the Warhammer Community site as part of future BL Celebrations, rather than Games Workshop/Warhammer stores. Obviously we don’t know what the long-term impact of Covid will be, so there doesn’t seem much point in speculating or offering suggestions about in-store events to help celebrate BL. In an ideal world I’d love to see more of these, of course…

Look beyond the new releases

As I’ve already said, I think a celebration of Black Library needs to be about more than just the latest books (and minis and merch) to be released. There’s nothing wrong with talking about the cool new stuff coming out – I enjoyed the interviews with Dan Abnett and Nick Kyme on WarCom this year, for example – but that shouldn’t be the only topic of conversation. After all, BL has over two decades worth of stories to talk about, and looking back at some of those older stories would be a great way of actually celebrating Warhammer fiction as a whole, and engaging with readers who have varying levels of experience with BL – from those who are brand new to Warhammer fiction all the way to 20+ year veterans.

Take the ‘Reader’s Choice’ paperbacks re-released each year, for example (Dead Men Walking and The Daemon’s Curse for 2021). I like the idea of digging back into the backlist for books to re-release in paperback, but just putting them on shelves and on the webstore isn’t really enough. They would, however, make good jumping-off points for retrospectives on some of the earlier stories! How about a history of Malus Darkblade and his various adventures, and suggestions for further reading for fans of the Dark Elves? Or an exploration of some of the lesser-seen Imperial Guard regiments in BL fiction, showing readers the connections between Dead Men Walking and some of Steve Lyons’ other Guard stories, and recommending what to try next?

Alternatively, how about carrying on a theme from the first BL Celebration in 2018, which marked the 20th anniversary of Black Library itself? Maybe each year there could be an article or two looking at some of the great books that were released 5, 10, 20 years ago – talking about their impact, whether they went on to be parts of larger series, and what the authors think of them all these years later. For example, 2022 will mark the 20th anniversaries of Ben Counter’s Soul Drinker and Gav Thorpe’s The Claws of Chaos, the 15th anniversaries of CL Werner’s Palace of the Plague Lord and Steve Parker’s Rebel Winter, and the 10th anniversaries of Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s The Emperor’s Gift and Chris Wraight’s Luthor Huss. I know I would be interested in revisiting some of those classics, and I’m sure there are plenty of readers who have never come across them before!

As an example of what I’m talking about, this year’s WarCom article on the history of Uriel Ventris was a step in the right direction (it’s promoting a new release but also looking back at older stories too), but I’d also like a bit more depth to this sort of article. As it is, this one is ok for readers who are new to the character, but it adds nothing of use for those of us who have read some or all of the books to date. How about including a reading order, showing where all the short stories fit in alongside the novels (like I did, in my interview with Graham), or getting a few thoughts from Graham to add a bit of extra context? The other thing it’s missing is any mention of Honsou, Ventris’ most iconic enemy and a character with plenty of his own stories too. Tell us about how these stories connect, point readers in the direction of what to read next!

Celebrate more than just 40k

This is a real bugbear of mine, actually. As far as I’m concerned, it’s not a celebration of Black Library if all of the new releases and all of the WarCom content is focused purely on 40k, with maybe an occasional snippet of the Horus Heresy. Where are all the Age of Sigmar releases? In four years of BL Celebrations there has been just one new AoS book – the hardback release of the Oaths and Conquests anthology in 2020. There have been more Warhammer Chronicles re-releases (The Daemon’s Curse, Hammers of Ulric, Iron Company, The Loathsome Ratmen and All Their Vile Kin, City of the Damned and Drachenfels) even than AoS! What kind of message is that sending to AoS fans?

It took me a while to notice just how badly the BL Celebrations were weighted towards 40k, and I think that’s because I enjoy reading about all of the Warhammer settings. There are plenty of people who are more selective over what they read (fair enough, considering BL’s bonkers release schedule) however, and by ignoring Age of Sigmar in this way I can’t help thinking that BL is going to be alienating a whole swathe of fans. I don’t know what the ratio of 40k books to AoS books is in general, but it’s clear that BL publishes a lot more 40k than they do AoS overall…and it must feel like a real kick in the teeth to see AoS passed over like this for the Celebrations.

So with that in mind, at the very least I think there needs to be a new AoS novel included next year, but what I’d really like to see is an Age of Sigmar novel as the headline release of the 2022 BL Celebration. We’ve had The Magos, Honourbound, The Regent’s Shadow and now The Swords of Calth as the previous headliners, so how about next time we get a new Hamilcar novel and an accompanying miniature of the Bear-Eater? There have been (or will be) minis for Gotrek and Gardus, so it’s not like Games Workshop isn’t prepared to make them! So let’s lead with AoS for next year’s Celebration, and remind readers that Black Library publishes a breadth of stories which doesn’t only extend to 40k.

Get the community involved

If I’m honest, the thing that continues to frustrate me the most about the BL Celebrations is that so far they’ve only really represented Black Library and its marketing team. I know I’m biased here, as someone who has spent a lot of time over the last few years writing about Black Library, but in my mind the Celebrations should be about building and developing the community – or if I’m being really pretentious, the Black Library ‘ecosystem’ – which I would say includes not just the fans but also the authors, editors and everyone else involved in planning, creating, publishing and selling BL books. Where are the articles written by people who can actually demonstrate genuine enthusiasm for this stuff?

This is actually something that BL misses out on in general, not just for the Celebrations, which is weird given how good the WarCom team seem to be with getting members of the community involved in general Warhammer content – people like Tyler Mengel, the Metawatch guys, and all the other amazing painters and hobbyists whose work is regularly featured. There was a time when BL authors were semi-regularly interviewed for WarCom, and the 2018 Celebration was in fact supported by an article in which six authors talked briefly about some of their favourite BL books (the sort of content that none of the following Celebrations have included). In my opinion that should be something that we see on a regular basis, not as a one-off, and the Celebrations should feature this sort of content heavily.

The key thing for me is moving away from the usual marketing tone of voice (which is fine…for product marketing) and getting some real people to share their enthusiasm. I’ve interviewed virtually all of the current Black Library authors at some point and I can say with confidence that they’re almost always delighted to talk about their work (what author doesn’t want to promote their work?!), and I can think of plenty of other bloggers, reviewers, podcasters etc. who consistently produce great BL-related content – so why not tap into this considerable source of passion for the subject matter? After all, the more you get people talking about books they love, the more they – and everyone reading – are likely to get enthused about buying more!

At the risk of sounding utterly immodest, I feel like a lot of the BL-related content I produce on Track of Words would work really well as part of the BL Celebration (or, to be honest, as general WarCom content), as I almost always write it with a view to sharing my enthusiasm for the subject, as well as providing useful information. This stuff isn’t really that hard to put together, either, and I’m sure there are loads of people out there who could produce articles at least as good as what I write. Here’s a list of suggestions for types of article that I think would be great to read about (from anyone in the community), which took me about 30 seconds to come up with:

• First ever BL books
• Favourite BL books from the last year
• Books that deserve to be more widely read
• Where to start with different factions
• Series reading orders
• Why I love a particular character

Those suggestions only scratch the surface, too. I’m sure there are all manner of amazing articles just waiting to be written, and I’d love to see a bunch of them over the course of the 2022 BL Celebration. Let’s have a proper Black Library takeover on the WarCom site, with multiple BL-related articles every day over the Celebration week! Why not?

One last thing…
I was originally planning on having just three points in this article (I mean, that’s how many wishes a genie grants, right?) but as I was writing it I realised there was a fourth topic I wanted to talk about as well. This might be something I look at in more detail again at some point, but I think it’s important to recognise that while Black Library books are obviously part of the wider Warhammer hobby, they can also be enjoyed on their own, with no other involvement in the hobby. I’m sure a lot of BL readers are hobbyists too, but I’d like to see a little more recognition for those readers whose only engagement with Warhammer is reading the books.

Compared to the gaming and painting aspects of the hobby, Black Library tends to be neglected by GW. That’s starting to change a bit in terms of White Dwarf, but when you look at WarCom BL has just a token presence with its one article per week (if we’re lucky). Take this article about the Black Library Masterworks – roughly 200 words about a series of reprints that are only available via the book trade (not via the BL/GW sites), the first two of which have already been out for months. I can’t even decide who I think this article is aimed at, and if I’m honest it feels like an almost total waste of time, however even this makes the point that there are plenty of BL books which are “beloved by readers who’ve never even touched a Citadel miniature.”

So what can be done to make BL feel like an aspect of the hobby that’s just as important as all the others, while also acknowledging that not all readers are hobbyists? Well…talk to the community, give us more information and help us feel involved! Don’t just present new information with no context, but think about how to actually get people excited about new ideas (like the Masterworks series) and new books, whether they’re close tie-ins to current events in the Warhammer settings or standalone stories exploring quiet little corners of these worlds. Help us to understand who the audience is for each story; mix up the types of content so that some of it relates back to the rest of the hobby but some of it just celebrates the fiction on its own

To me, the Black Library Celebrations should always be about celebrating Black Library in its own right, about highlighting all the incredible work that goes into creating these stories as works of fiction that can be enjoyed whether the reader has been a Warhammer fan for 30 years or is taking their first, tentative steps into these amazing worlds. There’s no need to always be referring back to the games and the other aspects of the hobby, because readers will find their way there of their own volition. Acknowledge the wider hobby, sure, and celebrate that too where appropriate…but let’s not devalue the work that goes into these stories by suggesting they’re only there to tempt people to buy the models.

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Anyway, I’ve written more than I was planning to for this article so I think now’s the time to finish up! As always, these are just my personal opinions and you may entirely disagree with me, which is absolutely fine. Don’t get me wrong, either – I’m looking forward to reading some of the great new books that were released as part of the 2021 Black Library Celebration, and as ever I’m grateful to the authors and everyone in the BL editorial team for all the work that’s gone into these stories. I just hope that one day we’ll get a Black Library Celebration that properly represents a celebration of everything Black Library.

I’m always interested in hearing what people think about these articles, so please do get in touch if you’ve got comments, questions or suggestions. Feel free to leave a comment below, or come find me on Twitter to have a chat!

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