Opinions: Black Library Limited Editions – Options, Not FOMO

In this fascinating blog post about his monstrously successful Kickstarter, SFF author Brandon Sanderson makes a great point about the importance of giving readers a choice of formats and price points. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while regarding Black Library’s ‘Limited Edition’ books, but I hadn’t been able to put my finger on exactly what I wanted to say until I read this blog post. You see, I fundamentally think that premium editions of books are a good thing, as they provide choice – which is always worth having. The problem I have is with BL’s bizarrely inconsistent approach to how and when to release premium editions. So let’s talk about how the point of limited editions should be to provide options to suit customers’ wants and needs, not to encourage FOMO or penalise readers who can’t afford high prices.

This $30m+ Kickstarter campaign is an intriguing subject in its own right, but other people (like John Scalzi, here) have written about that much more eloquently than I could, and Sanderson’s own blog post is both remarkably open and, I think, genuinely enlightening. As well as discussing things like price, availability and publication channels though, Sanderson makes some great comments on the economics of book formats. The gist is that by giving readers a wider range of choices – from low price options all the way up to expensive premium editions – authors and publishers are likely to make more money than if they only offer a couple of basic options, and customers are going to be happier. Whatever you think of Sanderson (I don’t really have an opinion, but he seems to be a little polarising), this seems like good sense to me.

Mockup (i.e. not final) art designs from Sanderson’s Kickstarter page – art by Steve Argyle, Howard Lyon, and Geoff Shupe

If you want to skip to the part I’m talking about, try searching for “variety of price points”. If you don’t want to read the whole thing, here’s a couple of particularly relevant quotes about offering multiple price points (including a premium edition):

“Those who weren’t able to buy books now can. Those who were buying editions they didn’t really want now have the editions they do want. And the fan who really wanted to buy in and get something cool for their shelf – well they’ve got a product that they like more as well.”

“With this distribution model…I can give everyone an experience closer to what they want. Everyone is happier. Fewer people (ideally no people) have to buy an edition they don’t want in order to read the book sooner – and I actually make a little more. This is what I think traditional publishing should be doing.”

Sure, Kickstarter isn’t an exact analogue for Black Library’s business model (which is pretty weird in its own right, as a sort-of publisher beholden to wider Games Workshop decision-making – that could be a whole blog post in its own right), but Sanderson’s points are still relevant, in particular the bit about readers not having to buy premium editions just to get their hands on books straight away. This is where I get particularly frustrated by BL, because too often they release books as ‘Limited Edition’ far in advance of the regular editions, making readers choose between waiting to read books they’re really excited about or paying a lot of money for premium editions that they don’t actually want. And we’re not talking short waits – recently the gaps between some Limited and regular editions have been well over a year!

Let’s forget for the time being about BL’s apparent inability to give customers proper notice of what they’re publishing when, or to allow genuine pre-orders, and their outright refusal to do multiple print runs of popular books in hardback or paperback (again: not a ‘normal’ publisher). In principle, all things equal, I genuinely think that premium editions are great…plenty of readers want them, so it’s perfectly legitimate – and in fact sensible – to offer them. But only when they’re offered as a genuine choice, like BL’s ‘Special Editions’ which are released at the same time as the regular editions (*see below – it’s confusing). When they’re the only option though, they reduce customer choice, encourage unhealthy impulse buying in some customers, and negatively impact other customers’ enjoyment of the books in question.

* To be clear, BL’s Special Editions (SEs) are released at the same time as the first regular edition (audio, ebook, either HB or PB depending on the series) while Limited Editions (LEs) are released before the regular editions. It’s confusing, and I don’t understand why BL almost never bothers to explain the difference.

If that sounds a bit hyperbolic, it really isn’t. I know I’m not the only BL fan who regularly loses interest after waiting six months (or more) before being able to afford a copy of a new book, or who finds the fractured nature of the community buzz to be really frustrating. Any discussion about LEs risks spoiling things for readers waiting for the regular edition, and that wait-induced lack of interest notably reduces the amount of online conversation once regular editions are actually available. I guess those are costs that BL is prepared to accept, but they don’t feel great from a reader’s perspective, and I can’t imagine authors love them either.

Fans faced a 10-month wait for the regular hardback of Ghazghkull Thraka: Prophet ofthe Waaagh! – I just hope that hasn’t affected readers’ enthusiasm for this brilliant book

Presumably BL feels that, for some titles at least, LE sales would suffer if they were released simultaneously with regular editions (I’m not sure what that says for their confidence in their own products), otherwise why not make all premium editions SEs, and release them simultaneously? As far as I can tell, SEs sell out just as quickly as LEs – certainly there are no premium editions of any kind available to buy on the Games Workshop website right now. And other publishers seem to happily release signed and numbered ‘limited edition’ hardbacks simultaneously – check out Goldsboro Books in the UK, for example.

Of course it’s been common practice in publishing for a long time to stagger the release of different formats – hardback first, then paperback – but the world is changing. Ebooks and audiobooks have shaken things up already, and customers – including readers – are increasingly looking for not just choice but also convenience. As Sanderson says, maybe releasing all formats at the same time – and therefore giving every customer the choice of what to buy straight away – is the future. I certainly don’t think it makes sense to make readers wait for regular editions; whether you call it rewarding people with money to spend or penalising people who don’t have that sort of money, it’s not a good look either way.

As far as I’m concerned, the way forward is – at the very minimum – to release premium and regular editions simultaneously. Those who want premium editions will still buy them, those who just want the words can choose them in whichever format suits them best, and everyone’s happy. Happy customers are good customers, and likely to be long-term customers! Reprinting backlist titles in premium editions is great, too, and to be fair BL are doing quite a lot of that these days. That’s always made more sense to me, as it means readers can choose to buy nice editions of books they’ve read and loved, rather than paying a lot of money up front for books they don’t even know if they’ll enjoy!

One thing’s for sure though: making people wait, encouraging FOMO and pressuring people into buying things they don’t want – that’s just not the way to go if you want to foster committed, lifelong fans.

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