It had been a long time since I last read a Gaunt’s Ghosts novel, but I found my collection in the loft a few months ago and decided to read them again.
It’s fair to say I had trouble putting the books down and I’ve quickly found myself at the end of the third omnibus. So, I thought I’d best see if Mr Abnett has been hard at work with his quill since I last read them. As it happens, he has! Two more omnibus books were released in 2018 and 2022, The Victory parts one and two.
But I’m not going to read them. At least for now.
That’s not really by choice. It’s because I can’t get them. They’re out of print, and I hold no hope that another print run will come anytime this decade.
It’s an issue I’ve had for a number of years.
Like so many things in this hobby, it all started with the Horus Heresy. I bought the first 10 or 11 books as they were released directly from my local Games Workshop. Unfortunately, I then had a bit of a break from the hobby (unintentional, just happened) and when I got back into into reading the series around 2019, most of the books were out of print. This meant I had to buy second hand copies from scalpers on e-bay if I had any hope of reading the series. Sure I got a few at a reasonable price, but most of them cost me at least three times RRP, usually more. I’m still missing around 10 books, but by the time I got to buying them I was looking at between seven and ten times RRP, so I’ve mostly abandoned hope.
From a business perspective, none of this makes sense to me. If you have a series of novels that sell well, you can literally print money.
Lets do the maths. If I bought a paperback copy of all 54 books in the series from GW at the RRP of £7.99, that’s £431.46 I’d have spent. Money in their pocket.
Now I can’t be the only person having this problem, otherwise paper backs wouldn’t still be going for £60+ online. So lets imagine there’s a thousand people like me who want the full collection in paperback (I suspect there’s a lot more than that globally). That’s £431,460. It’s not far off half a million quid. What kind of company leaves that kind of money on the table? And lets not forget that there are untold numbers of people across the world entering into the hobby for the first time who want to read the novels but never will, because they can’t get a copy.
Surely the authors must be annoyed that royalties dry up when people can’t buy the book?
Now, some of you might be saying “Why not just get the e-books or audio books?”
The audio book situation is simple to explain. I can’t take in a story unless I’m reading it. I zone out and my mind wonders, then I have to re-wind the same bit again and again until I give up.
My issue with e-books is a little more ephemeral. The simplest answer is that I work on computers all day long and the last thing I want to do on an evening is stare at another screen right before bed. But there’s also the physical element to it. I want to hold paper. I want to turn a page, and I want a physical reminder that I’ve read that book sat on my shelf amongst the matching spines of other novels in the same series.
On top of all that, I don’t want to join another device eco-system that could be taken away at any time. It’s all well and good having a Kindle until they pull device support or even pull access to novels in your library. Sorry. Not for me.
I think that’s the end of this rant. I normally prefer to take action rather than complain, but my choices are to pay more than it’s worth to scalpers or to not read the book. Therefore my current action is to not read the book.
Fortunately I have a fair backlog of books to get through, after which I’ll start looking at non Games Workshop books or pick up reasonably priced ones second hand.
