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Fearless posted:Not so much taken upon themselves as filling the role they (and possibly the World Eaters) were designed to do in the first place. Eh. The Space Wolves are by design the Emperor's executioners. I don't think they were meant to be the Astartes [secret] police - if anything, I'd suspect that's what the Alpha Legion or Night Lords were meant to do. The World Eaters, I think actually were fulfilling the Emperor's role for them up until they rebelled. Sometimes, an army of screaming maniacs with chainaxes and a will to slaughter is exactly what the situation requires.
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# ? Sep 19, 2014 18:30 |
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# ? Jun 6, 2024 01:26 |
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boredsatellite posted:I liked the earlier books but I found the later books just start to drop in quality.
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# ? Sep 19, 2014 20:11 |
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It mostly falls apart when he hooks up with Catti-brie.
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# ? Sep 19, 2014 20:16 |
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I never even finished The Ghost King. Or at least, I read the beginning, skipped to the end for some reason and then put it away without reading the rest in between. Doesn't help I later forgot I already had it and bought a second hardcover of it but didn't find out until it was too late to bring it back for a refund.
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# ? Sep 19, 2014 20:36 |
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Yo stop talking about your lame fantasy books in here. This is a thread for real literature.
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# ? Sep 19, 2014 21:12 |
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Mowglis Haircut posted:Yo stop talking about your lame fantasy books in here. This is a thread for real literature. ...wet leopard growl.
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# ? Sep 19, 2014 21:18 |
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Cythereal posted:It crops up in Unremembered Empire. The Space Wolves have taken it upon themselves to start policing the supposedly loyal Legions and Primarchs just in case they're not as loyal as they seem. Or that's just their macho excuse for keeping a personal line of communication open to every legion after their total fuckup with the 1k Sons where they got played hard because they didn't have this.
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# ? Sep 19, 2014 21:53 |
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Azubah posted:...wet leopard growl. Humours something something unbalanced something something choleric or whatever
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# ? Sep 19, 2014 21:55 |
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Mowglis Haircut posted:Yo stop talking about your lame fantasy books in here. This is a thread for real literature. Anyway last non-Warhammer related question: Is the Wheel of time series good?
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# ? Sep 19, 2014 21:57 |
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Waroduce posted:Humours something something unbalanced something something choleric or whatever What are rad apples?
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# ? Sep 19, 2014 23:12 |
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I think is more appropriate really
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# ? Sep 19, 2014 23:13 |
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Sramaker posted:
That depends entirely if you want to read a series that really feels like it ends after like three or four books before it just keeps trucking along without any real reason or anything overly interesting happening. Because that's what I recall from reading most of the books up to Crossroads of Twilight at least.
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# ? Sep 20, 2014 03:03 |
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lenoon posted:I think is more appropriate really I don't think any emote response is necessary, unless you feel like you might run the risk of being seen to not get the joke!! Also Kurze was pretty funny in unremembered empire on that bit where Lion el' Autism is about to jump him on his ship but gets spotted and Curze shouts "So close, but confounded!" then leaps off the pipe to batman else-ware.
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# ? Sep 20, 2014 03:21 |
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$30AUD for an Ebook. I love ADB's stuff, but that is too steep.
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# ? Sep 20, 2014 03:24 |
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Cooked Auto posted:Because that's what I recall from reading most of the books up to Crossroads of Twilight at least. If you stopped reading after Winter's Heart or Crossroads of Twilight (your wording makes it sound like it could have been either) you missed the series taking a sizable upswing right after those books. I won't deny that the series as a whole got mired in the doldrums around the middle, but if you enjoyed the setting then the last 4 books or so are worth reading.
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# ? Sep 20, 2014 03:52 |
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Mowglis Haircut posted:Yo stop talking about your lame fantasy books in here. This is a thread for real literature.
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# ? Sep 20, 2014 04:27 |
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Fried Chicken posted:Talon of Horus ebook and audiobook available now. Out of interest, how much DOES the authors get off the book sales?
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# ? Sep 20, 2014 13:26 |
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Demiurge4 posted:Out of interest, how much DOES the authors get off the book sales? It depends on their contract. Usually, an author gets an advance and a small percentage of the sales. The more popular the author, the more money he gets. $25 for an ebook is frigging insane. BL is going to wind up pricing themselves out of the market - I know hams will pay stupid amounts for BL books, but they will eventually reach a saturation point where people literally can't afford to buy another book. Greedy assholes.
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# ? Sep 20, 2014 15:21 |
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Demiurge4 posted:Out of interest, how much DOES the authors get off the book sales? It varies by contract, but as a general rule of thumb, the breakdown is 10% to retail 70% to printer/distributor 10% to publisher 5% to editor 5% to author Authors are usually in the low single digits for percent . for some more famous benchmarks, Stephen King gets 14%, while JK Rowling, she of the guaranteed bestseller who got a whole generation to be the most voracious readers since radio came about gets a whopping 18% cut. And the authors cut is modified by the advance. They will get cut a check based off the estimate of what their cut will be, and then don't see any until they exceed that - the publisher gets their cut until the advance is paid off. If 70% for the printer/distributor seems insane to you, consider that until the ebook, books were heavy and logistically intense - you can't easily ship them and they take up a lot of storage space and are internet it was very hard to get a store that had the stock you wanted all the time. That this has not changed since the 80s now that printing and distributing costs are nil (particularly with ebooks) is a reflection of the fact that Amazon pushed out the cartel and now has a lock on the market and is squeezing the publishers.
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# ? Sep 20, 2014 17:45 |
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Jesus, the guy who actually writes the drat book only gets 5% on average?!?
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# ? Sep 20, 2014 18:07 |
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Azubah posted:...wet leopard growl. Don't forget how there is always atleast one person who will mention how "this isn't the Dark Ages" or something about how we live in progressive times, and some supporting character will smirk and say "I beg to differ".
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# ? Sep 20, 2014 22:51 |
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Deptfordx posted:Jesus, the guy who actually writes the drat book only gets 5% on average?!? I should clarify that the percent the writer sees also varies by how many they sell. So the author's contract would really be "10% for the first 10,000 copies, 12% for 10001-50000, 14% for 50001-100000" etc. So boosting name recognition and sales is critical for authors. A lot of them take a smaller percentage on boos in return for more promotion from the publishing house because if the advertising takes off they will make a shitload more. This is also why some prefer franchise fiction and why so many others do free downloads - it pushes them into the higher brackets. Expanding readership is key not just for the direct sales, but also next round negotiations. - not only can they ask for a bigger base percent and argue the step up and ranges, the publisher will do more to promote it. But in general yeah creators get hosed. This is why keeping copyright is so critical - licensing rights pay big and even a flop can have a huge impact (the short lived Dresden Files TV show on syfy doubled butcher's readership) Given how low production and distribution costs are for ebooks (essentially nil) you'd think the rest of the supply chain would flex for a better distribution of the profits. But the DRM crusade of the early aughts (that the publishers insisted on) basically locked them to the Kindle for ebooks. Amazon has an 80% ebook market share because everyone used kindle because kindle was the only (easy) way to unlock books, like itunes and music. If they refuse to play ball you are sunk. Amazon has been twisting to take an even bigger cut lately, which is what the blow up with Hatchette is about.
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# ? Sep 20, 2014 23:04 |
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berzerkmonkey posted:$25 for an ebook is frigging insane. BL is going to wind up pricing themselves out of the market - I know hams will pay stupid amounts for BL books, but they will eventually reach a saturation point where people literally can't afford to buy another book. Greedy assholes. I can't wait for this to become more and more like the wargaming threads where a bunch of people are making observations like this and the other half are periodically waltzing in to talk about how they just dropped $XXX on the latest thing to be expelled from GW's rectum, thus tragically undermining the thesis of the first half. Sometimes they'll even overlap.
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# ? Sep 20, 2014 23:33 |
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There are no publishing or printing costs, which I assume to be the most expensive part of book making, when dealing with electronic books. How does GW get away with charging as much for a hardcover novel? That'd be like requiring postage stamps for emails.
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# ? Sep 21, 2014 03:33 |
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vigorous sodomy posted:There are no publishing or printing costs, which I assume to be the most expensive part of book making, when dealing with electronic books. How does GW get away with charging as much for a hardcover novel? Honestly editing and design is pretty expensive, though BL books are fairly poorly edited and produced. Some of their crappier authors like Nick Kyme also double as editors for what I assume is a slightly lower wage than normal. As for the second part, I have no idea but they seem to sell out of their $50 limited edition hardcovers pretty regularly so I guess the answer is "with ease"
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# ? Sep 21, 2014 04:34 |
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vigorous sodomy posted:There are no publishing or printing costs, which I assume to be the most expensive part of book making, when dealing with electronic books. How does GW get away with charging as much for a hardcover novel? Because the market will bear it, apparently.
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# ? Sep 21, 2014 05:13 |
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vigorous sodomy posted:There are no publishing or printing costs, which I assume to be the most expensive part of book making, when dealing with electronic books. How does GW get away with charging as much for a hardcover novel? Monopoly on the BL franchise. There is no justification for amazon ebooks costing as much as a paperback or hardback either, but they have the lock on the market so they set the price. Anyways I wrapped up Talon of Horus, and I get what other people were saying about it. It is much more of a background/worldbuilding/prelude than things happening. I don't dislike it, but I want to see what comes next. It seems like far too much was left unshown, but if this is the calm before the storm then its OK. Of course if he follows this in future books where major events like whole crusades pass by unseen it would be a problem. Here not so much, he makes the point that the Black Legion isn't the Sons of Horus reformed, but something new. So glossing over the last of their legacy being wiped away isn't a problem. You have Abaddon formally severing the last tie to them and declaring he (that is, the new legion and himself) are not the Sons in a really clear cut way. On Abaddon, I do like the take on him as the manipulative seducer overlaying the iron tyrant. It is in more keeping with the Lucifer = Abaddon take, and is far better than the rage monster he is portrayed as in other books. That said, that we don't see how he went from the rage monster to the new take on him is a loss. Hopefully it will show up in the future The big question is who is the second primarch that was killed with the talon?
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# ? Sep 21, 2014 05:25 |
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SRM posted:Because the market will bear it, apparently. You find this in a lot of niche hobbies and collectables. A blu ray set of a famous Japanese anime that was released in the 80s and contains only 7 discs sells for like $800 to $1.5k USD at retail because the company wants to make a minimum of $X amount and they know that there are Y number of hardcore fans that will definitely pay whatever to buy it. There's no incentive to grow the business or franchise since the market is most likely already saturated with product. I think its a safe bet to assume that Black Library/GW pricing works in the same way. Kegslayer fucked around with this message at 13:27 on Sep 21, 2014 |
# ? Sep 21, 2014 13:22 |
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Fried Chicken posted:Monopoly on the BL franchise. I thought it was Sanginus, then Dorn?
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# ? Sep 21, 2014 18:54 |
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Dorn died assaulting some Chaos Ship. I don't think it's ever been said that it was Abaddon who did him, or that it's been truely confirmed that he's dead.
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# ? Sep 21, 2014 19:14 |
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I thought they were leaving Dorn's "death" as only a possibility, like Alpharious. I thought the only definitively dead primarchs were Sanguinus, Ferrus Manus, Horus, Curze and the two shall-not-be-named.
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# ? Sep 21, 2014 19:14 |
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Even Cruze is in the maybe pile. We only have bodies for the first 3.
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# ? Sep 21, 2014 19:19 |
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MasterSlowPoke posted:Even Cruze is in the maybe pile. We only have bodies for the first 3. Didn't M'Shen chopped his head and kept it? Talos says it in the night lords trilogy iirc. Losing ones head tends to be fatal even for a primarch, except for good boy Vulkan of course.
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# ? Sep 21, 2014 19:24 |
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Wax Dynasty posted:I thought they were leaving Dorn's "death" as only a possibility, like Alpharious. I thought the only definitively dead primarchs were Sanguinus, Ferrus Manus, Horus, Curze and the two shall-not-be-named. Dorn is dead. New chapter masters have their names inscribed on the skeletal remains of his huge knuckle bones, which are kept in stasis.
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# ? Sep 21, 2014 20:54 |
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vigorous sodomy posted:Dorn is dead. New chapter masters have their names inscribed on the skeletal remains of his huge knuckle bones, which are kept in stasis. Yeah, but I thought the story was that they only ever found his hand and that he was never seen or heard from again. So, mostly dead, not completely dead.
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# ? Sep 21, 2014 22:30 |
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MasterSlowPoke posted:Even Cruze is in the maybe pile. We only have bodies for the first 3. Cruze let's himself get killed. Dorn's skeleton is suppose to be in some kind of field with his hands missing but I think that might have been changed in the newer fluff.
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# ? Sep 21, 2014 23:15 |
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Papa Smurf is also in a stasis field, with a cut to the neck from Fulgrim's blade and a myth that it's slowly being healed.
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# ? Sep 21, 2014 23:36 |
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Kegslayer posted:Dorn's skeleton is suppose to be in some kind of field with his hands missing but I think that might have been changed in the newer fluff. This was from Ian Watson's Space Marine which is, unfortunately, no longer canon. Unfortunate because that book's portrayal of Astartes as 'roided-up, closeted man-children with a confused sense of chivalry and an overwhelming urge to scrimshaw is 40k at its purest.
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# ? Sep 22, 2014 00:26 |
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Wax Dynasty posted:This was from Ian Watson's Space Marine which is, unfortunately, no longer canon. Unfortunate because that book's portrayal of Astartes as 'roided-up, closeted man-children with a confused sense of chivalry and an overwhelming urge to scrimshaw is 40k at its purest. There's always the Inquisition Wars from Ian Watson. The Space Marines gets his scrimshawing on again.
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# ? Sep 22, 2014 00:32 |
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# ? Jun 6, 2024 01:26 |
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I doubt we will ever find out what happened to most of the Primarchs. The mystery around them is too integral to the story, I think. Although having one or more show up in the 41k timeline would be a hoot.
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# ? Sep 22, 2014 00:32 |