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How do!

Whilst I’ve not been collecting LE Black Library books, as someone who through a silly idea has kind of become someone in the anti-scalping efforts? I want to speak out about the frustrations I feel about Scalping I and the Loot Group can’t realistically address. And that’s numbered copies of LE books.

Sure, once in a while we get a win and some kind person passes on their LE copy of a book At Cost, and the Black Library Nutters group have a broadly similar approach. But it’s barely a droplet in a drop that’s about to land in the ocean. Meanwhile, the mindless parasite Scalpers are having a field day. And that really, really gets on my surprisingly unflabby tits.

And it’s a situation that GW is, depending how you look at it, losing out on. Because there is another way. Just…have two ways to get the LE. First, the Numbered And Signed Edition. One for the truly dedicated collector. The other? Same fancy binding and covers, but Made To Order.

By all means make that window quite short, perhaps just a single weekend. It could be even shorter but GW would need to fix their queue system first, because today has been diabolical. But let all those who want a complete collection of fancy covers and bindings achieve that goal without having to pay a Parasite Premium. GW stuff is already quite wallet lightening as it is without “think of a number” scalper markups.

What’s in it for GW? More money. Because people want the fancy version, and people are happy to pay GW for that fancy version. Yes they get their money from every Scalper. But they could make more with a MTO window.

There are other ways round it, so please don’t feel I’m presenting the Only Option. But I think we as a community need to come together and start a letter/email campaign.

No, not an online petition. Those aren’t worth the paper they’re not actually written on in this situation. But a good old, old fashioned writing campaign. Where those with enough of an interest articulate their feelings, opinions and preferences. Show GW the potential demand, and from there, potential profits that, at least hypothetically, are there for the taking but being left on the table. Appeal to their nature as a profit driven business.

I have thought about offering a template letter (whilst not Shakespeare, I do write letters at a professional level), but I fear that’s too formulaic and thus easily dismissed. I can do one if needed though, as I appreciate some folk might appreciate such assistance.

But we have to at least try it on as a community. Even if nothing comes from it? We’ll have tried. And…if it works? We not only have a greater chance of getting the Nice Things we and others want a collection of, but the market for Scalpers massively reduces, which might see some percentage of those awful wastes of skin abandon scalping GW products altogether.

What say you, Dakka? Will you to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard?

I find it hard to get worked up about the limited availability of Limited Edition books from GW. As long as there is another way to get the content, for example an electronic copy of the book or a more standard version which doesn't sell out in seconds.

I agree that Made to Order would be preferable to GW just arbitrarily making a certain amount of stock and when it's gone it's gone. This comes with its own supply chain challenges though, which I guess GW don't always want to face, otherwise MTO would be more prevalent.

Seeing as GW's biggest problem is production capacity I don't see why they would listen to consumers who show them ways to make more money by tying up production capacity further. In GW's current situation they're raking it in as it is.

Honestly one simple way to resolve this would be to have in-store sale of limited items only. You want one you go to a physical store and have to place an order with the staff there.

If GW only accepted orders for these through their stores then a "one per customer" limit coupled with the physical need to be in the store could control the scalping issue considerably since the scalper can't make a bot to do the work for them.


GW staffers might even be able to spot scalpers or bad-agents.




Of course this also locks out anyone who doesn't have a local GW or who can't make it to a local GW on the release day. So anyone at work or with other things to do in their lives is suddenly locked out. So its not ideal.

In the end the core issue is that there's only X number made.

Another layer on that is if they are signed by hand then the author might not want made-to-order as it goes from a few hundred to suddenly "Here's the first 20K the next 20K will be in the next shipment - get working" .

Trouble with in-store only? Not everyone has a store in their country, let alone one relatively local to them.

But I still maintain writing our displeasure is the best, if not only way to at least try to get a change to the system.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, and keep the signed ones, just not on the MTO.

What say you, Dakka? Will you to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard?

You have my pen.

Have sent my email. But I forgot to attach the pics of the scalper anus showing they ordered 11 copies from 9:54am onward.

 Overread wrote:
Honestly one simple way to resolve this would be to have in-store sale of limited items only. You want one you go to a physical store and have to place an order with the staff there.

Eh. That would basically mean tiny fraction of interested people in my country could even try. What with having one location in entire country to try...

I'd be interested to see what the cost of goods on the limited editions are and what the availability is. I wouldn't be surprised if the editions are at a sweet spot where the bean counters allow something to be sold at a lower margin and that is about as many as the publisher can make. Having been involved with a fair number of publishers, books can be very cheap, but the 'limited edition' additions add a lot of cost. Like the signing alone is a lot of labor and I presume that having the author come to the warehouse is the cheapest option.

I would say this leads into a larger discussion of 'your website is crap' and how it would have been cheaper to have it built with AWS but then so-and-so's partner wouldn't have got the contract.

While it's quite clearly woeful i'd even wonder if a (regularish) made to order with books which might be in fairly high demand being printed by somebody else is viable

Printers like large order, Printers are reasonably happy with smaller orders for set numbers they can slot into larger print runs, regular but indeterminate orders i'm a lot less sure about

now using the facilities of a print on demand press might be more flexible, but most if not all of the print on demand books i've had are lower quality that the equivalent large press effort unless they were very fancy ones in the £75+ for a hardback range

(despite the claim that POD stuff can better, now whether that's down to inexperience on the authors part choosing what settings they want, POD printing & binding or just the cost of actually getting an equivalent to a normal book)

Whatever system you have for selling limited editions, by the very fact that they're limited there's always going to be someone who misses out, and so there's always going to be a market for the scalpers.

The way to beat that is for people to stop paying scalpers.



So far as books go at least, I'd suggest a better approach would be to scrap the limited editions entirely, and a premium edition that is offered as the initial release and then moves to Print on Demand, and a regular edition for those who just want a 'normal' book.

Once the limited editions stop being limited, there's no market for scalpers, but you still get the same 'prestige' of having the prettier book.

The part that's so frigging annoying to me is that they have a system in place that disallows you from getting multiples of the WH+ models. There's clearly a back-end method they have to put a "claimed" token on your account.

Applying something like that to LE/low stock releases and getting a person involved in the final check process("this same address is used in multiple orders...something ain't right") for things would go a long way towards preventing crap like this.

Assuming something didn't break, GW should be able to limit individual accounts to any number of set sales on an item they want.

The issue with scalpers is they'll run a LOT of accounts through the system at once. So each one might have only 1 model, but in total the scalper ends up with way more.


Also sometimes systems on websites break down when they get hammered with demand. That would come from both scalpers and regular customers around a product like this.


Heck last year I got tripled charged by Firestorm Games for Leviathan because the website to card interface broke down. Yes they refunded me on the two miss charges after I reported it to them; but the result was still the same. I had 3 card charges, but only 1 processed order. Firestorms end thought two payments had simply failed/been cancelled. All of that was simply the insane pressure of ordering going on all at once.

Email sent Doc

The stupid thing is they used to do a pre pre-order for signed Imperial Armour books from Forgeworld. If you were a regular buyer from Forgeworld you went on an email list that was notified before the general public and you could buy the signed copies a couple of days before.

I don't know what to tell you. The collectibles industry is a cruel place. Those limited edition copies are supposed to make their owners feel special, if everyone who wanted one could get their share, it'd not feel special now would it?

Best you can hope for is a reprint MTO run with some fancier covers later down the line. Or cough up that cash and make yourself feel special

If I were interested in BL books (I'm really not!), I'd settle for the regular paperback / digital editions. Limited edition special snowflake ish is for collectors, and I buy my stuff to use it (unless its a vinyl record - those I do store and never listen to)

Kidnapping Dan Abnett is always one option

 insaniak wrote:
Whatever system you have for selling limited editions, by the very fact that they're limited there's always going to be someone who misses out, and so there's always going to be a market for the scalpers.

The way to beat that is for people to stop paying scalpers.



So far as books go at least, I'd suggest a better approach would be to scrap the limited editions entirely, and a premium edition that is offered as the initial release and then moves to Print on Demand, and a regular edition for those who just want a 'normal' book.

Once the limited editions stop being limited, there's no market for scalpers, but you still get the same 'prestige' of having the prettier book.

Pretty much this.
GW will never do it though since they rather charge a few extra quid for the Ltd tag and sell out and then move to another Ltd book.
Works because the demand is large.
In my particular case I just miss out the all thing entirely and I can live with that very well thank you.

Ltd things is a consumer drug and GW is dealing it more and more. I predict they will explore this route even further.

Bold of you to assume GW doesn't know more about marketing than you do and the system isn't working exactly as intended...?

Beats hanging around Internet forums poop posting and making snarky comments though.

And it has some chance, however small, of getting GW to rethink things.

Sent an email today (in both French & English).
Tried to formulate my thoughts around trying to look past the initial quick financial gain of instant sell-out and consider long-term disillusion & discouragement of fans, and suggested moving to MTO for preorders passed during the initial period (once the initial print is sold, move to MTO). Books could have only the first print run signed by author, but at least there wouldn't be a mismatch in collections.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Bold of you to assume GW doesn't know more about marketing than you do and the system isn't working exactly as intended...?

If it is 'as intended', GW are a worse company than even we thought.
But we can always apply Hanlon's Razor.

It should be just one per account/bank card number/address.

 CragHack wrote:
It should be just one per account/bank card number/address.

It is trivial to set up more accounts.
Bank cards can be had almost as easily. Some accounts let you spawn one-use card numbers.
For multi-player households, 1 per address messes them up.

But yes, there should be some (maybe undisclosed) ways GW could limit scalping.
How do other companies handle limited-release sales?

The fact of the matter remains, GW sells their entire stock. I'm not convinced they care who they sell their products to, a scalper's money is as good to them as a regular customer's

 tauist wrote:


If I were interested in BL books (I'm really not!), I'd settle for the regular paperback / digital editions. Limited edition special snowflake ish is for collectors, and I buy my stuff to use it (unless its a vinyl record - those I do store and never listen to)

That saves my nerves and wallet certainly

Don't see much why I would be happier with more expensive cover that will get worn down by use anyway.

(nevermind with rulebooks which have 3-5 year age limit in usability from the release...At least with novel it's as usable as it was when I bought minus wear)


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 Skinnereal wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Bold of you to assume GW doesn't know more about marketing than you do and the system isn't working exactly as intended...?

If it is 'as intended', GW are a worse company than even we thought.
But we can always apply Hanlon's Razor.

So how many companies do LIMITED editions as UNlimited?

Would like to see one. Kind of contradicting term

The moment book is unlimited then it loses it value for the people who want limited edition in the first place. They want something very few have. GW couldn't sell books for high price anymore because the value for higher cost isn't there anymore.

It works for others

having a limited Edition, numbered and signed and a regular special Edition is not something new

if the special edition is limited and the genre popular enough that lot of people want to have it people will start making money with it
we have seen this with the Special Edition DvDs back in the days and the solution was not making the SE limited

that GW made it somehow worse because the onlineshop system introduced to limit scalpers actually hinders the regular people and allow scalpers to buy off the whole stock is a different problem

selling the LE shops only would work way better here
yeah not everyone can get into a shop to buy one, same as not everyone can sit in an online queue but getting nothing because you cannot go to the shop or getting nothing because of the system is not that different

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Bold of you to assume GW doesn't know more about marketing than you do and the system isn't working exactly as intended...?

That's exactly it. GW seems to be relying on the scarcity to drive sales - because it's a limited run the people who may want it later (and the whale collectors) are pressured to snap it up now instead of waiting for later and changing their mind. Just look at how big most collectors piles of shame are.

There would be nothing stopping them doing a pre-order system where you buy the book before the print run and they order exactly as many as they need. It'd hurt scalpers whilst helping the genuine buyers, because I doubt scalpers want to buy a pile of books 3 months in advance. For the truly limited run stuff they could always make the first 1000 orders numbered or something.

Ditto on identifying people ordering items via different accounts; they should be able to catch multiple limited orders going to the same address, or multiple orders coming in from the same computer and so on.

But I don't think they want to actually stop it, because they aren't confident they'd get more sales by reducing the scarcity.

 Skinnereal wrote:

 CragHack wrote:
It should be just one per account/bank card number/address.

It is trivial to set up more accounts.
Bank cards can be had almost as easily. Some accounts let you spawn one-use card numbers.
For multi-player households, 1 per address messes them up.

But yes, there should be some (maybe undisclosed) ways GW could limit scalping.
How do other companies handle limited-release sales?

Accounts/cards/bank accounts take effort, though.
How many multi player households there are? Husband and wife have both want the same limited edition book? Please..
But yeah, if someone really wants to scalp hard - nothing will stop them.

 CragHack wrote:

Accounts/cards/bank accounts take effort, though.
How many multi player households there are? Husband and wife have both want the same limited edition book? Please..
But yeah, if someone really wants to scalp hard - nothing will stop them.

There are presumably gamers who house share with unrelated gamer friends, so it's plausible that 2 or 3 of them may live at the same address and want the same LE book, but that's still going to be very rare.
A cap of 2 LE's per address would likely work in curbing a lot of scalping, but of course some of them will get orders to multiple houses (their work address, parents, friends) and you can get PO boxes fairly cheaply but again at any kind of scale it's going to really hurt profitability. It gets harder again if the credit card verification is tied to the address of the card holder, because then they'd need access to different cards for different addresses.

The fact that Games Workshop aren't approaching this with an obvious solution (MTO) probably means they think it's not worth the effort or expense. Much like a political party they're just going to ride out this storm waiting for something else to crop up or - far more likely - dangle some other new and cool thing for everyone to start talking about which shifts the conversation away from this entirely.

Even if you got a million people to sign on petition.org saying 'please make the book MTO' I'm not sure GW would do anything differently. That's the kind of action it'd take though, there's no point talking about voting with your wallet because no one that plays any GW game has any chance of resisting

 CragHack wrote:
How many multi player households there are? Husband and wife have both want the same limited edition book? Please..
But yeah, if someone really wants to scalp hard - nothing will stop them.

Student flats, gamers in houseshares, Couples who will split the boxes between them, gamer kid and parent, military bases ......