Hammer & Bolter announced!

As I’m sure many of you are aware by now, Black Library will be launching a range of eBooks and audio downloads this October and making the worlds of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 come alive on your handheld device, iPad and MP3 player. As part of this launch, we’ll be adding a new download-only short fiction magazine to our already heaving website. It’s called Hammer and Bolter and the logo looks like this:

Great news, the only thing I am worried about is the pricing.
When comparing ebook and printed versions on various shops, the ebook is hardly ever cheaper than the printed book - 1:1 pricing is NOT acceptable!

Looks good, doesn’t it? Even more impressive is the line-up we’ve assembled for our giant-sized debut issue. Not only do we have a brand new Dan Abnett short story but we’re also giving you a sneak peek at the first Chapter of Prospero Burns a good three months in advance of its publication date. Ben Counter and the Soul Drinkers storm back onto the page with the first two chapters of Phalanx – the Black Library’s first ever serialised novel that will be published in its entirety over H&B’s first year of publication. Anthony Reynolds contributes an entire novella continuing the adventures of Calard from his Bretonnian Knight novels while Sarah Cawkwell makes her Black Library fiction bow with a tale of the Silver Skulls chapter of the Adeptus Astartes. And Nick Kyme is finally hunted down by The Inquisition and forced to answer questions about his current and forthcoming novels.

• Prospero Burns? Wait, that was the once planned Horus Heresy novel BEFORE A Thousand Sons, which has been succeeded by Nemesis already and got another novel BEFORE Prospero Burns finally hits the shelves?
  Yeah, a sneak peak is definitely something we should already have gotten.
  (No offense to Dan, he isn't the one to blame, illness and so on)


• Phalanx? Wait, wasn't that the ship of Rogal Dorn, Primarch of the Imperial Fists, who were the predecessors of the Soul Drinkers? Anyway, nice, will probably get me start reading the Soul Drinker-novels on my shelf.


• Bretonnia? Not that I'm all that interested in these Knights, but hey, it's not like me to skip stories in monthly issues.


• Silver Skulls? Bring it on, Sarah!


• INTERVIEWS! Hell, yes! Please one with Mike Lee and Dan Abnett talking about upcoming Darkblade novels!

As exciting as all of the above is, possibly the most exciting thing about the first issue is that we have a previously unpublished John Brunner short story featuring none other than Gotrek & Felix! Written twenty years ago, the story has been sitting on various hard drives for the past two decades and, as far as we’re aware, is the last remaining unpublished story by the Hugo Award-winning author who sadly died in 1995.

Sorry, but I really had to look up Brunner on Wikipedia. Alright, don't know what to expect, but G&F is always good news.

Each monthly issue will be priced at £2.50 and feature brand-new short fiction and advance previews of forthcoming novels along with the occasional interview and other special features, but to celebrate the launch of our eBook range the first issue will be absolutely free!

£2.50 sounds good to me, especially considering the first issue for free.
Anyway, I can't say for sure that I'm going to buy it.
Reason is not the issue, the content, no, the payment system.
If BL doesn't start to use PayPal like Games Workshop itself does on the main page, only credit card owners will get to read these ebooks.
I'm not a fan of that credit card only-thing, like I told them time and time again, but we'll see...


Source: BlackLibrary.com