Black Library
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Black Library is a section of BL Publishing (itself a division of Games Workshop) devoted to publishing novels, art books, background books and graphic novels set in the Warhammer Fantasy world and the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Some of the more famous and popular titles include the Gaunt's Ghosts and Eisenhorn novels by Dan Abnett for Warhammer 40,000, and the Gotrek and Felix series by William King and Nathan Long for Warhammer.
[edit] In Warhammer 40K
The Black Library's name comes from the Warhammer 40,000 universe, where it is the place that all the knowledge of the Eldar on the subject of Chaos is stored.
[edit] History
The Black Library was founded in April 1997 to produce Inferno! magazine, a bi-monthly digest-sized anthology of short stories, comic strips and features from the Warhammer worlds. Its success spawned Warhammer Monthly comic, and then from September 1999 a lengthy series of fantasy and science fiction novels. Its first artbook "Inquis Exterminatus" followed in 2000. Inferno! and Warhammer Monthly were discontinued early 2005 as sales were meagre compared to the novels. The Black Library's catalogue now runs to well over two hundred titles, with a Warhammer and a 40K novel appearing every month.
In October 2003 BL Publishing started a sister imprint, Black Flame, which applied the same pulp stylings to novels featuring New Line Cinema characters such as Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees, and 2000 AD comic's Judge Dredd and others. Recently, Black Flame produced the novel for the movie Snakes on a Plane. In the summer of 2005 BL Publishing announced another fiction imprint, Solaris Books, that will produce original SF and fantasy, starting February 2007.
