UPDATE-June 29: The Warcraft paperback pre-orders are back.
Original article
I monitor upcoming Blizzard licensed products several times each week, and not long ago — around the time the Warcraft movie reached theatres in the United States, I saw a listing of pre-orders for upcoming book paperbacks coming this Fall 2016.
The ones I can remember were Warcraft: The Last Guardian, Warcraft: Lord of the Clans, and surprisingly the Warcraft Manga.
The first two obviously had ties with the Warcraft movie, so it’s possible these paperback books were aiming at those who watched the movie. It’s truly hard to find those books in libraries as they were originally sold back in 2001.
The mystery deepens when the exact same books (that were until a few weeks ago set for pre-order) no longer listed among the Simon & Schuster/Pocket Star Books collection. They still list the most recent books post-2008. All books from 2001-2006 are no longer in their collection.
That on itself triggers speculation. Will the license for those books be transferred to another publishing partner such as Harper Collins? Will those books be published again as paperback?
On the other hand, the Warcraft manga was published originally by TOKYOPOP. The Warcraft manga eBook license was then moved to Cryptozoic Entertainment along with the Upper Deck Warcraft license, and currently the Warcraft Manga are in limbo — but what I can remember from the Warcraft Manga pre-order page that vanished recently, it seems Blizzard Entertainment will publish the Warcraft manga from now on. The pre-order page listed “Blizzard Entertainment” as the publisher.
UPDATE: Though, the paperback I mentioned is no longer listed in a normal search, I was able to find the Warcraft manga paperback pre-order page (via Google) which is now not taking pre-orders. So the page did exist. I didn’t imagine it. The page sets the launch date to November 15, 2016 under the following:
Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment
Series: Blizzard Manga.
I’ll continue to monitor the cyberspace. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook for new updates. If the pre-orders disappeared it might mean things are getting ironed out.
