A little information that is at least helpful when trying to understand what happened with these extremely small runs of the latest books being published by Games Workshop. What it comes down to is....... Ooops, and a seriously underestimated idea of how many people want to buy their books. The number of copies made was a decision that was already made, and I am sure it not only is hard to change it, but extra runs could in fact effect other releases.
Lets take a look at what was said.
What is odd though so far with these softcover editions, is that they were released solely in the UK. Perhaps very soon we will see more of these elsewhere. (again at the time of writing this, soft covers are not on the US site)
via an anonymous source on Faeit 212
I have just been speaking with a GW store manager on the subject of the recent endtimes and leviathan sell outs. Apparently Games Workshop's original plan was to make a certain amount of hardback books, that would eventually sell over a longer period of time and that in a year or so, they would release a paperback copy.
They put in the order with the print company for a specific number of units for ALL the endtimes books at once (meaning that any future endtimes books are already printed and sitting in a warehouse). It turns out that they completely underestimated the popularity of these books - since 45% of their sales come from 40k alone - and so they didn't have enough to supply the demand.
So they weren't intending for it to be such a limited run and therefore it will come as a blow to them to not be able to sell more of the hardback copies. This meant that they have moved forward the production date of the soft backs and being webstore only products stores are now asking around how many people want copies so that they can have a limited in store stock. (Shield of Baal: Leviathan will also be getting a paperback edition in the coming weeks as well).