Raft of new Minecraft publishing coming

Egmont will this year release four new Minecraft titles, created to replace the original ‘handbook’ series.

John Packard, publishing director for brands and licensing at Egmont Publishing, said: “We are tremendously excited to be launching the Minecraft Guides this spring as they represent a real landmark in our Minecraft publishing plans. These new titles will explore new topics in depth for players at different stages in their Minecraft journey [and] will form a key plank of our publishing for the next three years.”

Two books are scheduled for release on 1st June; Minecraft Guide to Creative (which is about building structures in the game) and Minecraft Guide to Exploration (which shows players how to defend themselves). The next two books, Minecraft Guide to Redstone (about engineering) and Minecraft Guide to the Nether and the End (about a new terrain in the game), will follow in September.

All four titles were created with input from Minecraft’s developer Mojang and will be released in hardback, priced at £9.99.

Egmont said there are also “further titles planned” for 2018 and 2019.

Minecraft is one of the most successful children’s publishing tie-ins of recent years. The series launched in 2013 with four handbooks: The Official Beginner’s Handbook, The Official Redstone Handbook, The Official Construction Handbook and The Official Combat Handbook. A fifth title, Blockopedia followed in December 2014.

By February last year had sold 620,152 copies for £2.96m to date, according to Nielsen BookScan, whilst Blockopedia had sold 187,070 copies for £2.86m.

According to Egmont, total sales of the game (across all editions) are in excess of 107 million units.