The first book promo card in thirty years was announced by Wizards of the Coast - as was the first paper novel in seven years.
Earlier this year, at the MagicCon Atlanta 2025, Wizards of the Coast announced something that hadn't been done in decades: A Magic book promo card. The first printed book to come out in six years, the Secrets of Strixhaven counterpart book is set to take place adjacent to the regular Magic storyline. Titled "Strixhaven: Omens of Chaos" and authored by Seanan McGuire, the book was met to some of the loudest cheers of the convention Preview Panel, as was the special card Command Tower.
However, there is a reason for the cheers, besides fans wanting more of a standard Magic storyline push in recent years - WotC hasn't done this for quite sometime. In the mid 90's, HarperPrism novels had a cutout square in the back of the book you could send in for a promo card. Five cards in total were printed in the first five novels with their own special pen-shaped set symbol: Arena, Sewers of Estark, Windseeker Centaur, Giant Badger, and Mana Crypt.
While future books were put forward going into 1996, players complained about having to buy the books in order to get the cards. This reportedly all but stopped any more of the promotional cards from going out, making the HarperPrism card series a five-and-done product. It didn't help that the cards were all over the map in terms of playability. Sewers of Estark was seen as underwhelming, Windseeker Centaur broke the modern color pie, and Mana Crypt was seen as too powerful.
The five promo cards from this era have quite the history, but so do the books themselves. Magic storyline books remained a mainstay until the early 2010's when the storyline went fully online, with some stories coming out as e-books and others as graphic novels. "Scars of Mirrodin: The Quest for Karn" was the last one to come out in this era in 2011, and sales were just not that great. The Zendikar and Scars of Mirrodin books were that poorly received.
Magic tried again with a few print books of War of the Spark in 2019, but poor story quality, lots of retcons and lore issues, and a rushed schedule caused poor sales once again, with even e-books ending in 2020. They were, by this time, just seen as bad, with the official Magic stories online getting much better acclaim.
Since the beginning of the decade, the Magic storyline was only continued on through the official Magic story online. They continued to nab top authors to write them, like Valerie Valdes and Seth Dickerson, but books just were not in the cards.
However, by the mid 2020's, fans were asking once again about a written novel. And, by this time, Universes Beyond, Secret Lair Drops, and more proved that fans were willing to go down multiple avenues to get cards they wanted. This led to the 2025 announcement of a Strixhaven novel. Magic is having a seasoned writer write this and, to avoid past mistakes, didn't tie her up in having to stick to the official Magic storyline, and instead make a companion story to the events. However, fans and even McGuire herself have been honest about the new novel - it's a test to see if printed books can still work and what the fan reaction and sales will look like. If it does well, more books are in line. But if not, it may just be yet another aborted book launching for Magic.
"Thank you for that. Being totally blunt, this is an experiment of sorts: does the community actually mean it when we say we want books back?," said McGuire on Reddit in September 2025. "Will we pay the cost of one Collector Booster for a book? Pre-orders on this book are going to determine not just whether I get to write the sequels (I really want to), but whether we get to continue print fiction, YA or not.
"That's the early data [preorders] they have to go on if they want to make decisions in a timely manner. Post-release sales also matter, but may happen after they've already decided we failed. Your store will hopefully have pre-orders before the book comes out."
Time will only tell if not only book promos continue, but if the books themselves continue on in paper form once again.
