I don’t think a lot of people have enjoyed where the Trek novels or the whole post-2016 series have gone. None of the new bookstores in my area are carrying the novels anymore (you can still order them, but from what I can tell, the sales do not warrant the shelf space). The last novel I saw on the shelf was a copy of either the middle “Coda” book or a copy of the tie-in to the Vanguard series, and that was nearly two years ago now. And I haven’t seen a post-2017 Trek book on the shelves here since like 2019 (I’ve seen them on bookstore shelves that are 2 hours or more away from me), so I don’t think the new Trek has hooked the average person or even years long fan like the older 1964-2005 shows did. Sure there are the e-book releases, however, there are still tons of people who prefer the tactile experience of a physical book or vinyl record over an all-digital experience. And in my area I think people are showing how they find the books with their wallets.
Science fiction fans were early adopters of CDs for their SF movie soundtracks. And then streaming albums. Science fiction fans were also early adopters of eBooks, for example, the "Starfleet Corp of Engineers" eBooks were originally eBook only, IIRC, the first Pocket Books eBook exclusive series (although they did later over the stories in reprint omnibuses). IIRC, SF fans were also early adopters of online shopping, such as Amazon. In regular record shops and bookshops, the soundtrack and SF sections were the first to diminish.
Exactly. Personally, I'm a shameless Luddite who still prefers old-fashioned, dead-tree books, but it makes perfect sense that Trek fans in general are going to be technophiles quick to adopt the latest "new" tech -- like ebooks. And I can testify that an ever-increasing share of my royalties come from ebook sales.
Maybe, however if there’s nothing on a physical shelf for those who are browsing and don’t know what to get or maybe gift shopping, then I doubt they are going to realize that Trek books are still being published. Especially when there’s like 30 copies of different Star Wars books sitting on the shelf.
Talk to your bookshop staff. “Star Wars” appeals to the general public more than “Star Trek”. Shops stock what they know will sell quickly. SW appeals to casual browsers. Always has. If a Trek fan isn’t noticing ads for new Trek novels in all the social media places, are they really the type of fan who reads novels anyway? I always know what is coming up next, and I have standing orders at my favourite book shop to put them aside for me.
Covid and supply issues also had an impact on the number of books being released. I know that at my local Barnes and Noble they did a lot of consolidation and rearranging of the shelves and departments and the science fiction, music/movie and magazine footprint is a lot smaller than it was pre-Covid.
What ads are you talking about? I’ve never seen an ad or promo video pop up on Facebook or YouTube or other social media site for any Trek book. However, before Covid I remember my local stores having a shelf full of Trek. Since Covid it’s dropped to none. They don’t even carry the Trek magazine anymore.
On-line advertising is so niche and individualized, it's hard to generalize. I remember several years ago, practically every ad I saw on-line was for Eaglemoss Star Trek ships, until they figured out something else about me (I believe I may have looked at a pair of boots or jacket at some point, so now it's all clothes). I haven't seen any ads for Trek novels, either. I wouldn't necessarily expect to, I have various privacy and anti-tracking features turned on, and I buy all my Trek novels through the Apple eBook store, which isn't connected to the larger internet of ads the way YouTube, Facebook, Amazon, and so on are. I suppose I could try to see if I could provoke some ads, look for more Trek book content to interact with on social media. I'll also agree that the Trek selection is smaller, but that's as much my fault as anyone else's. I went to eBooks when MMPBs went the way of the dodo for space reasons, and even if I hadn't, I wouldn't be dropping by the book shop on my way home every month to grab the next book in person. I might be an issue with my tastes, as well. The last three times I wanted to grab a book in-person rather than pre-ordering (electronically or physically), in two of those cases my closest Barnes and Noble didn't have what I wanted and I had to swing around to one at another end of town.
I follow my favourite Trek authors on Facebook and they throw content online all the time. Progress reports and pics, cover art, synopses, competitions, extracts… Also Simon & Schuster and Star Trek magazine have Facebook pages. I receive email news from them to my email, but I have usually seen promos online before the email arrives. I have an Amazon Prime subscription, which leads to regular updates on upcoming audio titles. Since every new novel gets an unabridged audio these days, it is a great way to keep pace with new titles, even if I don’t buy every audio version. Lots of reminders! I add photos of each new purchase to the thread in this site, “Latest Acquisition”, so I am doing my bit for publicity.
Otherwise they are only targeting the fringe group for sales. How is that suppose to encourage sales if they are only a select group that most likely already buys the product with zero advertising? I still remember how in the 90s and early-2000’s, besides bookstores, the novels were also being sold in various other stores like Walmart or K-Mart and were visible to the non-fringe who were looking for a birthday or Christmas gift or make they had recently come across an episode on TV at home or at a friend’s house and maybe wanted to see how the series was in novel form. By not having the books in stores S&S are killing their sales because if people don’t know that they are out there, they are not going to search for something online that they don’t know about.
On the other hand, if they have books in stores and not enough are buying them they're paying to have books shipped and then remaindered. Retail stores in general is getting slammed lately.
New Trek is more niche than ever, being on Paramount+. The way people absorb content has changed so very much since the 90's. And I suspect tie-in sales reflect that, like the Playmates toys tanking (after tanking when they were paired with a successful blockbuster Trek movie years before!)
I'm pretty sure the toys tanked because kids don't play much with toys anymore, and adult collectors have moved on to things like sixth-scale figures.
The folks that do marketing for Trek Lit (and indeed Trek itself) have yet to figure out what every politician knows instinctively. The way you grow your support is by attracting new people without alienating the folks you have. They fail on both counts.
I don't know about anywhere else, but in my hometown, you could walk into almost any of the local grocery store chains and pick up the latest Trek paperback book. In fact, that was how I bought all my Trek novels for many years and managed to get quite a collection. But when Trek novels moved out of the mass paperback market, I suspect they immediately became out of sight and out of mind to anyone who didn't actively pursue them in actual bookstores or online. It's possible that some may not even be aware that Star Trek novels are still being published...
S&S are doing no such thing. It's the book stores choosing not to order them. I was going to ask how Trek Lit has "alienated" its fans, but I suspect this is a reference to ending the Lit Continuity. In which case, I point out Star Wars did something similar and their novel sales remain as strong as ever.
Star Wars didn't erase decades of stories from existence. They just stopped publishing new stories in the Legends continuity.
I wouldn't leap to that conclusion. Irregular scheduling, lack of must-read "event" stories (either within the novels themselves or tied to current events in the franchise), and the shift to a more expensive and less ubiquitous format (yes, I know MMPB's are falling off across the board) are all things the TrekLit audience wouldn't necessarily enjoy, completely aside from the regular, ongoing meta-story sputtering to a stop over a year or two before ending in a way that was, shall we say, challenging, controversial, and not really the kind of thing that got you fired up anticipating the next novel. Like, Firewall was a great story, but if Star Wars was doing it, it would've come out three or four years ago, and they would've promoted it as a must-read; I'd see excerpts from it randomly showing up in videos from content-farm Facebook nerd explainer accounts titled "How did Seven become a Ranger?!." Again, that's not something you can directly blame the publishers for, Star Wars also wouldn't have brought back a popular character, vetoed a midquel novel on the grounds that they might want to do a flashback, and then radically reinvented the show they were doing, twice, while also never getting around to doing the flashback. It's not the books' fault that these longer and longer production cycles aren't actually turning into pre-planning and two-way coordination.