I know not to trust Amazon or its release dates too deeply, but I was looking at getting the Planet X for the Kindle and saw two different versions of the book listed, the one that came out in 1998 and one which claims to be coming out on Tuesday, April 17. If it is being reprinted it appears to have done so under the radar, if not I'm at a loss for what else it could be. Any ideas?
Numerous popular-but-long-out-of-print ST novels are coming out in a more economical (for Pocket) trade PB reprint. The price is more like trade than MMPB. Inside, the books are the reprinted text of the MMPB, but with wider gutters. It's a kind of print-on-demand thing. My local SF bookshop has been getting some of them in as new titles (some "Stargazer" and "Vanguard" titles), only to realize the diehard collectors already have them at home as MMPBs.
Even Chapters-Indigo.ca has those books on their website. But I think "Planet X" hasn't been out of print since it first came out in 1998, since Pocket has been able to redistribute the book whenever anew X-Men movies hit theaters.
Amazon currently has no MMPBs at recommended retail price, so that indicates it has fallen out-of-print, or has been remaindered. Probably not long after "X-Men 3"? http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=x-men+trek+%22planet+x%22&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Ax-men+trek+%22planet+x%22&ajr=0
That must've been just within the past year since I saw it at a number of bookstores just prior to last year's X-Men movie.
Well, I wasn't even thinking about "First Class", but the warehouses might have been getting rid of a glut of reprints from years before. As I said, if Amazon has no new stock of a book at RRP, it's probably out of print, and people have to try the resellers (of remaindered stock) and second hand markets instead. If Pocket is releasing a popular MMPB in print-on-demand trade reprint, the MMPB is definitely out of print.
Got a copy of the POD edition from Amazon today. They've finally figured out how to "blow up" the text so it fills the pages on these PODs. The last several pages (replacing the "Star Trek Fiction" list found in the original edition) are a teaser for Christopher Bennett's "X-Men: Watchers on the Walls", which isn't current, nor contemporary with the first edition of this book.
^Wow, hopefully that means Watchers will be getting reprinted. And hopefully Spider-Man: Drowned in Thunder too, since that would be a nice tie-in for the upcoming Amazing Spider-Man movie.
Got mine from Amazon today. It's rather nice edition, wouldn't know it wasn't intended to be a TPB, really. Looking forward to reading it. I also finally got my hands on the "lead-in" story "TNG/X-Men: Second Contact," so I'm quite happy.
It's a fun read. Very silly, but then what eould you expect, really? Worth the purchase price purely for Wolverine running through Worf's calisthenics program.
It's too bad that the comic crossovers were never printed in a graphic novel format by either Marvel or Simon & Schuster.
Yeah, I was disappointed they weren't reproduced on that CD-ROM collection of the Trek comics from a few years back. I had to track them down through Amazon/eBay.