New Making of TMP book

My copy just arrived, but I'll have to look at it tonight.

 

Mine arrived, too. Not signed, unfortunately. Hell, I'd already ordered my copy before Preston Neal Jones even emailed me to tell me it was finally coming out. Still, it looks very nicely done. I guess I'll have to update the Star Trek: The Lost Books page again.

 

I just ordered this and have been looking forward to it for quite some time. I guess they have more stock in since apparently I was able to order it still.

 

Unfortunately mine's not signed either.

 

Finally arrived. Now that's what I'm talking about

 

Mine arrived today, although unfortunately I can't open it until Wednesday as my wife bought it for my birthday!

 

I was a little worried that this book might not read well because of the layout but I have found if I read it like a conversation going on it is extremely interesting. I like how the author only interjects when clarification is needed but outside of that he lets those involved in the project speak for themselves. One of the better non-fiction purchases I have made.

Kevin

 

Yes it reads like a CFQ double (triple? quadruple?) issue but as a book (which makes total sense )

 

Between being assassinated for not making enough and for not providing what I promised, I'd rather pick the former, thanks.

"Frantic attempts"? This isn't one of Black Library's limited editions where they're crashing the website trying to order them. They had these books available to order for weeks after release.

 

^Isn't it possible that they meant it when they said it, and later changed their minds?

 

I don't think there is any deception at play here. I do think they are surprised that there was enough interest that they sold all thousand copies. As Christophersays, they probably just changed their minds. If they thought they could sell more, they would likely have printed more on the first run. Doing so may well have lowered their own cost per book for printing, making them more of a profit.

 

I very much doubt that there is any deception going on here. There's a lot of interest in TMP from people on this board and in fandom in general. Too, being that Lukas Kendall was involved with this publication, it's entirely possible he and Creature Features employed the same approach to distribution as is done by the boutique soundtrack labels to insure they didn't spend more money printing copies than they would be able to make back. Then, given the surge in popularity of the book, they renegged the "strictly 1,000 copies" bit and ordered up some more -- something the soundtrack labels sometimes do as well, when a particular title sells out quickly.

This is all speculation on my part of course, but I think trying to ascribe any kind of negative or ulterior motive to Jones, Kendall or Creature Features is misguided, largely unfounded and farankly unfair.

 

The first printing was limited to 1000 copies. There was no guarantee that it would sell out or that there wouldn't be a second printing.

And it's not as if the second edition is coming out with material not in the first edition.

Neil

 

started reading the first 20 pages and then just picked various pages to skim through before going back to reading it properly. fascinating stuff. it really is just like finding a long lost Cinefantastique double (triple?) issue. I can sort of understand why it wasn't published maybe due to the revealing details (but then again there was a bunch of revealing details about stuff in the other trek movie CFQs, but maybe not so much as this - I guess i'll find out as I continue reading..)

as expected its quite similar to 'Charting the Undiscovered Country The Making of Trek VI' by Ed Gross/Mark Altman and 'The Making of the Trek Films' (both based on the trek movie Cinefantastique issues) but no pics and about twice/three times the length! its like a companion piece to those really

 

Hello friends, this is Lukas Kendall. I helped with the publication of Preston Neal Jones's long-lost book (scanning, formatting and proofing it, which took 2+ years)...I also worked on most if not all of the recent Star Trek collector's edition CDs. So I hope people trust me.

I've known Preston for years, and also Taylor White at Creature Features, who ponied up the dough to put in the marketplace a 600+ page oral history from 35 years ago with no illustrations.

We all loved the book, thought it was cool, and thought it should be available to the public. It's had 35 years of NOT being published. We succeeded where many others failed.

There were a lot of things that we simply did not know going into this as a business venture: namely, how many people would buy it?

Nothing stinks more than having 700 copies of an item in inventory...forever...and eating your shirt. Take my word for it: I put out a soundtrack album to A Man Called Adam. (If you don't even know what that is, don't worry about it.)

So a number of business and logistical decisions were made to minimize risk. Namely, to do direct sales only. To start by taking pre-orders so that we could gauge how many to print. To print them overseas to save dough, even though there would be a three-month shipping delay—not helped by a strike at the port in Southern California (really!). And to ship them as media mail for lowest cost to the customer, even though tracking is not available.

Then, we were surprised (happily) by the numbers of orders that came in after the book was in stock, and Creature Features had to build the logistics on the fly to handle all the orders during the holiday season.

So let me just say this: every decision that we made that might lend itself to a paranoid interpretation (they're a bunch of scammers! they didn't ship my book! ad nauseam)—the real answer is just that we are trying our best. We are trying to put out the best version of this terrific book, at the lowest cost, without taking a bath.

So be patient, everything will be taken care of, and hopefully a time will come shortly when all the of the commentary can be about the book and not about the ordering process.

The good news is that the book is terrific.

Thanks!

Lukas Kendall

 

Thanks for popping in. I've enjoyed what I read so far and am glad that more people will have the opportunity to purchase the book. LLAP