First 20 Pages of The Struggle Within Avaiable on S&S.com

[Dimesdan]

Christopher wrote:

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People keep asking me that, but it's not really a reasonable question.

You of all people Chris should realise that there is no such thing as the wrong or an unreasonable question, it is a fully reasonable question and until it is published on paper instead of digitally, people will ask.

It's meant to be an e-book. E-books are a much bigger thing now in the market than they were a few years ago, and this is Simon & Schuster's attempt to get back into that market with Trek. And it's only 25,000 words. It's a novella, not a novel. It's way, way too short to be published as a standalone book.

Good for them, hopefully it will work well and every single publication will be done digitally. I for one will then discontinue reading Trek books as I have no intention of reading books on a screen.

If it does well, there will probably be more e-books, in which case, maybe, eventually, years from now, there may be enough for a print collection, once the last 8 Corps of Engineers e-books and Slings and Arrows have seen print and once there's a gap in the schedule. Eventually. Someday. But in the near future? No way. That doesn't even make sense.

As for publishing it in "hard form." How about it being included with another Typhon Pact related story. This has been done before with Star Wars Novels, the ebook Ylseia was included in the paperback reprint of Destinys Way. I'm surprised you are thinking so two dimensionally when it comes to the publishing of one of your stories and it reaching a far wider audience.

It's an e-book. That's what it's meant to be. That's the market it's specifically designed for. And I wish people would just accept that.

Well that is fundamentally wrong from a business viewpoint, I'm sure ebooks are really easy and have their own place, but how is an ebook any different from a normal hard copy book in the way the prose is presented?

From reading the preview linked (and not enjoying it one bit) I can't see any difference. It still has sentences, it still has the structure one finds in a book so proclaiming that it's an ebook and that's what it's meant to be is just wrong. It should be designed for both e and hard copy and not to specifically fit in one or the other. By only aiming it at one type of readership, yes it's a larger audience then it was five years ago, but it's still not a massive audience and by only aiming at that one audience, you are alienating people who would read the story because it has Star Trek or Christopher L Bennent on the "front cover" and I just wish people accepted that!

[Christopher]

Dimesdan wrote:

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You of all people Chris should realise that there is no such thing as the wrong or an unreasonable question, it is a fully reasonable question and until it is published on paper instead of digitally, people will ask.

How is it reasonable to think it's likely that a 25,000-word novella would be published as a standalone book? That hardly ever happens these days. Maybe 40 or 50 years ago, but these days it's only done by very small presses, mostly vanity publishers.

As for publishing it in "hard form." How about it being included with another Typhon Pact related story.

Sure, that could happen eventually. I already said there are long-term possibilities. But as for near-future possibilities, there are no other short-form Typhon Pact stories in existence or known to be scheduled for the next year. If it does happen, it won't be for a while. And it would probably take years to accumulate enough of them to justify a trade compilation. There's just no reason to expect it to come out in print soon.

Well that is fundamentally wrong from a business viewpoint, I'm sure ebooks are really easy and have their own place, but how is an ebook any different from a normal hard copy book in the way the prose is presented?

Because there is virtually no print market for novella-length fiction these days. The few remaining print magazines rarely take anything over 10,000 words, and there's no longer a significant market for standalone print books shorter than 75,000 words. But electronic media don't have those limitations. You talk about appealing to a broader audience -- that's exactly what adding e-books to the line does. It broadens the possibilities and the markets. The Struggle Within could not exist as a print book. Electronic publishing makes it possible.

Is it "fundamentally wrong from a business viewpoint" to publish comic books instead of prose novels? Or to make half-hour TV sitcoms instead of feature-length movies? Or, for that matter, to publish prose tie-ins to a television show instead of just keeping it exclusively on television? How is it bad business to diversify? To give the audience more options? Sure, not every single audience member is going to be equally interested in every format, but the market isn't designed to appeal to only one audience member. If some people are more interested in one format of story and others are more interested in another, then it's obviously good business to reach out to both markets instead of focusing solely on one.

By only aiming it at one type of readership, yes it's a larger audience then it was five years ago, but it's still not a massive audience and by only aiming at that one audience, you are alienating people who would read the story because it has Star Trek or Christopher L Bennent on the "front cover" and I just wish people accepted that!

Nonsense. A story is a story regardless of how it's presented. We have print books, we have comic books, we have magazines, we have TV, we have movies, we have live stage shows. What's so horrible about adding even more formats for getting stories out to audiences? The e-reader audience is the same as the print audience, mostly. Just because some people are unwilling to experience Star Trek in e-books rather than television or film or comics or hard-copy books, that doesn't mean they represent the universal response. Certainly not among Star Trek fans, who -- as you'd expect from a franchise whose motto is "To explore strange new worlds" -- are generally early adopters of new technologies (for instance, they were early adopters of online purchasing, which is why it's often hard to find Trek novels on brick-and-mortar store shelves). Plenty of people are happy to read a story regardless of whether it's on real paper or digital paper (and the distinction in look and feel is increasingly nonexistent). So the audience is the same. The audience is for Star Trek, not for flat sheets made of processed wood pulp.

[JD]

Dimesdan wrote:

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Good for them, hopefully it will work well and every single publication will be done digitally. I for one will then discontinue reading Trek books as I have no intention of reading books on a screen.

I don't understand this. If you spend pretty much any time on the internet you read stuff on a screen, so why is it so horrible to read books off a screen? And if there is a reason that you can't handle reading off a screen for long periods, then you should really try out an e-reader, thanks to the e-ink screens and the size and shape of the readers, it doesn't really feel or look that different from reading a paperback. Hell, it's lighter than a hardcover, you don't have to worry about faded ink, and you can change the text style and size at will. I still go back and forth between paper and my Nook, and TBH I enjoy reading off of the Nook alot more than I do the paper books.

[Christopher]

I don't quite understand the fierce objections myself, but different people like different formats. There are people who only read novels and not comics, or vice-versa. There are people who love TV but don't like to read, and vice-versa. But that's why it's good business to diversify the market. Not everybody who bought the Myriad Universes trades bought the IDW comic under that banner. Not everybody who bought the DS9 relaunch novels bought Divided We Fall. Heck, 99 percent of the people who watch Star Trek on TV or in the movie theater don't buy the books. The goal of doing such tie-ins is to try to build a crossover market -- not just to broaden the appeal to more audiences but to give fans of one medium an incentive to try a different medium they might not otherwise have tried. Not everyone's going to choose to go along with that, and that's their choice, but that doesn't invalidate the goal.

[BrotherBenny]

I don't see the appeal of comics (but then I never grew up with them like other kids did, or do) but I love novels. I love books of all sizes (HC, TPB, MMPB) and I like the idea of carrying a library in my pocket so I can read to my heart's content without carrying around a dozen books.

Besides, as mentioned above, the eInk screen is more akin to an actual book than the backlit screens of computers, smart phones, and tablets, which makes it easier on the eyes.

Also, both the eBook readers and tablets are exactly like PADDs. If you think about the technology we have today and extrapolate out to the 24th century, we'll be well ahead of what Picard and his contemporaries have. It appeals to the ST fan in me.

[Idran]

Dimesdan wrote:

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You of all people Chris should realise that there is no such thing as the wrong or an unreasonable question

It's incorrect enough just to say there's no such thing as a wrong or bad question, silly platitudes aside, but it should be obvious that there's many possible examples of an unreasonable question. It's trivial for me to come up with about a dozen or so hypothetical examples off the top of my head of a question that would be considered unreasonable: one that invades a person's privacy, one that includes implicit false or overly strong assumptions and so can't be answered in a reasonable manner, one asked in a panel discussion or lecture on a subject completely off the intended topic and beyond the purview of knowledge of the speakers. It just takes a moment's thought to come up with examples of unreasonable questions.

[ATimson]

Christopher wrote:

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It's meant to be an e-book. E-books are a much bigger thing now in the market than they were a few years ago, and this is Simon & Schuster's attempt to get back into that market with Trek. And it's only 25,000 words. It's a novella, not a novel.

Then maybe they should price it as such - it's impossible to justify paying $6 for a 25,000 word novella when I can get a full 100,000-word Trek novel for the same price.

[TerraUnam]

We are still in an age when physical pages constitute "reading" and things on a screen constitutes "writing", regardless of PADDs, sorry, iPads and Kindles. Reading still equals paper.

It will change in time. E-published books and Kindles are popular among people over 65 I know because they can change the font size easily to accommodate deteriorating eyesight.

Give it ten years and a generation of elderly people who want changeable print size and a publishing industry who can accommodate that easily with e-books.

[Christopher]

TerraUnam wrote:

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We are still in an age when physical pages constitute "reading" and things on a screen constitutes "writing", regardless of PADDs, sorry, iPads and Kindles. Reading still equals paper.

People read plenty of stuff on screens. They read e-mail, they read blogs, they read news and magazine articles, they read Wikipedia, and yes, they read fiction. There are now more genre fiction magazines online than there are in print.

[fleetcaptain]

Got me craving more now too, lol. I honestly don't mind e-books myself. I did buy the first 4 novels and haven't read them all completely yet. So I don't mind either format at all.

[Christopher]

^Be aware that The Struggle Within does contain some spoilers for other Typhon Pact books, particularly Paths of Disharmony and Rough Beasts of Empire.

[j3067]

I read the sample. It was neat to see Jono and his people included again. I can't say I am too enthused about the set-up for the Chen/Choudhury plot. It seems like they are going to help nail a 95 theses to the Kinshaya's church door with a wink and a nod to the Prime Directive.

[ToddCam]

Star Trek fans are just as susceptible to technophobia as anyone I think. Many years ago, when the Lost Era came out, I found it odd that in the 24th century it was so hard to track down a single civilian on Earth because personal communications devices seemed to be solely Starfleet's purview, especially since the cell phone was already quite common by that time. I got a lot of responses disdaining the cell phone as a nuisance. I'm sure most of those people now have cell phones, but it seemed really odd that a bunch of Star Trek fans were afraid of the future like that.

Also, I still want to know why civilians don't have a cell phone equivalent!

[Christopher]

j3067 wrote:

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I can't say I am too enthused about the set-up for the Chen/Choudhury plot. It seems like they are going to help nail a 95 theses to the Kinshaya's church door with a wink and a nod to the Prime Directive.

That was not the historical referent I was guided by. More like the Indian independence movement and the Arab Spring.

[JWolf]

ATimson wrote:

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Then maybe they should price it as such - it's impossible to justify paying $6 for a 25,000 word novella when I can get a full 100,000-word Trek novel for the same price.

S&S needs to learn how to price eBooks. Look at the prices of the individual SCE eBooks.

http://books.simonandschuster.biz/Ag.../9780743475921

76 pages at most and it's $5.99. This is way out of line.