Are the Voyager novels not as popular?

[Infern0]

I notice that there are many TOS, TNG and DS9 novels released fairly regularly, on top of that, major crossover events like Destiny and Typhon Pact, as well as the upcoming "The Fall" also seem to kick voyager to the curb and feature heavily if not exclusively TNG and DS9


While i'm glad to have those other series and enjoy them, I find it a little dissapointing how badly Voyager seems to be treated, there was a massive gap between Spirit Walk to the second relaunch series, which featured four novels then also ended.

In that time there were probably about 20 TNG and DS9 novels.

[Patrick O'Brien]

I would not say that. I have enjoyed the Voyager relaunch and feel the amount of books are on par with my interest level. You may enjoy this literarytreks interview of Kirsten Beyer:http://trek.fm/literary-treks/litera...ten-beyer.html It goes into detail about her work on this book line.

[Sho]

While cynical me knows that the author name on the cover unfortunately isn't very important in tie-in fiction, I'd like to think that the recognition Ms. Beyer has been getting for the quality of her work is at least part of the reason why the line has been kept in her hands for now, at the cost of limiting its output to her capacity.

And I think waiting has its upsides. For example, there's a lot of grumbling from the 24th century fan camp about the TOS stuff dominating the first half of this year, but OTOH it builds up anticipation for picking up a Trek novel again and perhaps avoids over-saturation. If you know your audience is split to a degree, scheduling like this might actually make a lot of sense to keep readers around for years and years without wearing out their attention spans.

Edit: Also, what's this about the second relaunch series ending? AFAIK Ms. Beyer is hard at work on another installment.

[Thrawn]

Yeah, there's another Voyager novel coming next year.

[The Wormhole]

TOS and TNG were the most popular TV shows, Voyager and Enterprise were the least popular TV shows. That simple fact might account for why we so many TOS/TNG novels compared to VGR/ENT. In fact, despite grumblings on this forum, the best selling Trek novels are TOS novels set during the five year mission, which is the main reason they seem to dominate novel line-up each year.

Also, there's aren't really that many DS9 novels published these days. Last year saw two, and they were under the Typhon Pact banner and featured the TNG cast in a supporting role. Whatever DS9 we get this year is going to be part of "The Fall."

[Enterpriserules]

Right now Beyer is the only one writing for Voyager and I like that we are only getting one a year. The quality does not suffer when you give one writer time to polish a story that much. Voy has been a fantastic relaunch under Beyer.

[rfmcdpei]

It's my understanding that the first Voyager novels line that was written by Golden would have continued but for issues at her end. Is this correct?

[JWolf]

rfmcdpei wrote:

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It's my understanding that the first Voyager novels line that was written by Golden would have continued but for issues at her end. Is this correct?

Well, to be honest, the post Voyager books from Golden were going downhill in quality. It took Kirsten to bring them back from the edge of the abyss.

[Relayer1]

JWolf wrote:

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Well, to be honest, the post Voyager books from Golden were going downhill in quality. It took Kirsten to bring them back from the edge of the abyss.

I'd have said Kirsten actually had quite a bit of climbing to do...

[Enterpriserules]

Relayer1 wrote:

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I'd have said Kirsten actually had quite a bit of climbing to do...

And she has made it one of the best of Trek books!

[Christopher]

Infern0 wrote:

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While i'm glad to have those other series and enjoy them, I find it a little dissapointing how badly Voyager seems to be treated, there was a massive gap between Spirit Walk to the second relaunch series, which featured four novels then also ended.

As others have said, the current VGR novel line by Kirsten Beyer has not ended, and it's been quite popular.

The gap happened for a variety of reasons. Christie Golden moved on from doing Trek, and there was some reshuffling editorially. Marco Palmieri, then the senior editor of Trek/tie-in novels at Pocket, took over as editor of VGR and began developing a new direction for the series with Kirsten Beyer, and they needed some time to work out where to go with it. Then the Destiny trilogy event was developed and it was decided that the VGR novels would have to take it into account and coordinate with it, leading to a further postponement.

But the VGR novels have been going strong ever since, as much as any of the other 24th-century books in the past few yeras.

[Thrawn]

Right, what Christopher said.

Plus don't forget that during that gap, between Golden and Beyer, Marco realized Voyager was getting short-changed and commissioned the String Theory trilogy to try and bridge the gap a bit. Not perfect, but it wasn't like Voyager was intentionally ignored.

[Christopher]

^String Theory was also part of Pocket's 10th-anniversary celebration for VGR, along with Distant Shores.

[zarkon]

Infern0 wrote:

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Are the Voyager novels not as popular?

Well the tv show wasn't as popular, so any books based on it are going to have a smaller fanbase to market too.

I guess pocket think that post tv, one a year is what they can get away with.

Plus they release less books then back in the day overall

[Scout101]

A big-budget movie featuring Kirk and the gang is coming out in a couple months, why's anyone surprised (or grumbling) that the first half of this year is TOS-heavy? They're not straight-up tie-ins based on the nuTrek vs TOS Trek, but if people are about to go spend money to see Kirk and Spock, kinda a no-brainer to put more TOS products in front of them and ride the free publicity wave...