• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

2019 Releases

Well, I think that going forward we won’t have 12 books a year. I don’t feel there would be the appetite among readers for monthly TPBs.
 
I hope w e can still get Enterprise and Ds9 books again in the future. I'm just glad we'll have some Tos novels and a TNG book coming out next year.
 
Last edited:
Regarding future releases I'm not sure we'll see any more Enterprise novels (or DS9 or Voyager novels--except for Beyer's last book that is yet to be released). Esp. with a new trade paperback format. I'm just not sure enough people would buy a $16 Enterprise novel to make it worth their while.

I've no idea if you're right, but what you say makes a lot of sense to me. Some parts of the franchise may not be able to support tie-ins right now, and S&S would be right to publish what readers will buy.
 
I'm also curious will it be a MMPB since it's under the old contract, or upgraded to Trade (not sure if that can be done, maybe it's contracted as MMPB).

The contracts only specify the desired word count range, and define royalties for various different release formats -- so much for MMPB, so much for trade, so much for e-book. So the option is built in to release the book in whatever format or formats the publisher decides on. And Kirsten's novels tend to run pretty long by MMPB standards, so they'd be naturals for trade format anyway.


Perhaps they're avoiding Enterprise for now because DSC has some ENT-era time travel or ENT character reappearances up its sleeve.

It's simply that Margaret asked me to do a TOS book as my first one back after the license renewal. I can only write one novel at a time, after all. And this is sort of a soft restart to the line, coming back in trade format after a hiatus and after Discovery has brought in new fans, so for now we're focusing on the basics, the most popular series, to kick off the new phase. That's all there is to it.
 
So, there are already 4 novels announced for 2019?
Discovery: The Way to the Stars, by Una McCormack, January
TOS: The Antares Maelstrom, by Greg Cox, March
TNG: Available Light, by Dayton Ward, April
TOS: The Captains Oath, by Christopher L. Bennett, May
 
My desire to read trek books has waned a bit as I tend to enjoy the serial format (i.e. The Fall, Typhon Pact, Destiny) as opposed to the Planet of the Week type books. Yeah, some characters histories are moved along in the Planet o' the Week format, but as much as it is in a serial format, and it seems the re-sent button is pushed more.

That being said, I think Trek sales will decrease a bit (of course, just my humble opinion). More importantly, if sales were up, we'd have monthly trek books (or from years go by, 2 books a month).

I do think the silver lining with the Trek line on "hiatus" or at a minimum "curtailed" is I do some re-reads like the Vangaurd series, even tho' I know what is gonna happen, I forget the small details, and nice to read again.
 
Well, technically, The Captain's Oath is listed, not yet formally announced. A proper announcement is pending. That's why I haven't said much about it yet.
 
So, there are already 4 novels announced for 2019?
Discovery: The Way to the Stars, by Una McCormack, January
TOS: The Antares Maelstrom, by Greg Cox, March
TNG: Available Light, by Dayton Ward, April
TOS: The Captains Oath, by Christopher L. Bennett, May

Stand-alones. This is good for Cross Cult. They still have some catching-up ahead (translation and release of older novels). A new trilogy would slow that down.
 
My desire to read trek books has waned a bit as I tend to enjoy the serial format (i.e. The Fall, Typhon Pact, Destiny) as opposed to the Planet of the Week type books. Yeah, some characters histories are moved along in the Planet o' the Week format, but as much as it is in a serial format, and it seems the re-sent button is pushed more.
Available Light is a direct follow up to Control, dealing with the aftermath of that book's events, so it looks like the serialized storytelling will be continuing, at least for a while.
That being said, I think Trek sales will decrease a bit (of course, just my humble opinion).
What makes you think the sales will decline? Things still seemed to be going well before the contract delay.
More importantly, if sales were up, we'd have monthly trek books (or from years go by, 2 books a month).
It looks like we will be getting one book a month, so far we've already covered January, March, April, and May of next year, so that's already almost half the month. If they were going to be moving away from the one a month schedule, I would expect them to have spread them out a bit more. I wonder curious if there is a reason we appear to have skipped February?

I do think the silver lining with the Trek line on "hiatus" or at a minimum "curtailed" is I do some re-reads like the Vangaurd series, even tho' I know what is gonna happen, I forget the small details, and nice to read again.
I do agree with you here, I've actually got a pretty good chance of getting caught up on at least TNG, Titan, and Voyager thanks to the gap.
 
What makes you think the sales will decline?

Basic economics. Increase the price of a product, and people will drop out of the market. Pocket will lose a percentage of readers (and probably not insignificantly so) by moving from mass market to higher priced trades, but they'll probably end up making as much, if not more, money even with fewer buyers because of the difference in price point.
 
The economics of Trade Paper (and hardcover) are different than Mass Market Paperbacks, because unsold MMPBs are "stripped" for credit (the cover torn off & returned to the publisher) and the book is destroyed. With Trade Paper and Hardcover, unsold copies are returned to the publisher, who may elect to discount them -- these discounted books are the ones you see on the "remainder" table at your favorite chain bookstore. (Of course, it's been close to a decade since I had a favorite chain bookstore, so maybe this isn't the case anymore.)
 
It looks like we will be getting one book a month, so far we've already covered January, March, April, and May of next year, so that's already almost half the month. If they were going to be moving away from the one a month schedule, I would expect them to have spread them out a bit more. I wonder curious if there is a reason we appear to have skipped February?

Here’s my version of an explanation is that the January book is basically the February book. Isn’t it the Discovery one? So they probably wanted it to come out at the same time as Season 2. I imagine the process was just rushed to get it out a few weeks early.

And keep in mind the publishing year runs February to January, so if we have releases in “Februrary”, March, April, and May I see no reason not to assume we’re getting one a month all year.
 
Basic economics. Increase the price of a product, and people will drop out of the market. Pocket will lose a percentage of readers (and probably not insignificantly so) by moving from mass market to higher priced trades, but they'll probably end up making as much, if not more, money even with fewer buyers because of the difference in price point.
Damn, that's right, I completely forgot about the move up to trades.
The economics of Trade Paper (and hardcover) are different than Mass Market Paperbacks, because unsold MMPBs are "stripped" for credit (the cover torn off & returned to the publisher) and the book is destroyed. With Trade Paper and Hardcover, unsold copies are returned to the publisher, who may elect to discount them -- these discounted books are the ones you see on the "remainder" table at your favorite chain bookstore. (Of course, it's been close to a decade since I had a favorite chain bookstore, so maybe this isn't the case anymore.)
So that's why you never see MMPBs on the discount tables, I used to wonder about that.
 
Here’s my version of an explanation is that the January book is basically the February book. Isn’t it the Discovery one? So they probably wanted it to come out at the same time as Season 2. I imagine the process was just rushed to get it out a few weeks early.

And keep in mind the publishing year runs February to January, so if we have releases in “Februrary”, March, April, and May I see no reason not to assume we’re getting one a month all year.

That doesn't work, because all four books are listed by their scheduled release dates. So you can't apply the argument to one and not the others. There genuinely is a gap of a month between the DSC book and Greg's TOS book. That's not an illusion.
 
Was anybody at the Destination Star Trek literature panel earlier today? I’m guessing, because I can’t find news anywhere, that there were no new announcements?
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top