Next Picard novel: Second Self by Una McCormack, coming April 2022
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Speaking as a writer, thank you for taking the time to do a review as they mean a lot to us writers and help readers understand the book.
I admit, I've had plenty disappear over the years and its why I C&P my reviews to Goodreads so they're never really "lost."
I just got an Amazon notification saying my preorder has been pushed back until 13 Sept
Meaning the only Trek novels we're getting this year will all be released in the fall.
Bad news.
Depends on your perspective - it's still coming, this is just a delay. Is it a bummer that there's no Trek novel now for a good six months (the Insider Fiction Collection notwithstanding)? Yeah. But it's still coming. And, as has been brought up several times now in several places, with the publishing industry at large suffering from issues surrounding the supply chain, this is probably due to matters beyond the control of the publishers themselves - you don't think they'd WANT to put out a Picard tie-in novel right around the time of the new season being released?
Like, I know it's easy to jump immediately to doom and gloom predictions surrounding everything, but... It may really just be as simple as "the now-perpetually ongoing pandemic has caused a lot of issues in the areas that we normally don't really think about and they're trying to figure all of this out, we're not going to go back to "normal" in any time approaching soon."
Maybe the Picard audio drama next weeks is to look for a possible replacement for the novels.
This is based on nothing and doesn't make a ton of sense but it's interesting to see how novels for Doctor Who are comparatively non-existent whilst they release 12 hours of audio dramas per month.
This is based on nothing and doesn't make a ton of sense but it's interesting to see how novels for Doctor Who are comparatively non-existent whilst they release 12 hours of audio dramas per month.
I think they're from different divisions of Simon & Schuster, so I doubt it.
Historically, the opposite was true for Trek. Pocket doubled their output of novels from 6 to 12 per year when TNG came along, and were up to 24 per year during Voyager's run. They didn't start to decrease their output again until after Enterprise ended.
Also, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel novels thrived during those shows' runs, but didn't last more than a few years beyond them. I've heard that, as a rule, it's hard to sustain interest in tie-ins to a series that's no longer in production; Star Trek, Doctor Who, and Star Wars are some of the few exceptions to the rule. You can find a lot of series that have only a handful of tie-ins, like the four books that The 4400 got and the two or three that Leverage got. This is because publishers often like to wait and see if a show is successful before they invest in novels, but if they wait too long, the show may end and then the books can't sustain an audience.
I went back and looked at the old schedules - I can't be sure whether it was 2004 or 2005 where they "officially" dropped the 24 per year schedule. But either way, given publishing lead times, that decision must've been made before Enterprise ended.
I wonder if it's not Trek that's the exception to the pattern, but TOS and maybe TNG in particular.
It’s probably a cultural thing. Audio fiction doesn’t seem to have faded out of fashion in the UK the way it did in the US.
No, we still got plenty of post-finale DS9 and VGR novels. And as I said, other franchises like Doctor Who, Star Wars, and Stargate have also been exceptions.
But the point is that, as a rule, having an active show on the air helps tie-ins rather than harming them. Some do better than others after the show ends, but they all generally benefit from having the source show in active production. After all, the whole point of tie-ins is to appeal to the same audience that the series draws in, and that audience is usually largest while the series is active.
That's a bit of a story. When Doctor Who returned to TV, they had to stop publishing novels based on the Classic Doctors at request of then showrunner Russell T Davies and focus strictly on tie-ins for the current Doctor. Over the years, tie-ins for the incumbent Doctors have become increasingly fleeting due to successive showrunners Steven Moffat and Chris Chibnall not being particularly enamored with the novel lines and not signing off on approvals on them as a result.
The audio dramas meanwhile aren't legally allowed to touch the current Doctor until after their term ends, and therefore they don't need approval from the showrunner, so nothing prevents their releases.
My point was more that sales indicate interest. Many more audio dramas being produced shows a bigger interest for them compared to the novels, which aren't completely down to the showrunner.
If Chris Chibnall was personally approving one 13 novel per year I'd be very surprised.
All Big Finish audios get approved by somebody at the BBC who in the past has stopped them from doing certain things because it's too close to something upcoming on television, I presume it's the same group who approve of the books after they've been commissioned by BBC Books or whichever organisation it falls under.
In the past few years there have been a few Classic Doctor novels here and there even if it's been primarily reprints so I doubt either Steven Moffat or Chris Chibnall were deliberately blocking potential tie-in material if it could be potentially successful which just makes me assume it's BBC Books having an issue with sales figures. Especially when at the end of the day they don't have final say on non-TV related matters which they rarely get involved in.
EDIT: There are also the Thirteenth Doctor comics, and the occasional Thirteenth Doctor novel which Chibnall clearly has no problem so it'd be weird if he was picking and choosing.
The novels just kind of continually got dropped in the number of produced per year until the Thirteenth Doctor where S11 got three novels and then it became a thing where it was just special releases.
I don't think too much of this is related to the Star Trek situation to the point I need to go too far into it though.
When I mentioned franchises saw a drop in sales with TV revivals I wasn't taking about Doctor Who (although interesting Big Finish saw a drop in sales when Doctor Who came back, not sure how long it took them to recover but they're bigger than ever now so wasn't permanent).
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The showrunners do sign off approval on the novels. I remember the reason there were no new Doctor Who novels in 2016 was because Steven Moffat, believing he'd be leaving in 2015 didn't sign off on any and by the time he had agreed to continue running the show until the end of 2017, it was too late to sign off on any novels for 2016.
The "liner notes" at the end of the Panini anthologies of DWM comics outline how extensively RTD was involved with the comics when he was showrunner and the rules he set for them to follow. Though Moffat was not as involved and eased up on RTD's rules a great deal when he took over, he still exercised his power over them on occasion, most notably he arranged for the comics to use the name he came up with for the Time Lord General from Day of the Doctor.
My last post is very disjointed to read even after like four edits, forgive me it's 2am and I shouldn't be replying to messages before sleep lol.
Of course sales figures shouldn't have anything to do with a delay so I hope everything is alright with this release, really enjoyed all of the previous Picard novels and I've always really loved Una McCormack's work (check out The Undefeated).
Maybe all Star Trek tie-ins should have their sales figures publically released so if there is ever a minor sales dip we can point and run around whilst screaming that Star Trek is dead.
Of course sales figures shouldn't have anything to do with a delay so I hope everything is alright with this release, really enjoyed all of the previous Picard novels and I've always really loved Una McCormack's work (check out The Undefeated).
Maybe all Star Trek tie-ins should have their sales figures publically released so if there is ever a minor sales dip we can point and run around whilst screaming that Star Trek is dead.
Ah fair enough I knew about the RTD thing but had never heard the Moffat story since I've never followed Doctor Who books too closely and just tend to pick them up based on author. Thanks for letting me know, I'm definitely wrong here.
Should've checked up to make sure what I thought was true actually was before posting lol.
It wouldn't be unprecedented. Bad Robot was far more invested in supporting Kelvin Star Trek comics than they were in novels.
