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The Star Trek Encyclopedia

dave_R_treker

Captain
Captain
Does anyone have any idea on wheather or not they are going to come out with an updated version of the Star Trek Encycopedia. It has been over 9 years since the last one came out.
 
I know this question has been answered somewhere before. As of now, it does not appear that they will be updating it. I know that the last edition is missing the last 2 seasons of Voyager, ALL of Enterprise and Nemesis. I was disappointed about this as well, but we can all hope for the future!
 
From the FAQ:

Q. Where are my nonfiction books?
A. Nonfiction sales have been abysmally down for Pocket's Star Trek books recently; their last big effort, Star Charts, apparently sold very poorly despite being the coolest book ever. There have been a few books recently-- Fall/Winter 2006 saw the release of two projects, Voyages of Imagination: The Star Trek Fiction Companion (a guide to the prose fiction) and Ships of the Line (a collection of pretty starship pictures). A couple guides are slated for 2008 as well: Captain Kirk's Guide to Women and Star Trek 101.

There has been no word on any new editions of the Encyclopedia or Chronology or an Enterprise Companion. I don't care if you and all your friends would buy them, the books won't sell well enough. (Do you seriously think Pocket would not publish them if they could make good money?)
 
Does anyone have any idea on wheather or not they are going to come out with an updated version of the Star Trek Encycopedia. It has been over 9 years since the last one came out.

Now that Wikipedia, Memory Alpha and Memory Beta can answer ST trivia questions at the touch of a mouse, too few people want to lug out a huge encyclopedia any more. And stores don't wish to stock them.

Just imagine how big the book would need to be if you had to add six more seasons plus two movies into the existing book.
 
Just imagine how big the book would need to be if you had to add six more seasons plus two movies into the existing book.

Why, it would almost be the size and weight of this laptop!

:p

Timo Saloniemi
 
Well the Star Wars Encyclopedia will be two massive volumes, and will be out early next year.
 
In the age of the 'net, all printed encyclopedias are obsolete. Why bother, when wikis such as Memory Alpha (and Beta) can be updated instantly?
 
Well the Star Wars Encyclopedia will be two massive volumes, and will be out early next year.

Star Wars is a hell of a lot more popular than Star Trek. Star Wars books sell a lot more copies than Star Trek books, if the specialist bookstore, chain store, and newspaper bestseller lists printed in Locus every month are anything to go by. There are probably enough people willing to buy a Star Wars Encyclopedia to allow the publisher to make money.

For the last few years, there haven't been enough people willing to buy a Star Trek Encyclopedia for Pocket to make any money on it. If the new Star Trek movie next year is a Star Wars-level blockbuster, and sales of Trek-related products go through the roof, things might change.
 
You can always print it off on your printer ;)

In the days of Usenet, Compuserve and GEnie, and then Newsgroups, a well-meaning friend used to print me off a fan-written "List of lists" - kind of like Memory Alpha without the interactivity.

And then a month later, four more TNG eps had aired, and new novels and comics were out, and he's print me the phonebook sized list again... I rarely got time to read through it before the next one turned up. He killed a whole forest trying to be helpful.
 
Everyone does not have access to high speed Internet all of the time, and in all places. Sometimes it is easier to open up a paper book and look for what you want.
 
Call me old-fashioned,but I prefer the heft of good old hardcopy.

Me as well.

I don't care if all that info is on the interweb. The web is much too transient for my tastes. I want it written down and printed on paper.
You can always print it off on your printer ;)

Or...I'm just spitballing here, but what if there were stores where you could buy printed material already bound into a sort of book type of thing? I think I'd call them "bookstores" or something like that. But, anyway, you could go into one of these places and various companies (let's call them publishers) would have already compiled interesting stories or other material into individualy bound volumes which one could purchase.

Just a thought.
 
Everyone does not have access to high speed Internet all of the time, and in all places. Sometimes it is easier to open up a paper book and look for what you want.

Of course. But book publishing relies on supply and demand to make profits. Shops only want to stock ST books that will sell well, especially big, chunky, expensive books that take up lots of space. There's not enough demand for an updated licensed ST encyclopedia in hardcopy, so there is no current supply. Even smaller publishers have declined to release many unlicensed ST fact books in recent years.

If ST XI is a huge success, there may be renewed demand for an encyclopedia, but those some of us with high speed Internet will also want a hardcopy version. Even that product will go out of date as soon as ST XII is made. Then the complaints will start again.
 
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