Last chance for Books...

[Steve Roby]

The only TREK books that should be coming out are those that are based on the new timeline created by this movie. If they were to come out and make the clear, I would buy TREK books again and I think many others would too. You could put out a book a month, and I would buy them IF I thought they mattered.

"IF I thought they mattered." That's the key point. This is just another "who cares about the books if they aren't canon?" thread with a different style of provocation. Remember that statement from one of Abrams's Supreme Court guys?

As you know I considered some of the books, in my mind, to be of character canon. And some of them in between the movies to possibly be even possible candidates for canon, until some other movie comes along and makes those impossible.

Let's unpack that. Some books could be canon until other movies overwrite them and decanonize them. In other words, they wouldn't actually be canon, because if they were, other movies couldn't make them impossible, to use Orci's terms.

We have the Star Trek: Countdown comic as a test case, and Orci says "I am not going to declare whether comics are canon." That's something specifically created as a lead-in to the movie plotted by the movie's writers, and even its canon status is unclear at best. The idea that Pocket could do a series of monthly novels to be treated as canon is absurd.

It's not impossible that Pocket could start a line of movie continuity novels, find that they dramatically outsell the other books, and make a financial decision to use their resources on the books that sell best, dropping the other series. The end of the Doctor Who Eighth Doctor Adventures and Past Doctor Adventures is an obvious precedent. But they almost certainly would not be canon, so for the likes of RobertScorpio, they probably wouldn't "matter."

 

[RobertScorpio]

I don't get this at all. You apparently don't like the current crop of books, Robert...so that means nobody does? I guess Pocket keeps producing them out of simple charity or something?

Assuming the movie is successful, there will of course be books based on the new timeline, and so soon, you'll have your pick. But if other people want something else and are willing to pay for it, why should they have to settle for what you want? If there are still good books to be written based on the older shows (and of course there are - there's a whole damn galaxy to choose from for plots), they should be written.

If, as you seem to be implying, there's no market for books on TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT...well, the books just won't sell. It's as simple as that. But there is, you know. That's why the books keep appearing - because people buy them.

I guess its just my imagination that the TREK book shelf at my local Barnes/Noble is comprised of TWO shelves when it used to be five...long book shelves. Just two dumpy ones now. And they only carry the recent books. Must be those astromomical book sales...yeah..right.

They have made the golden-goose into a golden duck in the same way 600+ hours of TV episodes did the same thing to the TV side of the house. Its called a glut. I wonder which book series sells more between Star wars and Star Trek? I don't have to wonder. Star Wars has four shelves, and is in a prime location. Star Trek is in the back two rows. Not a prime spot at all...its the same reason they put the heavy selling slot machines in high traffic areas...trek books are where they are, hidden, because, til recently, they don't sell as much. Not that they are bad books, I am sure they are wonderful.

I could once go to the supermarkets and find TREK books there too...not any more...

Proof is in the pudding and right now, trek booksales, according to my local Barnes/Noble manager, are on lifesupport...he's right.

Rob

 

[Dayton Ward]

^ So the inverse of this is that it must be my imagination when I get a new contract and an advance in the mail, or a royalty statement with a check attached?

Somebody's buying these things, and they're doing so in sufficient quantity that Pocket is able to keep scheduling new books at least as far out as 18 months from now. Are things as good as they could be? There's always room for improvement, and there's always a desire to find ways to attract new readers. Jettisoning everything -- including the stuff that works and sells -- in favor of a few books based on one movie that has yet to earn the first dollar at the box office seems to me a bit extreme. YMMV.

Relax. Breathe regular.

 

[Christopher]

I guess its just my imagination that the TREK book shelf at my local Barnes/Noble is comprised of TWO shelves when it used to be five...long book shelves. Just two dumpy ones now. And they only carry the recent books. Must be those astromomical book sales...yeah..right.

Back in the early '80s, there weren't enough Star Trek novels in existence to fill two bookstore shelves. Only six books came out per year, at most. But the line was successful and healthy. The ST novel franchise is one of the largest, most successful media tie-in franchises in existence, rivalled only by Star Wars and Doctor Who, as far as I know. It's a long, long way from fading into nothingness.

And bookstores such as B&N generally only carry recent books anyway -- not just Trek, but everything. Look at the general SF shelf and you'll see mostly new and recent books, even from authors who have been in the business for decades and have extremely long backlists. So the absence of less recent books says nothing specifically about the Trek novel line. It's just what bookstores tend to do.

Proof is in the pudding and right now, trek booksales, according to my local Barnes/Noble manager, are on lifesupport...he's right.

Have you, by any chance, looked at a newspaper in the past six months? The economy of the whole planet is in a severe downturn. It's ridiculous to assume that any one particular product or service is doomed just because its sales decline at a time when virtually everything's sales are declining. As with the bookshelf thing, you're mistaking a universal trend for one specific to Trek fiction.

Besides, it's always a mistake to assume that a current trend will continue indefinitely. Trends follow curves. They have their ups and downs. When people are foolish enough to assume that an upward trend will continue forever, you get the kind of reckless behavior that caused the economic crisis in the first place. And it's just as unwise to assume that a downward trend has to continue to the point of destruction. You have to learn to look at the big picture and not assume that what's immediately in front of you defines all of reality.

 

[JD]

Not to mention the fact that there are a lot (hundreds?) of people posting on this board, with new people coming in on a fairly regular basis.

 

[Snaploud]

Talk about jumping the gun...

The movie might be incredibly popular. It might be a flop.

It also might be popular in the theatres but a terrible seller on the bookshelves (at least, in the long-run).

 

[Garrovick]

No way should there be an end to any book line that still sells at the level Pocket Books wants to see.

And if the TNG books end, even though I don't rise to the level of a real author, I'm pretty good at creating sketchy two or three page adventures of my own.

 

[JustKate]

I guess its just my imagination that the TREK book shelf at my local Barnes/Noble is comprised of TWO shelves when it used to be five...long book shelves. Just two dumpy ones now. And they only carry the recent books. Must be those astromomical book sales...yeah..right.

They have made the golden-goose into a golden duck in the same way 600+ hours of TV episodes did the same thing to the TV side of the house. Its called a glut. I wonder which book series sells more between Star wars and Star Trek? I don't have to wonder. Star Wars has four shelves, and is in a prime location. Star Trek is in the back two rows. Not a prime spot at all...its the same reason they put the heavy selling slot machines in high traffic areas...trek books are where they are, hidden, because, til recently, they don't sell as much. Not that they are bad books, I am sure they are wonderful.

I could once go to the supermarkets and find TREK books there too...not any more...

Proof is in the pudding and right now, trek booksales, according to my local Barnes/Noble manager, are on lifesupport...he's right.

Rob

No, it's not your imagination, Robert - I'm not doubting your vision, just your inference.

Star Wars may be more popular, but that doesn't mean Star Trek is unpopular. One doesn't necessarily follow the other.

And anyway...do you really think most scifi fans buy their books at book stores? I do a lot of my book shopping online. A lot. Not just scifi, either.

You can still find Trek novels at airport bookstores, I can tell you that. That's where I buy most of the Trek novels that I read (those that I don't buy online).

 

[Mike Farley]

I guess its just my imagination that the TREK book shelf at my local Barnes/Noble is comprised of TWO shelves when it used to be five...long book shelves. Just two dumpy ones now. And they only carry the recent books. Must be those astromomical book sales...yeah..right.

Well, cutting back on the variety of Trek books isn't going to do much to reclaim shelf space.

They have made the golden-goose into a golden duck in the same way 600+ hours of TV episodes did the same thing to the TV side of the house. Its called a glut.

For that past several years there has been ONE mass market paperback novel a month. How is that a glut?

I wonder which book series sells more between Star wars and Star Trek? I don't have to wonder. Star Wars has four shelves, and is in a prime location. Star Trek is in the back two rows. Not a prime spot at all...its the same reason they put the heavy selling slot machines in high traffic areas...trek books are where they are, hidden, because, til recently, they don't sell as much. Not that they are bad books, I am sure they are wonderful.

Star Wars books sell more. Star Wars has pretty much always had a bigger fanbase. Pocket books doesn't care how many Star Wars books get sold, only how many Star TREK books get sold. It's not a competition on shelf space or best seller list position.

And in every book store I have ever been in the Star Trek books and Star Wars books are shelved right beside each other. Right next to the 876 shelves of D&D books.

I could once go to the supermarkets and find TREK books there too...not any more...

My local supermarket gets most of the new Star Trek books, but no Star Wars books.

Proof is in the pudding and right now, trek booksales, according to my local Barnes/Noble manager, are on lifesupport...he's right.

All the brick&mortar books stores are struggling with sales. They're being out competed by online sellers like Amazon. And just because Treks books aren't selling well at your local B&N doesn't mean they aren't selling at OTHER stores.

 

[JWolf]

Not only is this movie the last chance for STAR TREK to really evolve, I think its also the last time for the books. I'm going to be blunt; they need to stop with all the star trek books that take place outside of the new movie series...no more TNG-DS9-VOY books...no more New Frontiers and starfleet corps or whatever...and no more Shatner books too...

The only TREK books that should be coming out are those that are based on the new timeline created by this movie. If they were to come out and make the clear, I would buy TREK books again and I think many others would too. You could put out a book a month, and I would buy them IF I thought they mattered. Thats what I would demand if I were JJABRAMS. There's nothing like quitting cold turkey, and its time to cut off the tap.

One book a month, yeah like comic books do it, would be great. You could rotate the issues among the great stable of TREk writers..but they would have to 'mention', in passing, the events in the prior books so it feels as if this is a new line and it all matters....

Thats what they should do...no..thats what they must do if they want to save the TREK book world...IMO...

Rob

You are supposed to take your pills everyday. See what happens when you miss a day.

 

[Deano2099]

The OP has a point. It would have been a perfectly valid and understandable business decision for Pocket to decide, around a year ago, to go this route, cancel the current lines and just start commissioning books based on the new film, to have them ready for one a month from when the film comes out.

But that would annoy the hell out of a lot of regular readers, they'd likely stop buying the books that are coming now and might be annoyed enough not to buy the new ones.

Still, if the new film was a massive hit that wouldn't be an issue would it? But that's one hell of an 'if'. If the new film is a flop you've lost all the old readers and gained no new ones. If the film is just moderately successful you've lost all the old readers and gained around the same number of new ones, but they're likely to be less dedicated fans of the books, and their interest is more likely to wane as the next-big-thing comes along.

If the film's a massive hit you're laughing. But that's one hell of a risk to take, especially in the current economy, and when you already have a profitable enterprise.

 

[Dayton Ward]

You are supposed to take your pills everyday. See what happens when you miss a day.

Now, now. No need to be nasty.

The idea of creating new stories growing out of the continuity for the new movie is a good one, and I can't imagine Pocket not doing that. Still, books for the existing continuity are still popular, and if they were going to be cancelled or retooled substantially in favor of "nuTrek" projects, we'd have heard that by now. Same with IDW, I think.

Just me speculating.

 

[Christopher]

The OP has a point. It would have been a perfectly valid and understandable business decision for Pocket to decide, around a year ago, to go this route, cancel the current lines and just start commissioning books based on the new film, to have them ready for one a month from when the film comes out.

Why do you think that would've been a valid business decision? Trek literature has a very broad audience base because it encompasses so many series. Some are fans of TOS, some are fans of TNG, some of DS9, some of VGR, some of NF, some of TTN, some of CoE, etc. Sure, there's plenty of overlap, but there are lots of people who are fans of the books and have little or no interest in Captain Kirk and his crew, regardless of what continuity they're in. So I don't see the business logic in cutting off a whole diverse audience base in favor of starting over from scratch with a single narrow one. It would be like saying that, if a new Superman movie were coming out, it would be a valid business decision for DC to cancel Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, and all its other series and only publish Superman comics based on the movie.

True, it is hoped that the audience for ST09 will be the largest audience ST has had for a long time. So even the 1-2% of them who are interested in buying books might rival the quantity of existing buyers for ST fiction. But it still doesn't make sense to dump one audience in favor of another when you can just as easily appeal to both audiences. It's not a zero-sum game. True, some slots in the schedule would have to be given up by existing series to make room for ST09 books, and those authors assigned to write ST09 books might have to write fewer novels in other series, but there are plenty of authors.

Also, there's the question of the relative amount of material. The ST09 continuity is brand new. There's not much to base new fiction on yet. It would be hard to come up with as large a quantity of worthwhile stories as you can get building on the vast existing continuity. So while it's certainly worth adding ST09 books to the mix, I can't see the sense in expecting them to replace everything else.

And then, of course, there would've been the logistical difficulty of writing books based on a film that hadn't been completed yet. Not to mention how protective studios are of their screenplays these days -- the security arrangements around the film's story would've been an obstacle to getting authors started on tie-in novels a year ago. And as novels like TNG: Ghost Ship have shown, a tie-in written well before the author can see the thing it ties into can be fairly inaccurate.

 

[JustKate]

I agree, Christopher - if Pocket can produce books for all the various fanbases, as it's been doing for a while now, why give up all the existing/overlapping fanbases for the new one? If publishers didn't give up TOS and the original cast for TNG, and then give up TNG for DS9 and VOY, and then give up everybody for ENT...well, why do so now, if they can still make money and sell books? If the new movie is a huge hit and brings in zillions of new fans, great. There will be books. I'm pretty sure there'll still be enough fans of the older series to justify at least some books, though. I want everybody to be happy, and I suspect Pocket does as well.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Star Wars books sell more. Star Wars has pretty much always had a bigger fanbase. Pocket books doesn't care how many Star Wars books get sold, only how many Star TREK books get sold. It's not a competition on shelf space or best seller list position.

I seem to recall an old "Starlog" interview where George Lucas had noticed that, after "Splinter of the Mind's Eye", one Han trilogy and one Lando trilogy, "Star Wars" had essentially permitted "Star Trek" novels almost a decade of original fiction tie-in SF sales with little competition.

 

[Marie1]

I could once go to the supermarkets and find TREK books there too...not any more...

My local supermarket gets most of the new Star Trek books, but no Star Wars books.

That's where I found my first DS9PF book! A grocery store!!!
I was walking along and... I had to back up because I thought... "Did I just see a Jem'Hadar?"

And it was!!

And then I had Avatar 1 & 2... so if Pocket decides to ditch everything but the ST11 thingy... that's just silly.

 

[JWolf]

You are supposed to take your pills everyday. See what happens when you miss a day.

Now, now. No need to be nasty.

The idea of creating new stories growing out of the continuity for the new movie is a good one, and I can't imagine Pocket not doing that. Still, books for the existing continuity are still popular, and if they were going to be cancelled or retooled substantially in favor of "nuTrek" projects, we'd have heard that by now. Same with IDW, I think.

Just me speculating.

It wasn't meant to be nasty. But it did sound like a silly idea to just all of a sudden wnd all Trek books except ones that fall into a different continuity. I do think it would be rather a bad idea not to have books based on the movie's continuity. I am looking forward to the new movie. But I really do not want it to take over everything and erase what we already have.

 

[D Man]

Trek has been off the air for nearly 4 years, and it's been over six years since Nemesis...yet the novel lines are still going strong. These books have had no problem surviving in a climate where there isn't a visible Trek presence on-screen anywhere. I really wonder why it should be necessary to cancel all the engaging, well-written, and clearly profitable current on-going story lines because a movie that we haven't seen yet happens to be coming out soon.

 

[Newspaper Taxi]

People, people. Let's take a look at the Rules of Aquisition for this one:

RULE 9: Opportunity plus instinct equals profit.

A new movie with a new timeline? Opportunity says make a book series out of it! Old fans still like books of old series? Opportunity says keep selling the old books and with a bit of luck the old buyers will buy the new ones as well!

RULE 45: Expand or die.

Failure to make books about the new movie's timeline could be a financial disaster.

RULE 57: Good customers are as rare as latinum. Treasure them.

This goes back to the idea if old customers still like the old series, keep making and selling them. At this point they've earned the right to buy more products from you.

RULE 239: Never be afraid to mislabel a product.

Pocket can put the images of the new character actors on books about the old timeline!

 

[Adam Holmberg]

God and posters of this board forgive me for justifying this pap with an actual response.

In my non-expert opinion - as a Trek fan since 1991 - that the number one reason interest in Trek fiction may have "bottomed out" is simply...the massive numbers of people who read Trek fiction are no longer interested in Star Trek. When Trek fiction peaked (that time during the early 90s when a Trek book was purchased around the world something like every 30 seconds), Star Trek: The Next Generation was on television, with new episodes being syndicated to such audiences that - if it had been a network show - it would have been in the top ten Nielsen ratings every week. That's what drove viewers to Trek novels - which, as Christopher pointed out - already did excellent sales for Pocket and Paramount.

But, when TNG was king of the world, no one was crying for Paramount to stop making TOS books. Indeed, I think TNG brought a whole new generation to TOS (I know because I was one of them). Using your business model, Gene Roddenberry should have demanded the TOS novel line be cancelled in favor of TNG only. I also point out that your logic doesn't exactly apply to actual programs either - the new Mission: Impossible films were the fuel that finally brought the original Desilu series to DVD. Should Paramount have ignored that and made a new show in the new continuity instead? I think not.

When New Frontier debuted, it made bucketloads of money. I think, actually, New Frontier filled a disappointed a lot of Trek fans had in Voyager because it took audiences to a place that was a real new frontier in the Trek world. Stargazer, Vanguard, and Titan followed because they were successful. If you think otherwise...I will paraphrase something my boss (a Home Depot store manager) said at a recent meeting - A business entity only exists a long as it is making money for its owner.

As others have pointed out - a company (especially a publisher, which has been hurting bad enough to lay off longtime employees whose work has made them money) would not be planning 18 months of books for a line that isn't making them money. Just doesn't happen.

So, why are your Trek shelves shrinking? Because...quite frankly...the interest doesn't remain in Star Trek. Star Wars dominates because it's more fantasy than science fiction - and if one looks at the Twilight/Harry Potter/Star Wars trend, we're in a fantasy time, rather than a science fiction one. Fantasy films are doing much better overall than science fiction right now. Is Star Trek dead? Not at all...Paramount is not sinking hundreds of millions of dollars to reinvigorate a franchise if they think it's going to be DOA.

Put simply...people are not buying Star Trek books, because many of the people who did buy them were turned off by Voyager, Enterprise, and (I'm sorry to say...because I think it's the best Trek) DS9. When a franchise loses audience share...everything - including the licensing suffers. I think reduced interest in filmed Trek + bad economy = lower sales.

Yet, in an interesting twist...the books are still being produced. There are no Mission: Impossible books being produced. No Man From UNCLE. No Space: 1999. No original Battlestar Galactica (no new BSG either for that matter). Most other franchises don't keep producing books five years after the last show goes off the air. Yet, this one does. In a horrible economy - a recession - no less.

I do also have to ask...what B&N do you shop? I've been in five in the last four months...and all of them still have their Star Trek books - yes on reduced shelves - right next to Star Wars, where they've always been. In fact, the one I was in Springfield, IL three weeks ago had three shelves. Also, I've noticed that while Star Wars is still strong...it also has lost a shelf or two here or there.

And, a final word...as someone who's spent nine years in retail - I've worked for great store managers. I've worked for lousy ones. But, most of the time...they know just as much as we do (us lowly employees) about why this or that product is shrinking. I'm not saying your friend is wrong...but I'm also saying...one store manager does not a franchise make.