What's in the best interests of PocketBooks is to make money, and they've decided they have a particular best way of pursuing that. Compromising their storytelling because a specific minority group of fans is displeased is a terrible idea, because if they adopted that model they would never tell any stories.
Kestrel, you are right Pocket Books is in it to make money, that’s why the attitude that fans or even fan groups are not considered is so wrong. I don’t like this turn of the books, I have a right to not purchase the books, a right to broadcast everywhere that I am not buying the books and why.
In today’s market authors are expected to promote their books, they are expected to set up conversations and generate talk about their books however they can. They are expected to give interviews, to write blogs, encouraged to use twitter comments and yes to use message boards.
This is one of the places that authors are expected to be and so here I will be to voice my dislike. It’s called feedback and my feedback, no matter where, will be given. You may not agree or even like what I say but it’s my right and if I have a point I would be stupid not to say it wherever someone might have a feed.
The following is gleaned from a end of year issue of Publisher's Weekly:
“With bookstore sales falling the last four months of 2008, total sales for the year fell 0.5%, to $16.93 billion.”
“Bookstore sales were off 4.7% in December, an improvement over the 13.0% and 5.6% declines posted in November and October.”
“Sales for the 81 publishers that report their revenue to the Association of American Publishers fell 2.4%, to $10.6 billion, in 2008. . . The 13% decline in the adult hardcover segment was the result of a 5.3% drop in gross sales plus a steep 10.8% increase in returns.”
And for those that don’t know “returns” are the front page of a paperback book that is sent back to the publisher and deducted from the publisher’s invoice before it’s paid. The returns for 2008 for all publishers wiped out any profit that they hoped to make.
This is the reason that Janeway fans believe that Pocket Books and Margaret Clark in particular have a vendetta against them. In harsh economic times you don’t insure the sales of books by alienating any and I do mean any fans. If you don’t respect your core consumer then you are going to fail. And a good book is only a good book if it gets read.
My prediction is in the next few months Pocket Books will decide that “Trek Lit” is not making money and actually close down the line. At that point Trek literature will go back to its roots for a while and the only Trek written will be the very fan fiction that a lot of you hold up to ridicule. At some point, someone computer savvy person will see a way to make money producing trek lit in a digital form and the people on the cutting edge will again be the fic writers that are comfortable with digital publishing, have new innovations and know how to market or promote themselves in a digital era.
Today’s Trek Lit was born out of Original Series fan fiction, and because fan fiction is pretty much controlled by the various shippers (just like the original fan fiction of the 70’s). The shippers are the ones that will ultimately midwife the rebirth of Trek Lit.
And if you don’t think that this is possible, just go over to ESPAN
http://espan-rwa.com/ and see the controversy brewing there between traditionally published books and digitally published books. Guys the times are changing.
One last reason, anyone can subscribe to feeds (that is the specialized search engines that crawl over the internet looking for “key words”. It is a marketing tool, it can be set to pull words or phrases out of the millions of board, blog, etc words posted, and pick up the URL’s. So if someone has subscribed and wants to see what is being said about a book for instance, they have the key phrase “Full Circle” entered and then they know where and what is being said. Tech savvy authors have continuous searches for their own names for instance.
The fate of any type of book now is in the hands of the “fans” that know how to use the technology avalible, and what is a good story will be decided by authors and fans and not some editor setting in an ivory tower using an outdated business model.
This is the very reason I am here. It is also the reason I generate negative feedback for “Full Circle” in a lot of different forums and blogs that are not connected to Trek at all. The feeds that run through “The Trek BBS” will show a different view point. It’s a way of making sure my voice is heard.
Akraprise, I’m sorry you don’t’ care for the shippers but truly we have as much right to be here as anyone else. This Board wouldn’t be here, the first Movie wouldn’t have been made if not for the fans, and the fans were finally heard because two women, Joan Winston and Jacqueline Lichtenberg found a voice through Penguin Books and managed to put a spotlight on the fandom, getting the attention of people with the power to make movies and books. If nothing else, Jacqueline Lichtenberg is the mother of the Trek shippers and her ship was Sarak/Amanda.
She is a tech savvy individual that actually gives not only writing tips (wonderful ones) but also teaches the uses of Blogs, interviews, and technology like Twitter. She will probably know about this post because she subscribes to searches on her own name.
Akraprise, I am a mod elsewhere, I know what “powers” you have. You can delete this post. You can lock this thread, or you can sever it at some point and start a new one.
One thing I do for you is create traffic; I create feedback, not just mine but others. If everything ran smoothly, people would have no reason to come here. You may be tired of the conversation but I personally think you are better off for it and that the BBS is better off because the shippers are here. If nothing else, we’ve got to be generating extra hits on your advertisers.
Brit
