Again, it doesn't matter. The contract they sign already contains a provision for if the book is turned into a film or episode, and they don't get royalties for it, period.
Summer nuTrek novels pulled-TrekMovie.Com
- Thread starter Darth Duck
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Again, it doesn't matter. The contract they sign already contains a provision for if the book is turned into a film or episode, and they don't get royalties for it, period.
ProtoAvatar
Fleet Captain
In my opinion, PB's decision doesn't make sense from a business point of view.
Star Trek, the movie, was a success. The books based on the movie are likely to be bought in greater numbers than those based on aging series. And yet, PB decided not to use such an opportunity.
The books might contradict later movies? Hardly relevant - past star trek books contradicted future material (and each other); and that can be said for almost any tie-in outings.
Star Trek, the movie, was a success. The books based on the movie are likely to be bought in greater numbers than those based on aging series. And yet, PB decided not to use such an opportunity.
The books might contradict later movies? Hardly relevant - past star trek books contradicted future material (and each other); and that can be said for almost any tie-in outings.
No, it doesn't.
I wrote on TrekMovie.com's comment thread that this is clearly an instance of Pocket taking the fall for someone else's decision. It may be someone at CBS Licensing. It may be someone at Bad Robot. This isn't a decision Pocket would have made. They're already out six figures on this quartet of books in time expended and monies paid to writers and copy-editors, and canceling the books won't recoup their investment.
My guess is that the people at Bad Robot changed their minds. Six months ago, they were willing to have books based on the film. Today, not so much, and they had someone at CBS pull the plug. Maybe they saw the first manuscripts and didn't like them. Maybe they didn't like Pocket's marketing plan. I don't know.
But there's no doubt in my mind that Pocket wouldn't have made this decision. There's too much money already spent, and there's a loss to the line in terms of revenue and prestige that may never be able to be recouped entirely from this cancellation.
This. A hundred times, this.
(Though I rather doubt that all four manuscripts fell afoul of the approval process, let alone so far afoul that they were deemed unfixable. My bet is some Hollywood power broker whose only knowledge of books is his Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar ballot just learned about this last week, and sounded an alarm that Jaime C. couldn't silence any other way.)
ProtoAvatar
Fleet Captain
Another problem PB has is the fact that, without these books, they have a lot of unoccupied slots for star trek books this year - and no time to plan and create replacement books. This sort of thing is highy detrimental to the star trek books line's momentum.
True. Such as some of the earlier Enterprise novels needing to be revised to avoid contradicting the show.
Maybe it's relevant now. Errors made in the past should not be the justification to continue making errors in the future.
ProtoAvatar
Fleet Captain
I wouldn't call them errors.
The only way to prevent these "errors" is not to publish any books in an on-going universe for fear of contradicting something yet to come. A self-defeating strategy.
Even more, many prefer different books to present different (imaginative) interpretations of certain concepts to a completely uniform tie-in universe (like star wars).
Sorry to quote something so far back in the thread, but I just checked and it actually has these down for July and August, so it looks like the people theorizing that we'd get more SCE/CoE omnibuses were right... maybe.
First off, JJ's approve wouldn't "make them canon" since the longstanding rule with Trek has always been that only what airs is canon.
Secondly, I still think following in the footsteps of the Star Wars licence and having the books all tied into one another is a huge mistake. For one thing, it's a burden on the work-for-hire writers who not only have to check their work against Trek canon, but also have to make sure it doesn't conflict with any other novels in the pipeline. That's a MASSIVE amount of work for very little money, and I don't think it makes for better novels. In fact, it often makes for weaker ones, because of too many cooks syndrome.
I actually hate hate hate that comics book publishing mentality carried over into the Trek licence. It may have revitalised flagging sales for a brief period in the 1990s, but I think it has done more harm than good. As a reader, I much prefer stand-alone works, or single-author series. This may be because when I started reading the novels in the 1980s, this was the norm. But I've seen with other properties how badly this works in terms of affecting both unit sales and the quality of the work itself.
(And frankly, continuing the comics example, even when I did read monthlies, I much preferred titles where I could read them and be satisfied without having to read 6 other monthly titles at the same time. For example, I adored Brubaker's Catwoman in many ways precisely because I didn't need to read all the other Batman monthly titles to get a complete story. And it meant I could completely ignore Hush if I wanted to.)
Very few new fans who are first-time readers of Trek tie-ins would pick up a new tie-in novel if they have to read 10 other novels to actually get the full story. They just aren't. And tie-in novels need to appeal not just to the small percentage of hardcore fans, but to as wide a customer base as possible.
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What you're overlooking, though, is that someone has to make that rule. And it can be changed. There are cases in other franchises of creator-overseen tie-ins being regarded as canonical by those creators -- the Del Rey Babylon 5 novels (outlined and approved by J. Michael Straczynski) and the "Season 8" Buffy the Vampire Slayer comics ("executive produced" by Joss Whedon), for instance. As a general rule, canon is that which is created under the direct guidance of the franchise's creator, regardless of its medium. It's not about film vs. print, since after all the earlier Buffy comics from the same publisher were non-canonical (since Whedon didn't directly oversee their creation).
So if Abrams' "Supreme Court" chose to oversee the creation of tie-ins that they chose to regard as canonical, nobody could prevent them from doing so, because they're the ones who are now defining what canon is. Too many fans seem to think that canon is some higher law imposed on the creators by the studio or God or something, but the studio couldn't care less about canon or consistency as long as they make a profit. Canon is what the creators say it is. More fundamentally, canon is what the creators create.
That has never been the case. The modern continuity among Trek books is a matter of authorial and editorial choice and preference, not a rigid mandate. There are still books that stand alone with no continuity references (such as Troublesome Minds) and books that directly contradict the main book continuity (such as the Crucible trilogy and the Shatnerverse). Even within the main continuity, books sometimes conflict with each other in minor details when the good of the story matters more than strict consistency (for instance, in Unworthy, Kirsten Beyer consciously chose not to worry about maintaining consistency with Places of Exile where the depiction of Species 8472 was concerned).
There has never been any attempt to imitate the approach of the Star Wars novels. After all, Star Wars is a latecomer compared to Star Trek, both in film and in prose. The SW novels' approach is far more inflexible than that of the ST novels.
It's no burden, because it's something we choose to do, not something we're forced to do. Nobody told me, for instance, that I had to keep Ex Machina consistent with other novels or use concepts from the overall continuity. I did that because I wanted to, because I appreciated what the other authors had created and wanted to acknowledge it. We're not hired drudges here. We're fans, not only of onscreen Trek but of one another's work in the novels. We coordinate our efforts because we enjoy it.
Unless a book is part of a trilogy or the like, you can always get its full story within the book itself. Any ties to other books are merely bonus links, extra material that isn't critical to the central story being told. To repeat an example I commonly use, you didn't need to see the story of Pike's battle on Rigel VII to understand "The Cage." When Marvel told that story as an issue of its Early Voyages comic, that was just a bonus, a little something extra. The full story was contained within the episode itself. So it's a fallacy to say that just because one story has connections to other stories, it means you "have to" read all the connected stories to understand what's going on.
True, but in the supremely unlikely event that the scriptwriters for the new movie decided to base their new film entirely on a tie-in novel, and made the decision not to provide a "story by" credit recognizing the author's contributions, more than likely that original novel would be re-purposed as a direct film tie-in to be published along with the movie, giving that author a bite at an even bigger apple. Nobody's going to pay another writer to write a novelization of a movie that's already based on a novel. At the very most, they'd more than likely ask the original author do re-writes to mesh more closely with the movie.
I'll agree that several creators may consider alternate sources of material "canon", but I don't for one second agree that they actually fit the criteria. If Whedon were given a chance at a big budget Buffy film, and was told by the studio the only way it would be greenlit would be if he ignored the comic series, and went in a completely different direction, he'd do it in a heartbeat. So would JMS with B5, or any other creator in that position. Ancillary products like books or comics can enter into a creator's continuity, but they're never going to be canon, simply because they don't have enough of an audience to care if they count or not. Canon can be overruled and sublimated, but it's generally not outright ignored. Tie-ins are all the time. And, honestly, that's kinda the way I think it should be.
Dude, the movie was supposed to breath new life into the franchise, not to kill it off. I guess they should stop selling GR Trek merchandise, and only sell JJ universe stuff, too?
I get that that's how it is, it's just that's where to me, the contract seems unfair. I get work for hire, etc. But to take Christopher's example, imagine an architect gets paid to build a house for a landlord, but he's promised as part of that he'll also get 1% of all the rent if the place rents for more than $1500 a month. After he's done the landlord decides to move in himself rather than renting it, so the architect gets nothing extra. Fits the wording of the contract, but is hugely unfair. But of course, most authors won't and shouldn't care as the books rarely pay significant royalties anyway, and they're unlikely to be turned in to films.
This is what I don't get. I'm sure Pocket are taking the fall for someone else, but there has to be something else at work. I don't know how this licensing works, but surely TPTB can't turn around and just change their minds after agreeing licensing conditions and being paid for that license by Pocket? Obviously if Pocket broke some of the rules or someone screwed up and they didn't follow the precise wording of the contract then that could be used as an excuse. But surely it would be horrendous business practice for Pocket to be paying writers and editors to work on projects that could just be nixed by someone else on nothing more than a whim?
Why?
That's a genuine, serious question.
Obviously the nu-Trek books were a good idea, to try and sell to people who enjoyed the new movie but weren't really in to Trek before. It's a shame they're having problems.
But this whole "we have to sell to as many people as possible to make as much money as possible" attitude is what got the economy where it is today.
Lets face it, the nu-trek books and Enterprise aside, the rest of the Trek line is based on stuff that was last seen on screen or in cinemas seven years ago. There's not a massive continual new audience discovering Trek and wanting to buy the novels any more. And the tone and style of the reboot was different enough that there's not room for much cross-marketing there.
The folks at Pocket Books know that they can pay David Mack $X to write a new Vanguard book, and that it'll cost $Y to have it edited and $Z to print. And they can look at past books in the series and see that the amount they'll make back from selling them is greater than X+Y+Z then they're in profit. It might not be a vast profit, but it's profit, not a loss. And as long as the books remain good, they can keep making that profit every year or so.
Especially in these turbulent times, there's a lot to be said for focusing on making your core audience happy and ensuring they continue to help you make profit, rather than speculating on how to attract some abstract mass market while risking losing the core audience. And using continuity to cross-sell books within the core market is a lot easier than dumping it to attract more new customers. Sure, it means us, the people that are posting on message boards like this, are being exploited for extra money. I've certainly picked up books I'd otherwise have not because of the continuity. But I've never been disappointed with or felt ripped off by such a purchase, because they're good reads.
I don't have time to read through all of the thread but I just want to register my disappointment, both for the writers personally and for myself and the other readers who were looking forward to these books. Hopefully their work won't have been in vain and we'll get to read the books, even if an amended form, after the release of the next movie.
Actually, yeah, CBS can.
Star Trek is their property. Nothing goes out with the Star Trek name on it that CBS doesn't approve of in every particular.
And there are things that have to be approved of by others as well. Some actors have likeness rights on merchandise that depicts them. Things like that.
If the approvals aren't all there, money can be spent along the way in its production, but at the end of the day it's a lost expense.
I can't see Pocket willingly making the decision, after investing in the books, to throw that investment away. This really seems to be a case of withdrawn approvals.
It's happened before.
Star Trek: The First Twenty-Five Years was printed and pulped. I think Allan Asherman's reference book on unfilmed Star Trek episodes was also printed and pulped.
The more I think about it, I can see two possibilities in which Pocket did make the decision to cancel the books, that it wasn't forced upon them:
1) Pocket discovered that it would be impossible to make money on the books, much like Marvel's discovery that they were losing money on every Star Trek comic they printed in the mid-90s. However, if that were true, then the line as a whole would most likely be in some dire financial straits, and there are really bigger issues at play than a few books.
2) Pocket discovered that their license with CBS was not all-encompassing and did not cover the film. However, as Pocket did publish a novelization of said film, I find this unlikely. On the other hand, the rights for the Art of book were sold to Titan Books, so it's possible that the merchandising rights for the film are separate from the merchandising rights for the rest of the franchise.
In other words, we're just in speculation land here. Riddles in the dark.
Count me as dissappointed. I was really looking forward to all four novels.
This has happened numerous times before: novels get approved twice: at the proposal stage and the final draft manuscript stage.
There are several examples where the tie-in proposal was approved, but the final manuscript had to be tweaked (or cancelled). Sometimes, as with novels like "Probe", "Metamorphosis" and "A Flag Full of Stars", DC Comics' TOS Series II (issue #1), and the graphic novel "Debt of Honor", big last-minute changes were ordered even though the original proposals identified that certain story elements, now objected to, would be in the manuscript.
The copyright owner is allowed to change its mind - contractually - at any point along the continuum. What sounds like a cool story months ago might prove tricky or competitive later. Or might end up an entirely different flavour to the style about to be presented canonically.
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