Has interest in Trek Lit dried up where you live?

[Ian Keldon]

I've noticed that the market for Trek Lit of all types in the city I live in has really dried up. We still get the occasional title on the supermarket book racks, but the last major new book retailer has cut way back on it's back-stocking (and may be cutting even more), and the secondary market has dried up completely. Most used book stores won't even take Trek books for store credit any more.

How is the market in your area?

 

[ScottDS]

I haven't tried to sell a book back to a used bookstore in years. The last time I tried, they wouldn't take it (it wasn't a Star Trek novel). But I always see Trek novels in used bookstores, along with some of the older reference books, like the Star Trek Encyclopedia and the TNG Companion (and it's always the one with the blue cover, too).

We're down to one Barnes & Noble and they carry about one shelf of Trek novels plus some of the oversized non-fiction books on a high shelf with the Star Wars non-fiction stuff. It irks me to see Trek ignored in favor of all the other franchises but I guess that's just the way the cookie crumbles. And that's why I have Amazon Prime.

There's a nice comic book store down here called Tate's and they carry some older Trek novels and even random issues of Starlog and curiosities like the Star Trek TNG Technical Journal. (They even have older making-of books for movies. The last time I went there, they had The Making of Congo and the old Babylon 5 making-of books!)

 

[Mage]

Well, SF in general and Trek in particulair has been growing out of favor in the Netherlands a lot in the last decade, with teenage fantasy (read Twilight and what shit) being the dominating fiction read here.

We used to have a few stores here and there who specialized in things like comics, Trek, Wars, B5 and what not, but those are basicly only comics/manga/anime now. Or completely gone.

It's sad really, but what are you going to do. Somehow Trek doesn't appeal to the newer generation, and the only way to make it more appealing is to turn into something that Trek isn't. Something that IMO Enterprise tried to do, make it more accesible to younger viewers. This kinda backfired though, because most of the younger viewers who were lured in by what they liked to see (nice girls, big 'splosions an' stuff) got tired of that pretty quick, and found what was left not interesting enough.

Some people claim that Trek should be brought to HBO, and be more like gritty, hard and explicite like GoT and such. Personally, I think that Trek will loose what it's all about.

 

[Thrawn]

I don't think it's really noteworthy that books based on TV shows that haven't been on the air for like 7 years now are losing popularity. TrekLit is either the second or third best selling tie in novel line at the moment, and both of the other runners in the top three (Doctor Who and Star Wars) still have lots of content being produced in other mediums. Trek just has the Abrams movies and Star Trek: Online, both of which combined have had two entire novels published connected to them (the novelization and The Needs Of The Many).

To me, it's much MORE interesting that we're still getting twelve large, well thought out novels every year. TWELVE A YEAR. That's almost twice as many as either Star Wars or Doctor Who. Hell, the average American doesn't read much more than that, total.

The line wouldn't be publishing that frequently if "interest had dried up".

 

[Deranged Nasat]

My local Waterstones typically has a single copy of each new title, a month or two after it's first released. Anything published before the year 2000 turns up with some regularity in second hand stores and charity shops, but when it comes to finding current Trek lit I rely on Amazon. In fact, my first experience with online buying in general came about because I left university and the nearby Forbidden Planet, and could no longer expect the monthly Trek novel soon after release. There's a FB in London, which I'm on the outskirts of, but I wouldn't feel up to a journey into the city just to get a Trek book. Whether that's a triumphant reminder that I still have a life outside fandom or a shameful display of laziness is up to you, but it's easier to use Amazon.

There's never any promotion for new Trek books, by the way. They just show up on the shelf a couple of months late, if they show up at all. How that compares to other franchises I'm not sure, since I'm rarely paying attention, but I can confirm that there's no real interest. That said, prior to university I ordered the monthly Trek books from a small bookshop on the nearest high street; they tended to fulfill an order faster than the chain stores. I wasn't the only Trek fan using them, either. So even then it seemed we hadn't the paitence for the big bookstores to start bringing them in, and looked to pre-order them from elsewhere.

EDIT: Good point from Thrawn. Monthly novels based on a TV franchise with no current series is pretty amazing. I suppose as long as we keep getting them it doesn't matter how little promotion they receive.

 

[JoeZhang]

They just need to write a Jack reacher/Star Trek crossover.

 

[BritishSeaPower]

I remember back in the day (late-90s) the B. Dalton in our mall carried almost every extant number TNG, DS9 and VOY novel and about half of the numbered TOS, so there was nearly a full unit of Trek next to a nearly full unit of Star Wars.

Now, Star Wars is an evergreen franchise. I don't think any of those books have never not been in print (Well, after Thrawn. I know Splinter of the Mind's Eye was OOP for a while.) till this day you can find books first printed in the 90s with updated timelines, baclkists and adds in them. So, when I go to my Barnes and Noble - which replaced my small B. Dalton with a huge, two-floor store just outside the mall - I'm not surprised to see 4-5 shelves of Star Wars novels, containing books that range from just out this week (Scourge!) to something nearly 20 years old, with the original cover art.

Star Trek, on the other hand, commands barely 2 shelves. In general the books on the shelf are no more than 3 years old, but more often then not are really only from within the last year. I have noticed that recently a bunch of older Titan books have popped up which were never around before. Part of this does have to do with what's in print vs. out of print, but it does seem like Trek is a "You're in or you're out" type deal. If you want to do any backlist reading, you have to look elsewhere. I don't know that's a sign of disinterest per se, but more to do with the audiences (~8 years since the last series aired, 1 movie ~3 years ago vs. an ongoing cartoon.) I do know my B&N does not stock the Abrams-verse Starfleet Academy books at all, which is curious.

Now, granted, I do know that Wars puts out 4-5 new books a year and Trek puts out 10-12, so there are turn-over concerns and the like.

I don't know that the interest is drying up, per se, but the audiences are vastly different in size, interest, etc

A second hand bookshop by me that had tons of 80s/90s Trek material recently closed, so I really only have the Kindle as a way to get into anything that's not 1.5-3 years old.

 

[Christopher]

In this day and age, the lack of Trek books on brick-and-mortar store shelves doesn't prove a lack of interest in Star Trek. It probably just proves that most ST readers buy their books online instead.

 

[Greg Cox]

For what's worth, I was at our local B&N yesterday and they had about two shelves of new and recent Trek novels, including (ahem) The Rings of Time. That seemed like a pretty good representation compared to other tie-in novels.

(There were only two copies of my WH13 book and one copy each of my Terminator and DC Comics novels, not that I was counting or anything!)

 

[Methos]

i wouldn't know about bookstores around here, as i do most of my book shopping online... lot easier and cheaper to find them on Amazon and have them delivered...

M

 

[Thrawn]

I personally have been buying all of my books on Kindle since early 09, and there are a bunch of other Kindle people on here.

Star Wars didn't release all of their back catalog on Kindle until last summer, which (it would seem to me) indicates that they didn't expect a huge portion of their audience to be going digital very quickly.

I think that Star Wars *certainly* sells more than Trek, but that the difference of emphasis in book stores is at least as much related to Trek fans tending to be online shoppers & early adopters of digital technology. I don't have numbers, but that seems right to me. (Just as an example, we have a couple long threads about ebook adoption in the recent past on this board, but there's only one thread about ebooks at all on the current theforce.net boards, and it's a tiny thread with someone asking if they're available in the UK.)

 

[Methos]

haven't moved to digital books yet... i'll admit i've been tempted, i have an android tablet so it's pretty easy to fit a lit reader for it... just not something i've actually gone for yet... think i'd miss actually holding the book in my hand lol

M

 

[Kelso]

We don't get them in supermarkets at all anymore, or at places like Walgreens. And the brick-and-mortar bookstores have whittled the Trek section down to about half a shelf.

 

[tomswift2002]

My local Coles (part of the Chapters-Indigo chain here in Canada) still had copies of the "Nightshade" reprint and several others from th past two years that take up about a shelf and a half. They don't carry the Starfleet books or the graphic novels (there are no comic book stores within 120km of where I live).

Last time that I was at Chapters in Ottawa (a big box book store) they had about two and a half shelves, plus the graphic novels in another section.

But with the Chapters-Indigo chain they have kiosks in their stores (Chapters, Indigo, Coles, Smithbooks, Book Company) where people can order right from their website and then paying in the store. I've used the kiosks quite a few times, since I've preordered quite a few Star Trek boos that way, especially for books that the brick-and-mortar stores won't carry (such as the recently release Destiny omnibus), since they also give the option of placing preorders for books being released over the next twelve months with he option to ship each book to your local store when it's released with no cost for shipping (since others are also ordering and having their books shipped to the same store).

I haven't seen a Trek novel in Zellers or Wal-Mart since about 1998. And the used bookstores tend to have mostly the TOS and TNG books from 1966 to 1992, with the books released since 1993 showing up rather infrequently and selling rather quickly.

 

[Greg Cox]

My local supermarkets almost never stock Trek books, except for a brief spurt around 2009 when the movie came out. I remember seeing a few TOS novels popping up around then.

 

[Patrick O'Brien]

In this day and age, the lack of Trek books on brick-and-mortar store shelves doesn't prove a lack of interest in Star Trek. It probably just proves that most ST readers buy their books online instead.

I agree with Chris. I think the main reason you only see one shelf of trek books at the local B&N is most fans use e-Readers. Before I got my kindle, I ordered my books from Amazon.com anyway. Come to think of it. What better why to read a ST novel than on an item based on Trek technology

 

[JD]

I haven't been to a book store in ages, but last time I was in the local B&N they only had about a shelf and a half of Trek Lit, and I don't think any of them were older than a year, and only a couple of the most recent had more than one copy. I'm an ebook reader and since I got Nook a year or two ago I've only been to a bricks and mortar store on twice with a few months of each other looking for a the Hollows graphic novel I just read. The few physical books I get now I get at the Wal-Mart where I work, and I haven't seen a Trek book there since around the time the last movie came out.

 

[Captaindemotion]

They just need to write a Jack reacher/Star Trek crossover.

I'd so read that in a heartbeat. Reacher versus a bar full of Klingons and then finding a plot that reaches to Starfleet intelligence. Are you reading, Lee Child?

In this day and age, the lack of Trek books on brick-and-mortar store shelves doesn't prove a lack of interest in Star Trek. It probably just proves that most ST readers buy their books online instead.

Probably, but there aren't as many Trek books in the second-hand (or 'used' as you Americans would say) stores that I go to as there used to be. Maybe more and more Trek readers are reading them via e-books but I don't know if that explains it either.

 

[Thrawn]

Well, no, it doesn't. It explains some of it. The fact that these are TV show tie-ins to a franchise that hasn't been on TV for 7 years, with 11 years since any of the 24th century ones have been on, explains the rest.

No one is saying that the Trek books aren't decreasing in popularity, at least a little bit. Just that it probably isn't as much as it looks.

 

[Christopher]

Probably readership by casual fans -- the sort who'd be inclined to pick up the books, read them, and then get rid of them -- has decreased, both because the shows are off the air and because so much book-buying is done online, so that fewer casual readers are just going to stumble across a Trek book and decide to pick it up. Also the greater continuity (and hopefully quality) in Trek books today may make them less "disposable" to their readers. So the people buying them now are more likely to hold onto them rather than selling/donating them to used-book stores.