2019 Releases
- Thread starter Jarrod
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All new print Star Trek novels will be in the trade paperback format. They have officially discontinued the mass market format for new titles going forward.
MMPBs are not "standard" anymore. They're pretty much a dying format, it seems, since eBooks have pretty much replaced them in the market and brick-and-mortar bookstores get more profit from trade paperbacks.
And the TPBs are not "overly expensive" for TPBs -- they're about normal. It's just that Trek MMPBs somehow managed to avoid a price increase for over a dozen years. If their prices had gone up at the same pace they had in the previous dozen or so years, they'd probably be around 12 bucks by now anyway.
I'm not saying TPB are too expensive for TPB I'm saying they are expensive for PB of any kind. It's just that TPB do not fit well in the bookcase along side the MMPB.
No, they're typically priced for paperbacks of their size. As I just said, the price of MMPBs has been oddly immune to inflation for a startlingly long time, so their low price was an outlier, not a benchmark.
The bookstores themselves have changed — they're no longer tiny things in malls that need to conserve room. There's also room in the trade paperback pricing for discounting, which you almost never see with MMPBs because the profit margin on them is minuscule.
About the shelf size, I do sympathize. My life as a comics and book collector is one long hunt for the right shelving units.
About the shelf size, I do sympathize. My life as a comics and book collector is one long hunt for the right shelving units.
Yeah, I'm a bit OCD about my books as well. I have a definite organization to all my Star Trek novels (really the only novels I collect en masse). I guess since I have hundreds of Star Trek novels it's almost required to have them organized or I'd never find anything. But they were all nice and neat and now I have big ole trades (the Discovery novels were there own series and were always trades so that didn't bother me).
BUT, that being said, since all future Star Trek novels will be trades and not a mix it will even out as time goes on. It'd be worse if they released some trades, some MMPB and be all mixed together. At least the trades will start and continue so it won't look so bad on my shelf over time.
Question: I assume that means the next Voyager novel "To Lose the Earth" will be a trade paperback as well then? It was commissioned before the stoppage in books but I wasn't sure is how it is released have anything to do with the contract. I honestly don't know how writers contracts for books work---would a contract say it will be a MMPB (or a trade)?
Most books are released in multiple formats anyway -- print books get released as e-books and audiobooks too, hardcovers get re-released in paperback, etc. So there's no reason for a contract to limit that. It only specifies what royalties you get for whichever formats it might get released in. And royalties from every release format all go into paying off the advance, so it doesn't matter much (except that we get a larger royalty per copy from trades, because the price per copy is higher).
Yeah, that's what I was wondering about. I didn't know if your agreements specified what formats it would be released in or if that was just a publishers decision. In the absence of some agreement saying it would be a MMPB it's probably safe to assume To Lose the Earth will be a trade then.
I wonder if there are any consequences for Beyer's book being released so many years after the initial announcement? I mean, I assume she has to wait for at least part of her fee until the book is released but can the publisher decide to deduct any money when a book is late (I mean, I suppose in her case there are extenuating circumstances since she is heavily involved with the shows which are franchise related, she's not late just because she didn't get around to it).
Not released, just delivered and approved. There are some cases where the final portion of an author's advance isn't delivered until publication (it was like that for me with Only Superhuman, for instance), but with Star Trek, the advance is delivered in three segments: on signing the contract, on outline approval by CBS, and on manuscript approval by CBS. For instance, I got paid in full for delivering my Kelvin novel back in 2009 even though it was never published.
I believe there is a contractual penalty for failure to deliver on time, but in a case where you let the publisher know in advance that you need to delay, at least if it's for a good reason, then the deadline can be adjusted accordingly with no penalty.
Well, that would make sense in Beyer's case. Esp. considering the reason for the delay is likely all the other work she is doing, and I'm sure it helps that it's the same franchise she's working within. I'd imagine that would be a good enough reason in her case
I am glad her book will finally get released. I was starting to wonder if it would quietly just disappear. Though since it's been a while since her last Voyager book I'll probably have to refresh my memory on where we are at in the Voyager universe, esp. considering it's a few years behind the other relaunches as of the last novel. Though everyone that writes in the relaunch universe usually does a pretty good job catching us up to speed on where everything is at within the story and I'm sure Beyer will do the same with "To Lose the Earth" so we're all on the, er, same page
More about book contracts: back in the day, decades ago, when hardcover publishers and paperback publishers were more likely to be separate entities, a hardcover publisher might buy all rights, but then sell the mass-market paperback rights to another publisher, splitting the money with the author, but nowadays most publishers publish in whatever formats they like. And, as Christopher said, the contract simply spells out the royalty rates for different formats; it doesn't specify what formats have to be used.
Just because a publisher buys the rights to all formats doesn't mean they're obliged to use them. You're not contractually obliged to put out a hardcover or a mass-market edition just because you have the right to do so. And, most of the time, these decisions are not made by the author or the editor, but by the sales and marketing departments.
"We had a meeting and we decided to put out the book as trade paperback instead of a hardcover because we think that will sell better." Or: "We cancelled the mm edition for Book Three, because the mm editions of Books One and Two didn't sell." That kinda thing.
Just because a publisher buys the rights to all formats doesn't mean they're obliged to use them. You're not contractually obliged to put out a hardcover or a mass-market edition just because you have the right to do so. And, most of the time, these decisions are not made by the author or the editor, but by the sales and marketing departments.
"We had a meeting and we decided to put out the book as trade paperback instead of a hardcover because we think that will sell better." Or: "We cancelled the mm edition for Book Three, because the mm editions of Books One and Two didn't sell." That kinda thing.
Reminds me of how David Mack's first Dark Arts book was simultaneously released in TPB and hardcover. I splurged, silly me, so now my copy of the second book, which didn't have a hardcover version, doesn't match.
I don't know if that applies in this case, but in some cases, a simultaneous hardcover is mostly done with an eye toward library sales . . . . .
That was exactly what happened. Tor produced 2000 copies of The Midnight Front in hardcover (as a "digital short run," working from the TPB layouts), mostly for library sales and a special promotion with PageHabit. I tried to order some hardcover copies for myself the week of release and was told they all were gone.
I thought that Tor would print more hardcovers, since there obviously had been a demand, but they decided not to. And then, for reasons that continue to baffle me, they opted not to do this for The Iron Codex, and unless something goes miraculously my way very soon, they will deny me hardcovers on book three, The Shadow Commission, when it comes out next June.
Of course, if a hardcover isn't Smyth-sewn or side-sewn, it's not really much of an improvement over a TPB or even a MMPB. For my own part, I regret having bothered with the additional expense for the HC edition of ADF's new expanded Mad Amos anthology. (It was also full of typos, but that presumably also affected the TBP edition, and maybe even the e-book; the proofreader should be taken out and maimed.)
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