Personally when I buy a tie-in novel, I want something that ideally 1) makes me feel like I'm watching the show, and 2) is well written. If I can't get #2, I'll settle for just #1, and I'm more likely to get that when it's set during a show.
2022 book releases
- Thread starter Enterprise1701
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Unfortunately, you underestimate how many of us dedicated fans exist, and in turn how much money we can offer. I do not like to admit it, but consider. How much publicity do you suppose any post-*Enterprise* pre-*Discovery* novel received compared to a naturally big marketing push for the likes of Desperate Hours or The Last Best Hope which ran concurrently with a bombastic premiere on the small screen? Because:
For example, the entire point of Star Wars to Disney is to make people who do not care, care about buying merchandise made famous by the big films.
I guess there are two schools of thought there. Some people prefer tie-ins to replicate the experience of the show, while others want them to go places the show can't, to take advantage of the medium to offer a different experience while still being true to the characters and the world. The optimal approach, then, is to do both kinds of tie-in.
I'm sure you do.
I mean, I like it when the books go new places... provided it's good. But if it's mediocre and doesn't feel like the show, then I might as well chance a piece of original fiction.
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There’s this implicit assumption that the novelverse is deeply bold and experimental in a way that standalone within-the-series stories couldn’t be, and I don’t think that holds up under any real scrutiny. All the novelverse really does is extend the serialized political storytelling of DS9 (and of much 21st century science fiction) to the entire 24th century Trek universe. You don’t need the ability to permanently change the lives of the main cast or alter the political makeup of the Federation to tell a thoughtful and rewarding science fiction story in novel form within the Star Trek universe; in fact, that kind of thing can get in the way of real depth by providing an artificial sense of significance. Fans have a lot invested in the narrative furniture of a series, so moving it around or getting rid of some of it can feel weightier than it is, especially when the idea that tie-ins don’t do that is so deeply engrained that it doesn’t matter if the novels have been doing it for 20 years now.
Of course, it’s an open question whether, given the available pool of tie-in writers, you would get equally bold results from a more standalone approach. I think the novelverse format certainly plays to the strengths of the people who are currently writing Trek novels, and I’m not sure that there are too many writers out there who could really maximize the potential of within-the-series novels.
Of course, it’s an open question whether, given the available pool of tie-in writers, you would get equally bold results from a more standalone approach. I think the novelverse format certainly plays to the strengths of the people who are currently writing Trek novels, and I’m not sure that there are too many writers out there who could really maximize the potential of within-the-series novels.
I am not sure I am underestimating the amount of fans out there, I also understand Greg's point because that is how tie-in fiction has worked for the most part.
I think the issue for me is I always liked stories in tie-in fiction that felt like they mattered to the story. It is why I loved the Litverse and the Legends books for SW. Now, the books that happen "in continuity" with their respected universes, they can feel important and change the way you feel about characters, episodes and the like, or they can just feel like a story, told to make money, but if you never read it, you wouldn't feel like you missed anything. I like the stories to feel like they have some weight for the characters or ones that change my perspective on episodes or films in a neat way.
The best authors in tie-in fiction make these things happen. My main argument here is that I can't see them putting out more that say, 6-7 books a year. At least one for each of the shows currently on, DISCO, Picard and SNW, a TOS novel and maybe one set in the TNG series.
I could be completely wrong, but from my time interviewing the authors and following Trek books, it just feels like what they will do.
I think the issue for me is I always liked stories in tie-in fiction that felt like they mattered to the story. It is why I loved the Litverse and the Legends books for SW. Now, the books that happen "in continuity" with their respected universes, they can feel important and change the way you feel about characters, episodes and the like, or they can just feel like a story, told to make money, but if you never read it, you wouldn't feel like you missed anything. I like the stories to feel like they have some weight for the characters or ones that change my perspective on episodes or films in a neat way.
The best authors in tie-in fiction make these things happen. My main argument here is that I can't see them putting out more that say, 6-7 books a year. At least one for each of the shows currently on, DISCO, Picard and SNW, a TOS novel and maybe one set in the TNG series.
I could be completely wrong, but from my time interviewing the authors and following Trek books, it just feels like what they will do.
We've only been getting a maximum of eight books a year since 2019 anyway, but that has more to do with the change to trade paperback for all releases and the associated rise in price than it does the Litverse ending or a desire not to "overmine" things.
Like I said, this is just my thoughts on this
So, not sure where to post this really (here or make a separate thread?) but as it concerns the publisher of future books:
U.S. Government Files Antitrust Suit to Block ViacomCBS’ Sale of Simon & Schuster
The government alleges that the $2 billion deal would give buyer "Penguin Random House outsized influence over who and what is published."
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/b...-viacomcbs-sale-of-simon-schuster-1235040630/
EDIT:
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/just...dom-house-s-acquisition-rival-publisher-simon
U.S. Government Files Antitrust Suit to Block ViacomCBS’ Sale of Simon & Schuster
The government alleges that the $2 billion deal would give buyer "Penguin Random House outsized influence over who and what is published."
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/b...-viacomcbs-sale-of-simon-schuster-1235040630/
EDIT:
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/just...dom-house-s-acquisition-rival-publisher-simon
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I wonder what this lawsuit against Simon&Schuster and Penguin books will do to the line of Star Trek books and the authors plans for future star trek books?
^^That's my interpretation, yes.
Rather, it looks to me like the Justice Department's antitrust suit is against Random House, an attempt to stop it from acquiring S&S from ViacomCBS. The Justice Department is concerned that one of the few remaining major publishers acquiring one of its main competitors would reduce competition and lead to less content and lower-paid authors. So they're concerned that the books that get published (all of them, not just Trek, which is a very tiny piece of the pie) could be affected if the sale went through. If they successfully prevent the sale, though, then S&S stays where it is and nothing changes.
I enjoy the novelverse and stand alone books, I just want a good story set in the Star Trek Universe.
I think it really depends on the individual work. As has been said by people more eloquent than I, this was the way that the tie-in novel have worked for a very long time.
Personally, what little I have read of the relaunch era was no more hit-or-miss than many books from the bottle episode era.
I've long belonged to the latter. As I'm a TOS generation fan, I read any novels imagining them as the lost movies, stories we'd have gotten if they'd had the budget. It's only in recent years that there have been books that I appreciated simply as exemplary episodes.
If it's a good story, of course I'm interested.
As I mentioned in the Shadows Have Offended thread, I enjoyed the trip back in time to 2370 but was pretty ambivalent over the lack of references to the rest of the novel-verse that have been peppered throughout most of the stories, including the ones that take place in between the episodes, over the last two decades (of course, most of the stories that I've read in the last two decades that took place between the episodes were TOS and the immediate pre-Romulan War Enterprise stuff (so The Good That Men Do on) and they had occasional references to stuff either established by other books; so far, all of the Discovery novels have been fairly consistent with the rest of the Litverse by trying to make what they show of the 2250s fit in with everything that's come before it in real time (pre-2017-2021), both on screen and on the page) - it was a bit of a change of pace, not necessarily good or bad, but if future novels continue down this path of ignoring everything but what's been shown on screen, it's going to take quite a bit of adjusting.
That was pretty much the norm for Trek tie-ins prior to 2000.
