Are the Voyager novels not as popular?

[Infern0]

I notice that there are many TOS, TNG and DS9 novels released fairly regularly, on top of that, major crossover events like Destiny and Typhon Pact, as well as the upcoming "The Fall" also seem to kick voyager to the curb and feature heavily if not exclusively TNG and DS9


While i'm glad to have those other series and enjoy them, I find it a little dissapointing how badly Voyager seems to be treated, there was a massive gap between Spirit Walk to the second relaunch series, which featured four novels then also ended.

In that time there were probably about 20 TNG and DS9 novels.

 

[Patrick O'Brien]

I would not say that. I have enjoyed the Voyager relaunch and feel the amount of books are on par with my interest level. You may enjoy this literarytreks interview of Kirsten Beyer:http://trek.fm/literary-treks/literary-treks-2-continuing-voyager-with-kirsten-beyer.html It goes into detail about her work on this book line.

 

[Sho]

While cynical me knows that the author name on the cover unfortunately isn't very important in tie-in fiction, I'd like to think that the recognition Ms. Beyer has been getting for the quality of her work is at least part of the reason why the line has been kept in her hands for now, at the cost of limiting its output to her capacity.

And I think waiting has its upsides. For example, there's a lot of grumbling from the 24th century fan camp about the TOS stuff dominating the first half of this year, but OTOH it builds up anticipation for picking up a Trek novel again and perhaps avoids over-saturation. If you know your audience is split to a degree, scheduling like this might actually make a lot of sense to keep readers around for years and years without wearing out their attention spans.

Edit: Also, what's this about the second relaunch series ending? AFAIK Ms. Beyer is hard at workhttp://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=147828 on another installment.

 

[Thrawn]

Yeah, there's another Voyager novel coming next year.

 

[The Wormhole]

TOS and TNG were the most popular TV shows, Voyager and Enterprise were the least popular TV shows. That simple fact might account for why we so many TOS/TNG novels compared to VGR/ENT. In fact, despite grumblings on this forum, the best selling Trek novels are TOS novels set during the five year mission, which is the main reason they seem to dominate novel line-up each year.

Also, there's aren't really that many DS9 novels published these days. Last year saw two, and they were under the Typhon Pact banner and featured the TNG cast in a supporting role. Whatever DS9 we get this year is going to be part of "The Fall."

 

[Enterpriserules]

Right now Beyer is the only one writing for Voyager and I like that we are only getting one a year. The quality does not suffer when you give one writer time to polish a story that much. Voy has been a fantastic relaunch under Beyer.

 

[rfmcdpei]

It's my understanding that the first Voyager novels line that was written by Golden would have continued but for issues at her end. Is this correct?

 

[JWolf]

It's my understanding that the first Voyager novels line that was written by Golden would have continued but for issues at her end. Is this correct?

Well, to be honest, the post Voyager books from Golden were going downhill in quality. It took Kirsten to bring them back from the edge of the abyss.

 

[Relayer1]

It's my understanding that the first Voyager novels line that was written by Golden would have continued but for issues at her end. Is this correct?

Well, to be honest, the post Voyager books from Golden were going downhill in quality. It took Kirsten to bring them back from the edge of the abyss.

I'd have said Kirsten actually had quite a bit of climbing to do...

 

[Enterpriserules]

It's my understanding that the first Voyager novels line that was written by Golden would have continued but for issues at her end. Is this correct?

Well, to be honest, the post Voyager books from Golden were going downhill in quality. It took Kirsten to bring them back from the edge of the abyss.

I'd have said Kirsten actually had quite a bit of climbing to do...

And she has made it one of the best of Trek books!

 

[Christopher]

While i'm glad to have those other series and enjoy them, I find it a little dissapointing how badly Voyager seems to be treated, there was a massive gap between Spirit Walk to the second relaunch series, which featured four novels then also ended.

As others have said, the current VGR novel line by Kirsten Beyer has not ended, and it's been quite popular.

The gap happened for a variety of reasons. Christie Golden moved on from doing Trek, and there was some reshuffling editorially. Marco Palmieri, then the senior editor of Trek/tie-in novels at Pocket, took over as editor of VGR and began developing a new direction for the series with Kirsten Beyer, and they needed some time to work out where to go with it. Then the Destiny trilogy event was developed and it was decided that the VGR novels would have to take it into account and coordinate with it, leading to a further postponement.

But the VGR novels have been going strong ever since, as much as any of the other 24th-century books in the past few yeras.

 

[Thrawn]

Right, what Christopher said.

Plus don't forget that during that gap, between Golden and Beyer, Marco realized Voyager was getting short-changed and commissioned the String Theory trilogy to try and bridge the gap a bit. Not perfect, but it wasn't like Voyager was intentionally ignored.

 

[Christopher]

^String Theory was also part of Pocket's 10th-anniversary celebration for VGR, along with Distant Shores.

 

[zarkon]

Are the Voyager novels not as popular?

Well the tv show wasn't as popular, so any books based on it are going to have a smaller fanbase to market too.

I guess pocket think that post tv, one a year is what they can get away with.

Plus they release less books then back in the day overall

 

[Scout101]

A big-budget movie featuring Kirk and the gang is coming out in a couple months, why's anyone surprised (or grumbling) that the first half of this year is TOS-heavy? They're not straight-up tie-ins based on the nuTrek vs TOS Trek, but if people are about to go spend money to see Kirk and Spock, kinda a no-brainer to put more TOS products in front of them and ride the free publicity wave...

 

[zarkon]

TOS books are best books for me anyway, character wise and setting wise.

Hopefully Devil's Bargain is better then Allegiance in Exile though

 

[Christopher]

A big-budget movie featuring Kirk and the gang is coming out in a couple months, why's anyone surprised (or grumbling) that the first half of this year is TOS-heavy? They're not straight-up tie-ins based on the nuTrek vs TOS Trek, but if people are about to go spend money to see Kirk and Spock, kinda a no-brainer to put more TOS products in front of them and ride the free publicity wave...

Actually that's kind of become the normal pattern these days. 2010 had several TOS-era novels in the first half of the year and Typhon Pact toward the end of the year. 2011 was heavy on 24th-century content in the first half and 23rd/22nd-century in the second half. 2012 devoted the first third of the year to the 23rd century and the rest of the year to the 24th. And this year we get a lot of TOS (and Rise of the Federation) in the first half or so, and The Fall in the second half.

So I don't think this is about the movie. This is just the way Pocket's schedule works these days.

 

[Relayer1]

Whatever the rationale for the release schedule (and I would love it if there were less TOS novels) we have to trust the publishers to maximise income. Without strong sales, there's no future for Treklit...

 

[JD]

^Exactly. The ratio of 24th/23rd/22nd century stories must be working out pretty well for Pocket, because it's been close to what we got this year for the last 3 or 4 at least.
I know I've been pretty happy with the output for the last few years. Sure some series might get a few more books one year, or one might not get any, but usually the next year the spread ends up more even.
Since 2009 we haven't gone more than 1 year without at least one book or story for each current series.

 

[ryan123450]

Well I don't read 5 year mission stuff, but I'm satisfied with Pocket releasing only 6 or 7 books I want to read each year from now on instead of them publishing 12 great books a year for like 2 years and then going broke.