This sounds like the beginning of an excellent practical joke. Just walk into this room, Mr. Cox. Your new editor is in there.
Aw, crud! Margaret Clark is gone now, too.
- Thread starter Biggshow
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This sounds like the beginning of an excellent practical joke. Just walk into this room, Mr. Cox. Your new editor is in there.
How can authors with books in production not know whom their current editor is?
Ah... Have you not been paying attention?
Because their editor was just laid off and no one's told them yet who will replace her.
You've never been in a job where the boss leaves and hasn't been replaced yet?
Once was unfortunate. Twice is a pattern.
I have an unfortunate suspicion that we may end up looking back on this as the start of a downward spiral for Trek Lit and Pocket. It just has that feeling to it. I really hope I'm wrong.
I fully understand all of the assurances in the thread; but what are you going to say when the third editor is laid off in another six months?
I have an unfortunate suspicion that we may end up looking back on this as the start of a downward spiral for Trek Lit and Pocket. It just has that feeling to it. I really hope I'm wrong.
I fully understand all of the assurances in the thread; but what are you going to say when the third editor is laid off in another six months?
At that point, I'd be less worried about the future of the Star Trek book line than the continued existence of the Simon & Schuster publishing company.
A few weeks ago, I made reference on this BBS to "Margaret and her staff", meaning MargaretClark, Ed, Jennifer and whoever else was working on Pocket Books' ST stuff at the time, and Margaret very quickly corrected me and said that she was "it". No "staff". The one currently working on ST stuff for Pocket.
I took that to mean that not only was Margaret editing all the books that Marco had in train before he left, but that Ed and Jen weren't actually looking after any ST titles at that time.
S&S dismissing yet another senior editor is cost-cutting. Margaret wasn't "Senior Editor of Trek Only"; IIRC, she was a senior editor who happened to look after much of ST (based partly on once being an editor on DC Comics' ST line) and had a proven specialty in fiction (and especially?) factual licensed tie-ins. S&S bean-counters weren't looking around to see which personnel are nursemaiding which books currently being written or edited. The people left have to pick up the slack. (One assumes that it will be Ed and Jen, given their past experience with ST.) It's a big picture thing, and the ST license is one small piece of the S&S output, as a quick glance through the quarterly catalog easily demonstrates.
If S&S do ever drop the ST license, someone else will pick it up. As we've seen in the comics, motion picture and action figure worlds, ST doesn't lie fallow for too long before a new proposal is put forward.
And if S&S does ever drop the ST license, I've probably got a backlog of at least five years worth of ST novels and anthologies to read, let alone one day actually having the luxury of re-reading my old favourites from four decades of ST publishing.
Ed and Jen aren't Senior Editors, as far as I know.
And many publishing firms now use freelance editors (like KRAD) so they aren't up for all the financial matters that come into having permanent staff members.
I suspect Titan Books would be at or near the top of the list; they're publishing the art book based on the Abrams film this fall, and they've branched out into mass-market tie-in fiction (see their Terminator: Salvation novels).
I also suspect that Del Rey may be contractually forbidden from acquiring the Star Trek license, should it ever become available, due to holding the Star Wars license.
The thing is, Lindley, there are a number of steps Pocket can still take before they would have to give up the Star Trek license. They could drop to six books a year. They could transition the line from mass-markets to trade. Either would staunch the bleeding to some extent; even if it's not Star Trek in particular that's bleeding, the company as a whole certainly is. I'm not advocating either step, though I personally think that moving to trade is more likely than halving the line again.
darkwing_duck1
Vice Admiral
Could someone (anyone) who might be in the know as to this explain how an 11% slump in sales works out to a 70% loss in profits? Doesn't that indicate that a few "earner" properties are carrying a lot of lesser selling ones? What does that mean for tie-ins?
Yes, but the pattern is all around you. It's called the crummy economy. This shouldn't come as a surprise when things are tough all over.
If so, then it would be as part of the downward spiral the publishing industry as a whole is going through.
An "if" is not a "when." Any prediction based on "if current trends continue" is unreliable, because they rarely do. The economy's going downhill now, but sooner or later things will recover or at least stabilize. No trend lasts forever. So instead of inventing imaginary "whens" to worry about, the sensible thing is to wait and see what actually does happen.
If the state of the economy continued to decline so that Simon & Schuster was forced to downsize yet again, that might reduce the tie-in division to one editor. But: it started out that way. It ran effectively that way for over a decade. And then it got bigger. Now it's gotten smaller again. Everything fluctuates, because life is about change. Sooner or later, trends reverse themselves.
Pocket Books has been publishing Star Trek fiction for thirty years. That's an astonishingly long and successful run. It's essentially an institution. I think it's premature to assume that a thirty-year publishing franchise is doomed because of nine months of difficulty.
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