How much individual influence does an editor have on the tie-in literature?
Aw, crud! Margaret Clark is gone now, too.
- Thread starter Biggshow
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That's probably a good question. For instance, we know Margaret Clark supported the 'Trip is alive' thing. Now did she come up with that idea herself, or support the person who came up with it? Did she 'fight any battles' to clear it with whoever it had to get cleared with CBS/Paramount/whoever-wise?
Depends on the book, of course. But it's often a very collaborative process. Sometimes my instructions from an editor are as vague as "We need a VOYAGER outline by Thursday" or sometimes they're very specific:
"I want a Mirror Universe story in which Mirror Picard is a swashbuckling tomb raider who is hired by Dr. Soong to track down the Borg . . . ."
The latter, in fact, is exactly how Margaret pitched my Mirror Universe novella to me. She knew precisely what kind of story she wanted before she even picked up the phone to call me.
By contrast, John Ordover just wanted a trilogy titled "The Q Continuum." He had no idea what it might be about. He just thought (correctly!) that "The Q Continuum" was a great title for a trilogy. I had to make up the story myself.
So, yeah, it varies. But the editors are often heavily involved in the process.
"Trip is alive" was Margaret's idea, and she was quite open and vocal about that at Shore Leave over the years. One year she related how when Last Full Measure was written, she wanted Andy Mangels and Mike Martin to add the wraparound that revealed that Trip was alive in the future, and they were resistant to the idea until she promised them they could write the novel that revealed the trick.
Obviously, she'd have had to clear Trip's resurrection with Paramount, just as she had to clear Janeway's death in Before Dishonor. (Even then, Paramount wanted an escape hatch to Janeway's demise, hence Lady Q taking Janeway into "heaven.") Pocket can't just do anything with Star Trek, but they have a long enough track record with the property that even the daffiest ideas get at least some consideration.
With an ongoing series like the post-finale novels or Vanguard or SCE/CoE, say, the editor is analogous to the showrunner of a TV series, the one responsible for shaping its overall direction and maintaining its continuity. That still means the individual authors do the bulk of the plotting of the individual books, but often within parameters defined by the editor: include this, avoid that, get the story to this point, though it's up to the author to decide how to meet those goals. Sometimes the editor simply defines what type of story the author is being hired to do. For instance, Marco decided that Titan would be an episodic series of sense-of-wonder adventure stories, so that's what he asked me for in Orion's Hounds. When he picked me to do The Buried Age, he asked for an epic quest narrative about a disillusioned Picard rediscovering his love of exploration, perhaps with an archaeology angle. On my Marvel novels, he told me to do standalone adventures, to approach them like movies. When I did Aftermath for KRAD, he assigned me to introduce the Tev character he'd created and to move Gomez's arc to a certain point, but left me free to figure out how and in what plot context.
The first time I worked with Margaret was on Greater Than the Sum, and that's the book where I had the most editorial influence on what to do: wrap up the Einstein thread from Before Dishonor, set up Destiny, establish Picard and Crusher as married but don't show the wedding, write out Leybenzon and kill off either him or T'Lana. On my upcoming Abramsverse book, she was emphatic about keeping it a standalone tale and avoiding continuity ties, cross-references to the Prime universe, and efforts to explain or rationalize the changes in the movie continuity (sensible since the books should be able to stand on their own), but otherwise offered no specific story instructions. So there it wasn't about what to do, just what not to do. (Although I'd already pretty much arrived at the same conclusions on my own.)
The first time I worked with Margaret was on Greater Than the Sum, and that's the book where I had the most editorial influence on what to do: wrap up the Einstein thread from Before Dishonor, set up Destiny, establish Picard and Crusher as married but don't show the wedding, write out Leybenzon and kill off either him or T'Lana. On my upcoming Abramsverse book, she was emphatic about keeping it a standalone tale and avoiding continuity ties, cross-references to the Prime universe, and efforts to explain or rationalize the changes in the movie continuity (sensible since the books should be able to stand on their own), but otherwise offered no specific story instructions. So there it wasn't about what to do, just what not to do. (Although I'd already pretty much arrived at the same conclusions on my own.)
QFT. The thing Lindley and others really, really need to keep in mind that this is not just about their favorite books. These aren't "assurances" we're making; these are "efforts to get you to understand reality."
Again, QFT.
That is something I would love to know, too. Unless that 11% slump was in sales of their line of $200 gold-plated hardcovers, I don't get it.
There are reasons to sell during the best of economic times, and there are reasons to sell during the worst of economic times.
Regarding the company doing the purchasing: Trek is on the rise right now, and the economic slump means that they might be able to get trek rights for a very low price. There's also no reason to assume that buying trek would mean having to hire new editors. They could already have a tie-in department, and trek could just be added to the work-load. New editors could always be hired (to lighten the load) once the economy picks up.
Regarding the company doing the selling: S&S is probably in need of some short-term cash-flow, and they have already shown a desire to cut costs in their tie-in department. They may see the new Trek movie's popularity as an opportunity to get a decent price (despite the downturn in the economy).
I'm not saying that I would be in favor of selling (were I working for S&S), but I can see why the move could be seen as reasonable.
The books aren't about "justifying" things from the movie, but about building on what the movie established. That said, Seek a Newer World does acknowledge that the promotion was unusual and controversial.
Early in the process of writing the book, I read a comment from screenwriter Roberto Orci that the timing of the end of the film was deliberately left ambiguous so that there might've been a longer interval than it seemed between the defeat of Nero and Kirk's promotion ceremony. So I thought about reworking SaNW so that it took place between those scenes, with Kirk only in temporary command while Pike was undergoing treatment and evaluation, and ultimately earning permanent command. I wasn't sure I could get away with that overtly, so I came up with a way I could do it implicitly -- keep it ambiguous in the same spirit as the script, and write the book in such a way that the reader could interpret it as taking place either before or after the film's promotion ceremony.
But then I saw the movie again, and I noticed that at the promotion ceremony, Kirk still bore the same bruises from earlier in the film, only half-healed. And his exchange with Spock in the final scene made it pretty clear that Spock hadn't been selected as first officer yet. I couldn't figure out an uncontrived way to fit those facts into my plan, so I gave up on it and went back to the original version where the book was after the end of the movie. Just as well, since I later found out that I'd be doing the second original Abramsverse novel rather than the first. In retrospect, I don't think the idea would've worked that well anyway, since I would've had to cheat and fudge too many things.
Unless I'm sorely mistaken about the way this works, S&S couldn't sell the rights to Star Trek, because it doesn't own them. It is licensed those rights by CBS. CBS would be the seller in this scenario. What would be their incentive to take the rights away from an experienced company that's their own corporate partner and license them to a company that's never handled the property and would funnel money into some other conglomerate's coffers instead of their own?
It could be possible that "sales" is counting items and "profits" is counting the money made on those items. Bad economic times can also have opportunities for those that are in the right place at the right time.
Brit
You don't think Pocket could sell the remaining time on their contract to another company? If someone, say Titan Books, came to Pocket and said, "We'll take the contract off your hands for X million dollars," I don't see why Pocket couldn't make that deal. There are reasons why they shouldn't, but I don't see any reason that Pocket, unless their contract with Paramount expressly forbids it, couldn't sell off the remainder of their term.
Seems pretty straight forward. Means they need to sell X number of books to break even, and that the 'profits' are the sales above the break-even point. Could be that by dropping total sales numbers 11%, and having a corresponding 70% drop in profits, that a large chunk of the 'profit' money is tied up in the last 20% or so of the sales...
^As an example:
Profit is $100,000. Profit drops 70% to $30,000.
The 70% profit drop is equivalent to an 11% drop in sales revenues.
x = sales revenues (prior to drop)
$70,000 = 0.11x
x = roughly $636,364
$536,364 of the original sales revenues went to costs. The remaining $100,000 was profit, so a drop in $70,000 took off 11% of sales revenues but 70% of profit.
Obviously, this assumes that costs are a constant.
Profit is $100,000. Profit drops 70% to $30,000.
The 70% profit drop is equivalent to an 11% drop in sales revenues.
x = sales revenues (prior to drop)
$70,000 = 0.11x
x = roughly $636,364
$536,364 of the original sales revenues went to costs. The remaining $100,000 was profit, so a drop in $70,000 took off 11% of sales revenues but 70% of profit.
Obviously, this assumes that costs are a constant.
Honestly, that's not how it works. CBS gives them the rights to publish X number of books over X period of time. Unless the deal with Pocket is unlike any other licensing deal I've ever seen, Pocket would not be free just to turn around and sell it to someone else--and certainly they couldn't do so with the licensor's permission.
I've negotiated dozens of licensing deals, for everybody from CONAN to ZORRO, and I've never seen a contract that would allow Tor to sell the franchise to somebody else.
I believe with the CSI tie-ins, the deal between CBS and Pocket was for four books over 18-24 months or something. CSI:NY only got one licence, therefore only 4 books, Miami got two, therefore 8 books, and Vegas already has three, totalling 12 books, with a fourth already partway through as Mortal Wounds (collecting the first three Vegas books) was part of the third licence. I'm guessing the slowdown was the reason for the Miami and NY licences not being renewed/whatever.
Fair enough. I was thinking in terms of baseball contracts, where teams can off-load players by selling the contract to other teams. To my mind, I couldn't see why a publishing contract would be different. Clearly, they are.
ETA: But wouldn't there be a buyout price on the contract? Not for someone to snipe it from Pocket, per se, but if Pocket wanted to divest themselves of the contract, isn't there a price that they could pay to get out from under it?
On the other hand, maybe there's not a buyout clause based on past history. Marvel basically said "Fuck you" to Paramount and refused to publish anything more to get out from under the Star Trek comics license, and Activision had to sue to break their contract with Paramount over video games. In both cases, neither contract made the licensee any money; Marvel, because they couldn't sell enough comics to turn a profit on the license, and Activision, because Paramount actively thwarted their attempts to make money with the license. (Yes, Activision made a bad deal, but Paramount didn't negotiate in good faith, either.) So maybe Pocket, even if they wanted to, couldn't divest themselves of the Trek license until the contract has expired.
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Uummm... yes. And a gold-plated book has more cost than a mass market.
There is no incentive for CBS to take Star Trek to another publishing company since, as you've already pointed out, they own S&S. Unless they were to close S&S, which I doubt as it is one of the largest publishers in the world.
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