General questions re:Trek books publishing history

[dstyer]

Hi. Last year I compiled a spreadsheet detailing the publishing history of the Star Trek novels in the US market. I made it available online, but was looking to update it with more confirmed, exact info. I have a few questions:

1 - By my review of websites and personal collection details, it looks like the transition by Pocket Books from publishing two books per month to only one happened in May 2005. Can anyone confirm?

2 - Has it always been the rule that the MMPB books have been published / released on the Tuesday just prior to the beginning of the noted publication date? (i.e. a book stating "First Pocket Books paperback edition June 2017" was actually in stores on the last Tuesday in May)

3 - Was there ANY regularity to when the SCE e-books came out each month?

Thanks for any and all help!

 

[Christopher]

1 - By my review of websites and personal collection details, it looks like the transition by Pocket Books from publishing two books per month to only one happened in May 2005. Can anyone confirm?

That does seem to be about when it happened. I didn't realize it was that long ago.

2 - Has it always been the rule that the MMPB books have been published / released on the Tuesday just prior to the beginning of the noted publication date? (i.e. a book stating "First Pocket Books paperback edition June 2017" was actually in stores on the last Tuesday in May)

As a rule, mass-market paperbacks in brick-and-mortar bookstores don't have fixed street dates -- it's just whenever the stores' employees get around to shelving them after they arrive, which could be anytime in the last 2-3 weeks of the preceding month or the first week or so of the "official" month. (I've worked as a shelver in bookstores -- there are dozens of boxes of delivered books sitting in the back room, and the order in which they get shelved is basically a matter of which boxes are in front/on top of the pile.) It's only big-ticket items like Stephen King or J.K. Rowling books that have scheduled release dates. Assigning an official release date to MMPBs is more a practice of online retailers like Amazon. Or rather, if it was done before online retail, it was more a technicality than a real practice.

No idea about the third question.

 

[David cgc]

In the past couple years, it's started to seem like my local Barnes and Noble is shelving Trek books closer to (if not on) the "official" date, to the point where I've stopped dropping by any earlier. I'm not sure if it's coincidence, my imagination, or if the shelving system has just been tightening up recently for whatever reason.

 

[Stevil2001]

2 - Has it always been the rule that the MMPB books have been published / released on the Tuesday just prior to the beginning of the noted publication date? (i.e. a book stating "First Pocket Books paperback edition June 2017" was actually in stores on the last Tuesday in May)

I feel like there was a point where this was adjusted in some way, resulting in four books having the same listed month of publication, even though they were released in two separate months. I used to have an Access database with all this stuff in exhaustive detail; if I remember, I'll pull out my external hard drive and see what I can find.

 

[Defcon]

1 - By my review of websites and personal collection details, it looks like the transition by Pocket Books from publishing two books per month to only one happened in May 2005. Can anyone confirm?

FWIW this is the quote Marco Palmieri gave in February 2005 on the PSiPHi board:

Yep. Beginning in June, there'll be one mass-market ST title per month.

We've been discussing such a change internally for over a year. Our feeling is that we can do a better job, both editorially and sales-wise, by putting greater energy and effort into fewer and more carefully chosen projects, making the line leaner, meaner, and stronger. The respite being take from studio-produced Star Trek reinforces that strategy. And when you think about it, a media tie-in publishing line consisting of one mass-market book per month, (plus a handful of annual trades and hardcovers), during a time when no new studio-generated material will exist to support it, is still an amazing thing.

Marco

So I guess May 2005 was indeed the last two book month.