Long story short: JJ had planned a full multi-media presence for Trek: books, comics, web, movie, even a TV series. CBS balked at doing a series (and at stopping all merch for Old Trek to make room to push the new Trek). JJ got his shorts in a knot as a result and had the books pulled. If you want to know what the Trek rennaisance would have looked like, look at how Disney is doing Star Wars currently.
http://www.thewrap.com/movies/artic...ights-killed-jj-abrams-grand-ambitions-91766/ http://www.blastr.com/2013-5-16/apparently-jj-abrams-tried-shut-down-all-star-trek-tos-merch
I believe Bad Robot claimed - based on some market research - that there was "Brand Confusion" between Trek XI and the previous incarnations of the series. They wanted the "media empire" thing but CBS basically came back and said "Yeah, we make $2 mil a year on Shatner's face on plates, so... no."
That attitude kind of baffles me. Marvel and DC sell merchandise based on multiple versions of their characters and it doesn't seem that confusing. Just make sure you have Pine, Quinto, Saldana, Pegg, ect. on stuff for the Abramsverse, and Shatner, Nimoy, Nichols, and Doohan on Prime universe stuff. I'm pretty sure people who care enough to get the merchandise are going to care enough to be able to tell the difference.
Then again, you still sometimes get goofy stuff like Armin Tamzar- excuse me, Marcus Johnson; Nick Fury's previously-unknown son that happens to look a lot like Sam Jackson and who, after his father is nearly killed, decides to start going by his birth name of Nick Fury, Jr. and take on a leadership role in SHIELD. (Done, according to Marvel's VP of Publishing, specifically to avoid brand confusion.)
^Nope. Fully documented above. And it's EXACTLY the plan JJ is following with Star Wars (with Disney's blessing).
No, Abrams doesn't have anywhere near the kind of power over Star Wars that he did with Star Trek. He's director of Episode VII but beyond that has no influence over anything else in the franchise. He has no authority over any of the other movies currently in development, no authority over the Rebels series, nor does he have approval rights over the tie-in materials, not even ones directly related to The Force Awakens. Disney people above him make all those calls. Hell, in some cases, he's being overruled by Disney, for example, he wanted the names of the new characters kept a secret until the movie's release, Disney said no, and all the names are now revealed on the action figure packaging. Abrams is directing one movie. Granted, it's the most important movie, given it's basically launching Disney's Star Wars, but it's still one movie. He has no real power over the Star Wars franchise or the direction it takes. There is no "Abrams Masterplan" for anyone to follow here. There is a plan, but it's thought up and implemented by Disney's people, not Abrams. He didn't even get to bring the rest of his Bad Robot cadre along for this movie.
I take anything from The Wrap and Blastr with huge grains of salt. And Blastr is just regurgitating what was posted on The Wrap.
Trek readers were early adopters of online ordering and eBooks. Bookshops know this and order appropriately. Trek books regularly get onto bestseller lists, so sales are still good. If someone special-orders a Trek book, the store would more than likely order a few copies for the open shelves at the same time. If no copies of a title get special-ordered at all, it is possible that no copies get ordered because it appears to the manager that that book won't be as popular. Or, it may be that all ordered copies end up being put aside for customers, with no copies left over for the open shelves. I'm in Sydney, Australia, and - after many years of shopping around - I ended up grooming the most reliable store to maintain my monthly special order. They know of my preference for "the best" copy, and often encourage me to swap my copy for one on the open shelf if they have picked poorly. They get at least 20 or so of some Trek titles. Some customers order "all DS9 novels", or "only every TOS book", etc. Sometimes they get in a Trek book I've not realised was coming (eg. the Spock bust with logic book). Sometimes I let them know of an upcoming book they'd missed in the catalogues (such as the recent IDW comic compilations and the upcoming costume book). My decades of regular shopping there have made me a favourite customer and I get excellent service. But it's a two-way street.
It's also the same plan as literally every major franchise for the last five years or so. Did JJ Abrams make every major IP owner suddenly realize the profit potential of transmedia? Universal wanted to take a shot at doing this with the Universal Monsters. Did JJ Abrams inspire that? Just because it's the same plan doesn't mean that JJ Abrams came up with the plan.
Thank you, that was my point. Disney is doing with Star Wars what they have already done with Marvel, and it should be noted, Abrams has nothing to do with Marvel at all. Just because this is similar to what he wanted done with Star Trek doesn't make him the driving force behind it.
Exactly. They changed several of the ways they ordered books for customers over the decades because of my influence. And I've outlasted all of the managers and staff since I first started visiting the store in 1979.
Just to provide everyone with an update... I found myself in Chapters this evening. So, I did ask about this, as I said I would. The first thing the employee said was "that's more of a head office decision". But he did look them up on the computer, and did confirm that there were none on order for their location. Since they were recent releases, he felt that they *should* be carrying them, and seemed confused as to why they weren't. So he wrote out a note to leave for another employee, to see if the other employee could look into the situation, and perhaps contact head office and try to determine what was going on. So I thanked him for that, and he thanked me for bringing it to their attention. I guess now I'll just wait and see if anything changes. And now it looks like Atonement has shown up in my city. Not at Chapters or Indigo, but at the only remaining Coles location in our city. (Which, ironically, is right across the road from the Indigo, when all the locations that were nowhere near another bookstore were closed down.) Since they're all part of the same corporate family, my discount card works at Coles too, so I'm going to try to find the time to get up there sometime soon and see if I can grab a copy. Since I was actually in Chapters, I was able to take a look at their shelves, and it did appear that they had ordered in some new S&S Trek books since I was last in: there were a handful of new omnibus versions that I don't remember seeing before. (Granted, maybe I just didn't see them because I wasn't looking for them before? But they do take up some space, so they're a little hard to miss!) There was one copy of Twist of Faith, two copies of Destiny, and three(!) copies of Mere Anarchy. Not sure what that was all about...
That's balderdash of the highest order, considering the comic books that are out new from IDW. The whole thing is stupid, and the idea that people are just going to want to see merch of only Shatner, Nimoy, Nichols, and Doohan is going to bite them in the ass, as somebody said here a while ago. As well, the audience for merch of the old series is shrinking, with the last generation being Generation X; when they die off, what then? They have to start making prose novels and other merch based on the current continuity.
I just spotted a copy of Twist of Faith at Chapters, too! Why would they be ordering copies of that omnibus now...?