Has interest in Trek Lit dried up where you live?

[Reanok]

I have a problem finding new Startrek novels at the different stores I visist all you can find are an endless bunch of Vampire & were wolf romance books everywhere.I'm lucky if Barnes and Noble have the new Startrek books at their store thay only have one shelf full of Startrek books. So I end up ordeingr some of the books online it's the only way I can find the Startrek books I want to read nowdays.

 

[CaptainMatt]

We have a used bookstore here that recently closed for business, and they had a nice few shelves of Trek novels. I used to go in occasionally and pick through them looking for favorite stories. That makes one used bookstore left, along with Barnes & Noble and something called 2nd and Charles, which nearly defies dscription with its combination of new and older titles which includes old Trek novels.

 

[Lt. Brannigan]

There was never an interest in Trek Lit where I live, in the first place.

 

[CaptainMatt]

Oooh that is a nice avatar how come you by it?

 

[Mr. Domino]

I can usually count on seeing one copy of each new Trek book showing up in each of the three bookstores in the area that carry new product, and two copies in a secondhand store that gets them in for me and another fellow. That's about it, really. I have to drive a fair ways to dig around for the (many) holes still in my collection.

 

[Lt. Brannigan]

Oooh that is a nice avatar how come you by it?

My avatar? If so it's one I cobbled together quite quickly with Paint Shop Pro.

 

[Enterprise is Great]

We don't get them in supermarkets at all anymore, or at places like Walgreens. And the brick-and-mortar bookstores have whittled the Trek section down to about half a shelf.

I haven't seen a Trek novel in a supermarket since the Double Helix miniseries was published.

 

[Mage]

I, too, have been buying almost all of my Trek books online for years now. Much easier, delivered right in your doorstep. I've bought a few in a tiny comicbookstore, but that more because I happened upon them, then me looking for them purposfully there.

 

[Therin of Andor]

My local Waterstones typically has a single copy of each new title, a month or two after it's first released.

Have you considered this?: perhaps they have fifteen standing orders, plus one more for the shelf.

Ask the shop: when that one copy sells in the first few days it is put out, do they immediately order in another one to replace it? Do they "special order" books for customers who miss out?

In the old days, many ST novels were sold in bulk as "sale or return", hence the warning about "stripped books" inside. Sometimes in a cardboard display stand. Many shops now are expected to buy their stock outright and, if the books get damaged or faded before being sold, they have to discount them, at less profit, rather than return the books for reimbursement.

Many regular readers get tired of missing out, or of that whole monthly hunt across town to see which store would get their supply first, especially if they are collector fans who buy every ST novel and comic that comes out. Online ordering and standing orders in book/comic shops are the ways to go.

 

[Therin of Andor]

but there aren't as many Trek books in the second-hand (or 'used' as you Americans would say) stores that I go to as there used to be.

I find that second hand bookstores' stock often reflects the tastes of the shop owners. Some buy and sell lots more romance, or high brow literature, or mystery, or science fiction.

Been to Amazon lately? Every second hand store, from bricks and mortar ones, rented warehouses and even individuals selling from their own homes, have representation on Amazon, or there's Book Depository, AbeBooks, and many other online sellers. Many second hand dealers can no longer afford to rent a store in the main street, but they still deal online. And shops are more savvy, using current online and auction prices to set the prices on their own stock.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Never has been any interest here. Waterstones usually has 2 - 4 Trek books, squished between Star Wars and Terminator Salvation. They never ever reduce the prices.

All the second hand finds have mostly dried up (y'know, cos I bought them all!), and, other than a MAJOR haul of Treklit at a library sale the Christmas before last, I've been buying online. Filling the gaps with Amazon and eBay, and preordering (usually at least a third off RRP!) new ones I like the sound of.

 

[Christopher]

I'm reminded of something I read recently about comic books. It used to be that you could find comics at the corner drugstore or newsstand or grocery store, and readership of comics was in the millions. But then the direct-market distribution system took over, and comics ended up being sold primarily in specialty comics shops and disappeared from those other places, and today comics readership is in the tens of thousands. It wasn't because the audience lost interest, it was because the distribution system changed in a way that targeted the product only at active, invested fans and removed everyone else's access to it.

I wonder if a similar mechanism is in place here. Maybe it's not that readers have lost interest in Trek books, but simply that they've lost casual access to them due to changes in the distribution system, i.e. the dominance of online book buying.

 

[Sho]

I'm not sure that analogy really holds up too well, though, because at least over here, bookstores don't compare in their casualness to newsstands and grocery stores, and Trek novels were never sold at the latter. I'm sure people casually picking up Trek books at book stores used to (or still does, with whatever changed frequency) happen, but removing that from the equation doesn't have a similar-scale effect as with the comics example.

And don't forget that the changed landscape also introduces some effects to offset the loss of bookstores, and even enables communities that used to be ill-served by bookstores. Bookstores can only stock so many books and so every book has to justify its presence; Amazon & co don't have a shelf space problem and the cost of merely listing a book in their catalogue is minimal to them. As a result the internet largely solves the problem of access to less popular books and makes maintaining a niche audience much simpler.

As for the OP, no clue. I honestly haven't been to a bookstore in years, doing my book shopping exclusively online. This is partly related to the fact that much of the lit I read is in English, and even when a local bookstore does stock Trek books, they will be the German translations I have no interest in. Thus for me the internet has made it vastly easier to access Trek books and without it, I would probably not be buying any today.

 

[Christopher]

I'm not sure that analogy really holds up too well, though, because at least over here, bookstores don't compare in their casualness to newsstands and grocery stores, and Trek novels were never sold at the latter. I'm sure people casually picking up Trek books at book stores used to (or still does, with whatever changed frequency) happen, but removing that from the equation doesn't have a similar-scale effect as with the comics example.

I used to see Trek novels on the supermarket shelves all the time, even if they were just on a single shelf surrounded by hundreds of romance novels. My father and I would have a bit of a thrill when we came upon one of my books on the shelf while grocery shopping. But they stopped carrying them a few years ago.

 

[Reanok]

I went grocery shopping this morning and the store finally had the new Startrek Novel Vanguard series finale.At least they finally had a new novel after 4 months of no trek novels in their store .It's strange how for a few months they carry the new books and then none at all. I think the distbriturs have large role what books arrive inlocal grocery stores.

 

[Ian Keldon]

I'm reminded of something I read recently about comic books. It used to be that you could find comics at the corner drugstore or newsstand or grocery store, and readership of comics was in the millions. But then the direct-market distribution system took over, and comics ended up being sold primarily in specialty comics shops and disappeared from those other places, and today comics readership is in the tens of thousands. It wasn't because the audience lost interest, it was because the distribution system changed in a way that targeted the product only at active, invested fans and removed everyone else's access to it.

I wonder if a similar mechanism is in place here. Maybe it's not that readers have lost interest in Trek books, but simply that they've lost casual access to them due to changes in the distribution system, i.e. the dominance of online book buying.

I think it's a bit of both, really.

 

[TenLubak]

There is 2 shelves at Barnes and Nobles in White Marsh and about the same in bel air and towson. All other bookstore have gone away. So i think books are drying up while little kids play with thier telephones.

 

[Therin of Andor]

My father and I would have a bit of a thrill when we came upon one of my books on the shelf while grocery shopping. But they stopped carrying them a few years ago.

If not for ST:TMP's novelization presence on a rack near the supermarket checkout in December 1979, I possibly wouldn't be a ST fan today, although it was probably the only ST I ever saw in a suburban Sydney supermarket.

The other major challenge to recent ST novel distribution: about six or seven years ago, Diamond Distributors decided to no longer carry Pocket Books' monthly output - or vice versa(?), Simon & Schuster decided to no longer be in the monthly Diamond orderpak, and to handle their own distribution to comic shops and SF specialty stores.

i think books are drying up while little kids play with thier telephones.

I was at as gathering of booksellers, writers and teacher librarians recently. A new investigation was quoted which had discovered that kids are actually reading as much as ever. (Recent spikes in YA vampire stuff shows that books are still being read.) It's actually older people who are finding their spare time consumed by their mobile phones, iPads and Internet browsing!

 

[Thrawn]

^ In America, the most recent study I read showed that it was teenagers that were falling the most, compared to past numbers. Which would indeed be just about the time that they get phones.

Though much of what they do on their phones involves reading and writing, and there isn't any evidence that writing in text-speak reduces ability to write academically (just the reverse, in fact). So I still mostly agree with your point that people make too big a deal out of it.

 

[BritishSeaPower]

I don't think I've ever seen a Trek book in a supermarket with the exception of tons of remaindered Star Trek XI novelizations at a BJs Wholesale.