Have the new Relaunch novels been resized?
- Thread starter Freman
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Yes, Trek releases are all trade paperbacks now, reflecting the larger industry trend away from MMPBs (because e-books have largely supplanted them in their market niche).
The size has become bigger. I'm not fond of the pocket books paperback quality. The German editions have better paper quality. On the other hand: you can handle the bigger books better than the smaller ones when it comes to the readability.
But you need more space for collecting the books....
But you need more space for collecting the books....
And every Gallery trade-size PB release has been accompanied by an unabridged audio version, which is very cool.
New Gallery trades (after DSC's debut) start from 2019's "The Captain's Oath" (TOS), 2019's "Available Light" (TNG), and the forthcoming 2020's "The Unsettling Stars" (Kelvinverse) and "To Lose the Earth" (VGR).
"The Last Best Hope" (PIC) was in hardcover.
When the first trades started popping up, it was explained that the author cut was slightly higher than a MMPB, so it's nice to know the creators benefit.
A number of recent TOS novels. See the "(Trade paperback)" annotations on my various audio lists:
https://therinofandor.blogspot.com/p/i-hear-star-trek.html
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Since the renegotiated licensing deal. Of course S&S have been reissuing older titles in TPB as print-on-demand titles for 10 years now. But some bookstores and even warehouses probably still have new copies in MMPB of the pre-2019 titles, just as long as the stock lasts, and then it’ll be a question of if S&S physically reprints they in MMPB, or they go the print-on-demand route or they could even discontinue all physical releases and just have the digital version available.
But there are fewer of them per year, so it kind of balances out.
Industry-wide, it's been a growing trend for years. With Trek, it looks like the last mass-market paperback from Pocket was Voyager: Architects of Infinity in March 2018, and the first non-Discovery TPB was TNG: Available Light in April 2019.
Yep. Reprints of some ENT, Vanguard(?) and TNG novels have popped up in my local bookstore in the Print-on-Demand trade format, with wide gutters.
The first "Romulan War" book debuted in trade in 2009 (instead of hardcover), but Book 2 came out in regular MMPB. Of course, "New Frontier" eventually moved to trade PBs instead of hardcovers.
Yeah, those Romulan War books got both, as I recall.
Book 1 of The Romulan War was originally released as a trade paperback then later reprinted as an MMPB.
The first Enterprise Trade Paperback was waay back in 2003 with “The Expanse/The Xindi” novelization. Of course “The Expanse” was originally, as per the copyright page, going to be a hardcover release.
Yep. True. The belt was tightening.
Yep. When the preview cover (below) was launched at a Shore Leave, the story may have only been planned as a single title, then it was split and given two subtitles, but only the first one came out in trade. I was always in a quandary about whether to rebuy the first as the matching MMPB to the duology.
Also chuffed that I own the actual Tellarite robes featured on that cover, bought in the "It's a Wrap!" auctions.
The Romulan War: Beneath the Raptor's Wing by Ian McLean, on Flickr
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As I recall, it was the other way around -- it was originally planned as a trilogy, but when the license came up for renewal, they decided to wrap up any ongoing story arcs just in case it didn't go through, so the plot for books 2-3 was compressed into book 2.
I wish it had been a trilogy. Book 1 was good, but then Book 2 read like a TV script and was very skeletal.
Yes, that's a good way to put it. I enjoyed the lead up to "The Romulan War" and enjoyed the first book. But the 2nd book was 'skeletal' as you noted. It felt like a summary of major events.
My guess is Michael Martin probably had the story mapped out for a trilogy (at one time I thought I read early on there was a 4 book series planned one for each year of the war but I could be mistaken). But it seemed like they trimmed it back to just two books after the first was already done. So I don't really blame Michael Martin for it. He probably had to trim two books into one and toss out stuff he wanted to do that would have fleshed out the story better.
I wonder what ever happened to Martin. I think he only wrote one more Star Trek book after that and I haven't heard much about him since. I wonder if he was irritated at all by the trimming of the Romulan War books. I suppose authors are used to that sort of thing but sometimes I wonder when something like that happens if they're just a little bit peeved (they're human too after all). Also I have to imagine that cut into his paycheck a bit. Instead of getting paid for 3 books he just paid for 2 so I imagine it stung a bit economically as well.
But anyway, it's why every time the subject comes up I always say I wish Pocketbooks had commissioned a "Tales of the Romulan War" anthology (like "Tales of the Dominion War") to fill out more of the details using Martin's novels as a framework to work off of. But sadly I think the ship has sailed on that possibility (not to mention I'm not sure we'll see any further Enterprise novels overall--though I live in hope that I'm mistaken).
"The Romulan War" books seemed to create the falling out between Andy Mangels and Michael Martin. I recall Andy expressing surprise that a solo book deal had been negotiated without his participation or knowledge, and Andy couldn't seem get back into the Pocket Books' inner sanctum for new projects of his own.
Strangely enough, my bookmark is still one-fifth of the way through Martin's "Typhon Pact: Seize the Fire". Several attempts over the years to get into it and failed each time. (And yet I had enjoyed "Star Trek Online: The Needs of the Many".) I ended up jumping over to Dayton Ward's "Typhon Pact: Paths of Disharmony" when I was invited to be a Beta reader.
Still annoys me to this day.
A shame. The books they did together were excellent.
I think Andy was the talent though. Everything Martin wrote was pretty awful to me. I used to resent my book of the month being a Martin novel when there were so many better writers. All of his solo book contracts should have gone to Bennett or Mack or McCormack, etc.
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