"New Frontier: The Returned" released as a physical book?

[Therin of Andor]

IIRC, the original announcement for "The Returned" was a trade book from the Gallery division of S&S. Later, that first Amazon listing was revised as a trilogy of eBook novellas instead.

"New Frontier" had originally moved to a first-release hardcover (and later trade) program, with a MMPB followup, to satisfy PAD's contractual leeway due to hois popularity. Hardcovers and trades earn a higher royalty for the author, and then the MMPB royalties are additional cream. ("A second bit of th cherry", it was explained as at the time.)

I am fairly certain we will see a MMPB (or trade) reprint for "The Returned", but the interest for these more-recent ST eBook titles by Pocket would have been way lower if we knew that a MM hardcopy reprint was definitely scheduled for release. Their secrecy ploy worked on me; I bought the three NF eBook instalments, where I don't routinely buy other ST eBooks.

It must be very frustrating for the publishers to attempt to predict (and steer) the future preferences of the readership. I know quite a few IDW collectors who "wait for the trade omnibus" now, rather than buy the monthly comics. (And too many leftover issues appear to spell failure, and shops cutting down on ordering.) But that leaves issues of comics on the racks. Hopefully, these new market trends have established themselves sufficiently for the products to survive.

 

[Freman]

Still no news on this? I want to read it so badly, but I also steer clear of ebooks.

 

[GaryH]

I think you can assume not happening now, so your choice is ebook or do not read.

Without spoilers, it was a bit disappointing but by the end the characters were back to being themselves and in a good place. I hope we get more, now PAD has warmed up again.

 

[Freman]

Well, that's unfortunate. Guess I won't be reading it then.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Damn, I forgot about this thread.

Pity there's still no news on this front. Not surprising, just disappointing.

 

[GaryH]

Is there an email address to write to where we can ask for another Peter David book?

 

[Defcon]

Is there an email address to write to where we can ask for another Peter David book?

Inhouse Ed Schlesinger is responsible for Star Trek at Simon & Schuster:

http://simonandschusterpublishing.com/gallery-books/ed-schlesinger.html

 

[GaryH]

Email sent! Thanks

 

[JD]

Still no news on this? I want to read it so badly, but I also steer clear of ebooks.

Pocket/S&S seem to have pretty much stopped rereleasing e-books in physical media at this point. Which really does make sense since at this point the vast majority of people are going to have phones, tablets, or computers to read e-books on.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Sure, most people have the devices, but are there more people who will read them on said devices instead of physical books?

 

[Idran]

Sure, most people have the devices, but are there more people who will read them on said devices instead of physical books?

If there wasn't then that would be a huge area where S&S could make a lot more money, and as annoying as I find a lot of corporate attitudes, I have to admit that one thing that corporations do really well is research into what makes them money. They'd have to be idiots to not conduct research into that, and they're definitely not idiots, so I have to assume that they've done the research and the market studies and the projected income and expenses and etc. and determined that the number of people that would only read a novella if it was collected in physical form is not enough to warrant the additional expense of collecting it in physical form. Especially for a book with such a small audience overall; while I obviously don't have stats, I'd be surprised if the overall audience size for a non-TOS Trek book would be much above high five/low six digits. Pleasantly surprised, but I know it's often been said on TrekBBS that the audience for tie-in works is like 4% or something of the total Trek audience, and that anything outside TOS isn't anywhere near the popularity of TOS books. Even lower for a non-TV book series like New Frontier, I'd think, though that's also a guess.

Unfortunately, I can't find any actual publicly available stats or polling in the vein of answering that particular question, about percentage of people that would avoid a book if it was e-book only as compared to those that just prefer physical books. I can say that overall, there's still a preference in the market towards physical media, though it's not overwhelming. According to a survey by Pew just this month, of the 73% of people that said they did read at least one book in the last 12 months, about 52% of that segment (38% of all respondents) said they read physical books exclusively. (About 8% of that segment [6% overall] were digital-exclusive, digital meaning either e-books or audio books, and about 38% of that segment [28% overall] read both. MoE of 2.9% on the overall percentages based on sample size according to their methodology section, full report available here.)

 

[DimesDan]

Having spoken to a friend who works in a book shop and also observing others on the Luas here in Dublin, physical books here in Ireland seem more popular than ebooks.

 

[GaryH]

As a Dub, I agree with this.

 

[JD]

Sure, but reading and preferring physical books isn't necessarily the same as refusing to read a book you want to read because it's only available as an e-book.
Obviously the e-books must be doing pretty well, since they are releasing them on a pretty regular basis now, and haven't seen a need to try to get more money out of them with physical releases.
I do kind of wish at times that the book publishers released their exact sales numbers like the comics publishers do.

 

[donners22]

These are the only ebooks I've ever bought. The format doesn't appeal to me, but I got them to support NF/PAD.

 

[Idran]

I do kind of wish at times that the book publishers released their exact sales numbers like the comics publishers do.

That's not the publishers, that's Diamond that releases those numbers, the distributor. That's why there's almost no information at all about digital sales figures except when something's doing really well in digital like Ms. Marvel. I'm sure if DC and Marvel had their way, Diamond wouldn't release physical numbers either, since they'd only want numbers to be public knowledge when they're good.

 

[Freman]

I hate reading on tablets etc. That's why I won't. Prefer an actual book in my hands.

 

[Jinn]

I don't like reading on tablets too, so I read on my computer. I don't know why, but I really like it.

 

[Freman]

I basically don't like reading from a screen of any kind. I'd rather read from a tablet than my computer, though. lol

 

[Jinn]

I basically don't like reading from a screen of any kind. I'd rather read from a tablet than my computer, though. lol

Fair enough.