That's EXACTLY my point.
Random Thought: Was Janeway Killed Because She was So Polarizing?
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That's EXACTLY my point.
What tie-ins? Besides Star Trek 101, I don't recall any tie-ins to the film (and 101 wasn't really a tie-in to the film).
I don't remember any special displays for Star Trek books at any bookstores in the Cincinnati area either.
It's a tough economy yes... but you don't get rid of the people who are making you money. I'd like to know the business school that the Simon and Schuster execs went too, "I know an excellent way to save money... we'll get rid of the people making us money! Brilliant!!!".
Where do you people work?
Longterm employees (with larger paychecks and benefits packages) are usually among the first targeted with any company-wide layoffs. Marco and Margaret fell into that group when it came time to let people go. There were people in their department who make less money who can do the same job (at least, so far as the bean counters are concerned). It sucks, but that's the way it works in business. It's happening where I work EVERY DAY...good people who bust their asses are being shown the door because that's just the way it goes when the company has to tighten their belts.
Longterm employees (with larger paychecks and benefits packages) are usually among the first targeted with any company-wide layoffs. Marco and Margaret fell into that group when it came time to let people go. There were people in their department who make less money who can do the same job (at least, so far as the bean counters are concerned). It sucks, but that's the way it works in business. It's happening where I work EVERY DAY...good people who bust their asses are being shown the door because that's just the way it goes when the company has to tighten their belts.
I've been a manager at my company (a bank) for eleven years and have never once seen someone who was making the company money let go. Unless the area was being spun-off to a new company or the area was being done away with entirely (which I think neither apply to Star Trek books).
Your mileage may vary...
^ Yeah. Must just be my imagination.
And your point was wrong.
They didn't fire people because the line wasn't wildly successful. (And profitable != wildly successful.) They laid people off because they were losing money just by having them on staff, so they laid off the highest-paid employees from many different divisions purely to avoid paying them in order to keep from losing money. It wasn't a Star Trek thing, it was a whole goddamn company thing.
Right, because Pocket knew that the bookstores didn't want any. Ergo, Pocket didn't make any.
You do if you can't afford to pay them anymore.
And you earned your economics degree at...?
Sorry. I read that as netspeak for "I call bullshit." My bad.
Ok, Genius...
Explain why the amount of Trek books available at bookstores continues to decline? Explain why Pocket can't sell bookstores on the viability of the Trek line (Nemesis was six years ago)? Explain why one of their premiere titles (New Frontier) is so well hidden that it collects dust on the shelves?
Until Pocket sees fit to give us sales numbers... all we can do is judge the success of the Trek line by what we see go on in bookstores and on-line retailers like Amazon.
High School Diploma here. Plus ten years of retail management and eleven in banking.
Sorry. I read that as netspeak for "I call bullshit." My bad.
I don't really know Netspeak. If I call "bullshit"... I just call "bullshit".
I don't know what bookstores you're going to, but I've seen the number of Trek novels available at bookstores and other outlets increase significantly since ST09 proved a hit, so I reject your premise.
They couldn't sell bookstores on the idea that ST09 was going to be a hit because bookstores were looking at previous Trek films to make the evaluation over whether it was going to be a success and therefore sell merchandise. NEM was a flop, INS was uninspiring, and FC was 12 years ago.
Margaret and others have indicated that if the economy were better and Pocket and these bookstores had felt they could afford the potential loss, they would have bitten the bullet and made more ST09 tie-ins anyway. But in this economy, neither group felt they could afford the potential loss if ST09 flopped, and so they decided to stick with what was a proven, reliable money-maker -- the regular schedule of ST novels -- over taking a risk that they could make more money or lose money depending on whether or not the film was a hit.
And, by the way, do you really think Pocket would be putting out an ST book every month if the ST line was not in general successful?
First, the fact that we don't have sales numbers means we don't know whether the number of books in bookstores is actually declining, other than anecdotal evidence (and people have been complaining online about fewer Trek books in bookstores for about as long as there's been an online).
Second, you mentioned Amazon. It's been mentioned time and again that Trek fans tend to be early adopters of tech (that was why Pocket created the Starfleet Corps of Engineers ebook series), and that we buy a lot of books online. That could very easily translate to fewer copies in bricks and mortar stores.
All I can do is tell you what I'm seeing at Cincinnati area brick and mortar stores. Maybe we're just a soft market for Trek. But we weren't ten years ago.
But wouldn't the sales of monthly Trek books also figure into projections about how successful supplemental Trek material would be? You keep talking about Star Trek 2009 like it exists in a vacuum with only Star Trek: Nemesis.
You very well could be right. These things could be selling like gangbusters on-line. But I would also think that Star Wars books would sell well on-line too and that doesn't seem to hurt their presence at brick and mortar outlets.
I think it's just your area. As I said, I've seen the number of Trek novels available drastically increase at several bookstores in my area, in my former university's area, and in a neighboring state since ST09 came out.
Apparently not. From what we've been told, the bookstores and Pocket judged the potential profitability of ST09 tie-in material on the basis of how successful previous Trek films had been, not on the basis of how successful the standard novel line was.
Which makes sense, really -- with movie tie-in material, you're talking about merchandise that's more expensive to produce than a novel, and whose success is based on the relative success of a film that's going to be in theaters for a few months and then new on video for a few months later in the year. So it has a narrower shelf life. Whereas with novels, you're dealing with merchandise that's cheaper to produce and has a steady, reliable customer base, and which can be on the shelves for a much longer period of time.
Because we're talking about a film tie-in, not a TV tie-in. Unfortunately, the performance of previous Trek films is going to be the determinative metric over whether or not it's worth it to produce or try to sell film tie-ins, not the TV shows -- especially since there hadn't been a Trek show on TV for three years when ST09 came out.
Star Wars has always been more popular, and more consistently popular, than Star Trek; comparing Trek's bookstore presence to Wars's is a completely meaningless piece of data in measuring whether or not Trek novels are selling reliably.
When I was here yesterday, this thread was about Janeway. What happened?
She died.
('Twas a very sad story)
Well, after 5 billion posts, Janeway's still dead. We're just filling time until she gets better.
When I was here yesterday, this thread was about Janeway. What happened
The Janeway fans said the books were selling poorly and that's why Marco and Margaret were laid off. We still haven't seen any evidence of any of that, of course.
Sci's right. Star Wars sells a hell of a lot more than Star Trek. It's a much more mainstream, popular property. The number of Stephen King books in a bookstore doesn't tell you anything about how the other horror writers are doing, does it?
Besides, we had a discussion around here not long ago in which I pointed out that Star Trek books were showing up regularly in the Locus monthly bestselling media SF tie-in list again. Star Wars still dominates the list, but for a couple of years Star Trek was making occasional appearances on the list instead of showing up every month, as it has this year. Without actual numbers of copies sold it's hard to say exactly what that means, but it suggests the Trek books are doing reasonably well.
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