Generally, unlike Star Wars these days, none of the Star Trek books are canon, even those written by people who work on the show. It's kind of been a policy that if it isn't seen or mentioned onscreen somewhere, it isn't canon.
David Mack writing the first one was announced in the same announcement about the books, Kirstin Beyer has a supervisory role with the novels, making sure they are consistent with the show, but at least as far as book 1 is concerned is not involved in writing it
No, there's no such thing as a canon Trek novel, and for the foreseeable future there's not likely to be. While it is true that Kirstin Beyer is supervising the novels to make them consistent with the show, this is only being done in an effort to cut down on the "weird stuff" that early tie-in novels tend to run into when the authors have no on-screen material to base things off of, like early TNG novels referring to Riker as "Bill Riker" or early Voyager novels calling the Doctor "Doctor Zimmerman" or early Enterprise novels for some reason calling Hoshi "Ensign Hoshi" as opposed to Ensign Sato. Basically, they want to make sure the novel has the same feel as a Discovery episode, but it'll still be as non-canon as every other Trek novel in existence.
That makes the tie-ins that much interesting, breaking out of the b-cannon mold for once.
It is =not= a novelization of the pilot. It will connect to the pilot but will not rehash it.
Well, yeah, they have some one from the show supervising and coordinating the novels, which the other TV shows never did. Still doesn't make them canon.
That's why Kirsten Beyer is supervising the novels, in order to cut down on stuff like that.
