I think Beneath the Raptor's Wing is worse (I couldn't finish it), but I agree that the Enterprise relaunch is the weakest corner of Treklit. ST-One, if you want to read Enterprise books, I recommend the Daedalus duology. Please don't judge all of Treklit by the Romulan bore.
Chapters website indeed does not have them for order any more. Before Dishonor is my worst book ever. I still can't believe that trash came from David.
I liked it. Yeah, I'm willing to admit that there was some weird stuff in, like the KM crew, but I still enjoyed it.
Getting back to the topic, by any chance might one of the professionals in attendance have any idea who was the marketing genius at Simon & Shuster who had the epiphany that this skinny pseudo shop manual should, during a borderline economic depression, be released as a hardback, with a $27 cover price. Was the shoddy quality of the product not enough to discourage sales? Did they really have to make it ridiculously expensive as well? And they wonder why these types of books don't sell.
As I said in the Tech topic, they'll probably use this as an example of fans not being interested in tech manuals.
Oh, for those halcyon days when John Ordover and Margaret Clark and Marco Palmieri used to come in to these threads and converse with their customers...
Isn't it that the publisher of all of the Haynes manuals approached Simon & Schuster and CBS Consumer Products for permission to do this under their licensing umbrella, since S&S wasn't doing licensed ST manuals of its own at the moment, due to them being economically unwise for Pocket? http://www.haynes.com/ http://www.haynes.com.au/webcontent1.htm I noticed, the other day, there's even an "Apollo 11" Haynes Manual due! Aren't they all matching hardcovers? So there are probably collectors of Haynes Manuals out there, just itching to add a ST one to their collection. And ST collectors who are wanting a new ST manual for their collection. "The worldwide leader in automotive and motorcycle repair, maintenance and customising manuals with sales of well over 7 million manuals annually and over 150 million total sold globally, Haynes Manuals are a must-read for all car owners..."
^I think you're right. This is Haynes's creation, but they needed S&S's aegis because only S&S has the license to publish Trek fiction. So the formatting and price decisions would be Haynes's.
On their own websites, most Haynes Manuals seem to be around the same price and format as each other. There are three cheaper ones, aimed at young children: including manuals for "Thomas the Tank Engine" and "Wallace & Grommit" inventions.
Well, all I know is that the Haynes manual I got for my Saturn is paperback, and sure as hell didn't cost $27.
After flipping through it at BN, I was a little disappointed in the fact that they really didn't expand on the Ent-B and the Ent-C all too well and the Ent-E was the same. I hate it when we get these reference books that are more or less summaries of various episodes. I want more background material, I want more stuff that we haven't seen or read about it, especially with the little know Enterprises. On the lighter note, we do know that the fate of the Ent-B.
Well, we sort of know its fate. It disappeared while out exploring, its last transmission being about an infection or contagion that led everyone to believe the crew died of plague. So I suppose it's still hanging in space somewhere. The history for the -B that the book offers differs from that in the novels anyway, including a new Tomed Incident and Harriman apparently leaving the ship after the post-Nexus repairs.
And yet, I seem to recall when "Mr Scott's Guide to the Enterprise" came out, there were ST collectors screaming, "Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! It's all wrong! They're making up stuff that was never in canon!" And, if you got your dream manual, and then future novels, comics, episodes or movies overruled the information Haynes provide, again we'd hear the screams of "Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! It's all wrong!" and "Why weren't the filmmakers making use of information that has been provided to them?"
Sadly this is probably the case. Kind of like a few years back when Unseen Frontier got canceled, we got Starship Spotter as a sort of consolation prize. While Spotter wasn't a horrible book (it wasn't a great book either), it didn't live up to the promise of what Unseen was suppossed to have been. Thus, the lackluster sales of Spotter was read by The Powers What Is as a lack of interest in tech stuff by the fans. Thie whole situation is like that episode of Taxi where the cabbies are trying to figure out how to get fresh apples in the vending machines: "Maybe if we buy all the old apples, they'll put fresh ones in!" "No, they'll think we like old apples and keep giving us that." "Oh. Then let's not buy any of the old apples!" "Nope. then they'll think we don't want any apples..."
Pfft. FASA's Enterprise-B history was more interesting than that. And we all know Harriman stayed in command of the Enterprise-B for several years and grew a pair after living an alternate life in which he was a total maniac and blew up Vulcan at the behest of Garry Mitchell. He then retired and entered politics. So there.