No problem, just expected the current format.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - The High Country by John Jackson Miller
- Thread starter JJMiller
- Start date
I feel like
- they went TPB with Disco because that's the standard format these days;
- they chanced HC on Picard because of (one presumes) the success of the Disco books and the high profile of Picard; and
- because those were successful, they're going to HCs for each new line... but probably don't want to upgrade an existing line, hence still TPBs for Disco.
I suspect too that there's the tie-in factor. Picard has a built-in TNG fanbase, and I suspect for SNW they're really hoping to tap into the TOS market that keeps the TOS novels outperforming all the other properties in the line.
I actually like hardcovers as a physical item, but I do get concerned about affordability. Although if they're only going to be releasing four to six books a year in total anyway, and most of them will probably be TOS, TNG or Discovery TPBs, it's probably not going to be much of an issue.
Yeah I got an update from Amazon saying my
Order is delayed.
Order is delayed.
A lot of everything has been pushed back lately. My grocery store still has trouble keeping all their shelves stocked. I'm sure it's just a sign of the times. I don't think I'm going to be bothered too much by waiting an extra three months.
"I remember when we had 24 Star Trek novels a year!"
"Let's get you back to bed, grandpa."
"Let's get you back to bed, grandpa."
Grandpa Pedantic here: it was 24 mass market paperbacks, PLUS hardcovers/trade paperbacks (some of which eventually showed up as MMPBs). So, it looks like 1996 had 27 new titles, 1997 had 26, 1998 had 27, 1999 had 30 (or 31, if you count "New Worlds, New Civilizations" as a fiction title) 25 in 2000 (plus the first three SCE e-novellas) 25 in 2001 (plus 8 more SCE e-novellas) 2002 had 32 (and the SCE e-novellas are now monthly, so +12) 30 in 2003 (+12). We started to see production decline in 2004, with 23 titles (+12 SCE). In 2005 production again declined to 19 (+12 SCE) and, after May 2005, MMPB production was cut in half, from 2 to 1 a month. For the next decade, we got 12 mass market paperbacks, and an occasional hardcover or trade paperback. The regular program of monthly e-novellas stopped in early 2008.
There was also an extensive program of YA novels & novelizations, but I've left them out of the annual counts.
It was some time in the early to mid 90s that I stopped even trying to keep up. I'll be working through that enormous backlog of fiction for, frankly, the rest of my life. And I still don't think I'll get through it. Especially if I keep re-reading the 1980s TOS novels and fanzines, rather than skipping ahead to books I've never read.
Just get the eBook released on time. There's no supply chain issue with eBooks,
That would risk undercutting sales of the print edition and leaving the publisher with a lot of unsold copies. Not gonna happen.
One factor is whether enough people will keep buying at the higher price point. Coda was three books in three months, and even much higher-profile books don’t get that kind of hardcover release. (Stephen King wanted to do a simultaneous hardcover release of the last three Dark Tower books, and the most he could get was having them released over a year). Plus the vast majority of novelverse titles had been paperbacks, so it would be unusual and risky to jump to hardcover for the finale.
Hmm. A few weeks ago, I was in the local Kelly Paper, and aside from not having what I needed, there was so little on the shelves that I asked if they were shutting down the location. It was only then that I learned there was a paper shortage. (I needed paper to run slug request forms at the Printing Museum; I ended up finding some at Staples, and decided on some 100% recycled stock that, as it turned out, ran beautifully on the Museum's Heidelberg Windmill.)
If Kelly's shelves are bare because of a paper shortage, that would explain much about the dearth of new ST books in general, as well as the delays in the handful that are scheduled for release.
If Kelly's shelves are bare because of a paper shortage, that would explain much about the dearth of new ST books in general, as well as the delays in the handful that are scheduled for release.
Which actually makes perfect sense: if the ebook came out too far ahead of the first print edition, it would hurt sales of the latter too much.
I normally do a similar thing with the newsletter I work on: even though it's certainly possible to send out the PDF edition in advance (and much easier now that the group has a couple of list servers set up), and with this month's edition, time constraints made it necessary to send out the PDF to all members, including those who normally get only the print edition, before the print edition was even ready to go in the mail, I normally don't even generate the PDF until at least a few hours after the print edition is in the mail, because I don't want to penalize those who choose to receive only the print edition.
I normally do a similar thing with the newsletter I work on: even though it's certainly possible to send out the PDF edition in advance (and much easier now that the group has a couple of list servers set up), and with this month's edition, time constraints made it necessary to send out the PDF to all members, including those who normally get only the print edition, before the print edition was even ready to go in the mail, I normally don't even generate the PDF until at least a few hours after the print edition is in the mail, because I don't want to penalize those who choose to receive only the print edition.
As has been said here, the print edition is the key to everything — booksellers and their customers are already placing orders and no one wants to undercut them. S.C.E. and the e-novellas were a different animal as those were crafted specifically for the delivery system they released in.
