One area I'd see that indicates Keith was right about the tough spot Pocket is the overall way that the bookl ine has been treated like the ugly stepchild. Countdown could have been a great book instead of a somewhat silly comic, and probably been out on the shelves quicker, but TPTB were more interested in the comics-reading demographic.
Actually comics can get on the shelves quicker than novels, because they're shorter. The lead time for novel publication is much longer than for a comic.
Add to that a rumored prohibition on TOS novels in the year leading up to the film's release, and what are they supposed to release?
It wasn't a "prohibition," it was a choice on the part of Pocket's editors to avoid the TOS era. Remember, at the time, we didn't yet know that the film would be an alternate timeline, just that it would be a prequel. So there was every possibility that it might have redefined some fundamental things about the TOS era as we knew it, and therefore the editors preferred to avoid doing any TOS fiction that might be contradicted soon after, or even before, the books came out.
Of course, in broad terms like those, there's always the possibility of:
Option 3. Take a minimal risk. Potential consequences: 1. Make a little more money than you otherwise would, and know that there's yet more to be made in future. 2. Lose a little more money than you otherwise would, and know that you've investigated a potential market.
Pocket did take a minimal risk by putting out the
Star Trek 101 nonfiction book as a movie tie-in despite the traditional poor performance of Trek nonfiction. But that was scuttled when Paramount delayed the movie after it was too late to reschedule the book.
Then there was going to be a hardcover
Crucible omnibus with new material as a tie-in to the movie's new release date, but the economy tanked, Marco got laid off, and the project had to be cancelled.
So it's not that Pocket didn't try anything. It's that circumstances undermined the things Pocket did try.
Isn't the situation about the 40 year anniversary a bit different than this year's release of a new movie? I mean, 2006 the only recent thing on TV was the mediocre Enterprise, Star Trek's decline was never more obvious. So I'd guess that also translates into poor sales.
But this time, there was a new movie that's been hyped all over the place, Kirk & Spock were once again the main characters in recent Trek - IMO a vastly different situation for trying to sell reprinted TOS-novels...
As Keith said, hype for a movie doesn't guarantee sales for its tie-in books. Look at
Watchmen. As Keith also said, book vendors don't look at the performance of movies, they look at the performance of earlier books in the same series or category. Yes, it's a different situation, but try telling
them that. They have their formulas.
FWIW, the "replace images of old actors with the new ones" is not an altogether crazy idea. The Wired comic already retconned the Pine and Saldana appearances in the prime reality.
Not really. The renderings of Kirk and Uhura didn't closely resemble either pair of actors and could've been interpreted either way. Uhura had Saldana's hairstyle, but not really her face. And Kirk didn't look remotely like either actor to me. However, the comic did use the movie's uniform design.
I'm also thinking they probably can't do any novels set in the new timeline since they're already fast-tracking a sequel for summer 2011. Then again, if they were given some inkling of what the sequel would do, they could have a tie-in novel ready to go.
Plenty of tie-in novels in the past have been done without knowing where subsequent movies or episodes would go. If tie-ins were avoided due to the risk of contradiction, there'd hardly be any tie-ins. Yes, it's taking a risk, but that's just the nature of the business. As I often say, every work of science fiction will eventually be contradicted by reality, whether by scientific discoveries that disprove the story's assumptions or simply by the calendar catching up with the story.
The way it's worked in the past is that you tell a story that doesn't alter the status quo -- though ideally one that lets you explore the characters in more depth and fill in some more detail on the universe. There's always the chance that a later film might reveal things that contradict your assumptions, but all you can do is try to minimize that risk by avoiding any really radical revelations or changes.
(Which is another reason why I wasn't talking about the kind of huge political stories
DaveGalanter seemed to think I was. It would actually be best to stay away from stories like that. They'd probably have to be fairly continuity-light tales. Which is why much of the interest would come from exploring the different attributes of this timeline and its characters, evoking the distinct feel of the movie continuity.)
True, Pocket avoided doing TOS novels last year for risk of contradiction, but that was because Pocket and the rest of us knew so little about the film. Now we have a clearer sense of the basic parameters of the Abrams timeline, so even though we don't know where a sequel would go, it would be possible to devise stories that could fit with the movie currently in theaters, whether prequels or cautiously structured followups.
Then a year or so later, they ran another story about Worf suddenly winding up in the Delta Quadrant and joining Voyager. 
It really is the number one news service. 
