STARGATE ATLANTIS : rewatch disscussions and comments

[AJ86]

Assumption 1: The only market for tie-in books is among hardcore fans.

It's not without reasoning though is it? Who else is going to buy relatively poorly written novels based on a TV series unless they're hardcore fans? I mean I'm sure those people exist, but I doubt they're in any sort of majority. Besides, how am I making an assumption any more than you are? What evidence do you have that the sales are dominated mostly by casual fans?

Assumption 2: Hardcore Stargate fans only want to read tie-in books that are considered canonical by the producers.

I never said that at all. I said that many more hardcore fans would buy the books were they actually canon. If you actually read the forums when this question is asked, you'd see that it really is the case, unless people are for some reason lying.

Conclusion: Stargate books sell poorly because the producers do not consider them canonical.

You're confused. No one said they sell poorly. I said they'd sell a lot better if they were considered canon.

Both of those assumptions are a bit of a stretch. Canonicity doesn't seem to affect the sales of Star Trek books at all, and I can't imagine Stargate fans being substantially more anal than Trek fans.

Are there are canon Trek book sales you can compare to the non-canon ones? If not, then how could you possibly know how much the canon status of the books help or hinder sales?

 

[The Wormhole]

Star Wars books were at one time considered canon, until the prequels came along and pissed all over them, picking and choosing what they wanted and didn't want to be canon. Despite this, sales for Star Wars novels haven't had a noticeable change. And, Star Wars novels of nebulous canon sell just as well as Star Trek books which are 100% non-canon.

Canon is just a word used for internet arguments, not a decider in book sales.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Star Wars books were at one time considered canon, until the prequels came along and pissed all over them, picking and choosing what they wanted and didn't want to be canon. Despite this, sales for Star Wars novels haven't had a noticeable change. And, Star Wars novels of nebulous canon sell just as well as Star Trek books which are 100% non-canon.

Canon is just a word used for internet arguments, not a decider in book sales.

People who really want more Stargate will, if they like tie-in books, buy them--canon be damned. Trek books have never been canon, not even the novelizations of episodes/films, and those have sold steadily over the years.

Star Wars books have a very muddled canon status and they, too, manage to sell.

Stargate books just don't sell very well because the Stargate audience has always been small--well under half the Trek audience, comparing peak to peak. Quality aside (I don't know how good any of the books are), people not interested in Stargate are very unlikely to buy Stargate books, so you really have to draw from people who watched the shows.

There's just no evidence that canonicity matters as a driver of tie-in book sales.

 

[Saquist]

Most fans of any given show are actually not invested enough to talk about it online. Places like TrekBBS and Gateworld don't represent the mainstream fans, but rather the hardcore fans. Gateworld has about 42,000 members. SG-1 got canceled having somewhere between 1-2 million weekly viewers, right? The entire Syfy forum has 146,067 members, and presumably millions of people are watching their shows. TrekBBS has 21,209 members, while at its peak TNG was pulling over 10 million viewers a week.

You see what I mean? Online fandom is a tiny fraction of a fraction of the people who actually watch (or ever watched) a show. In other words, their opinions don't really matter when it comes to making business decisions.

SGU didn't fail because people here and over at Gateworld didn't like it. It failed because a couple million people gave it an honest chance and they didn't like it. They were bored, turned off, whatever.

Tie-in books generally don't sell that well to begin with, either. Saying the Stargate books don't sell well because they're not canon assumes the general book-buying public cares about such things. They don't. They care primarily about whether the book has good reviews and good word-of-mouth, or they just buy it on impulse. Canonicity may be of concern to hardcore fans, but not to anyone else.

The point is that these represent an excellent sampling of those fans you wouldn't normally have.

Like Stargate for instances...pretty much what the fans are saying on Gateworld is what the people at the Gate Cons are saying (within reason). It's fascinating really and that's why the producers do listen but often they wait too late.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Most fans of any given show are actually not invested enough to talk about it online. Places like TrekBBS and Gateworld don't represent the mainstream fans, but rather the hardcore fans. Gateworld has about 42,000 members. SG-1 got canceled having somewhere between 1-2 million weekly viewers, right? The entire Syfy forum has 146,067 members, and presumably millions of people are watching their shows. TrekBBS has 21,209 members, while at its peak TNG was pulling over 10 million viewers a week.

You see what I mean? Online fandom is a tiny fraction of a fraction of the people who actually watch (or ever watched) a show. In other words, their opinions don't really matter when it comes to making business decisions.

SGU didn't fail because people here and over at Gateworld didn't like it. It failed because a couple million people gave it an honest chance and they didn't like it. They were bored, turned off, whatever.

Tie-in books generally don't sell that well to begin with, either. Saying the Stargate books don't sell well because they're not canon assumes the general book-buying public cares about such things. They don't. They care primarily about whether the book has good reviews and good word-of-mouth, or they just buy it on impulse. Canonicity may be of concern to hardcore fans, but not to anyone else.

The point is that these represent an excellent sampling of those fans you wouldn't normally have.

Like Stargate for instances...pretty much what the fans are saying on Gateworld is what the people at the Gate Cons are saying (within reason). It's fascinating really and that's why the producers do listen but often they wait too late.

I'm sure the producers are really concerned about what 20,000-odd fans think out of an audience of 1-2 million.

 

[DimesDan]

Me, I read novels based in the Trek universe, I've read a fair few in the Star Wars universe and I couldn't care two hoots about whether or not the story "actually" exist or not. Yes it's enjoyable to watch or read something, but it's all make belief anyway and if I feel the need to include events that occur in a novel into my own personal continuity I will, canon be damned

 

[Temis the Vorta]

And while Star Wars certainly sells considerably well, it doesn't really pull in much more than other tie-in novels, and I don't think that it would hurt sales much if George Lucas suddenly decided they weren't canon.

You haven't been keeping up with the Warsie news, have you?

No, it's okay. It's better this way.

The Clone Wars is a great example of why writers should ignore canon. They're taking the PT and telling it right this time. If that steamrollers some novels I've never read and never will, fine by me!

By far the biggest job Star Wars needed to do is repair the immense and very high-profile damage done by the terrible PT movies. All the Star Wars novels ever written aren't even a drop in the bucket compared with the notoriety of three bad movies, viewed by countless millions of people worldwide.

As for the original point, has TCW hurt novel sales? Even if it has, I doubt it could possibly equal the boost in revenue attributable to TCW and (especially) increased toy & merchandise sales, which is where the real money is.

 

[JarodRussell]

It's not without reasoning though is it? Who else is going to buy relatively poorly written novels based on a TV series unless they're hardcore fans?

Haha, ouch.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

It's not without reasoning though is it? Who else is going to buy relatively poorly written novels based on a TV series unless they're hardcore fans?

Haha, ouch.

I was just about to QFT that one. Of course only hardcore fans buy novels. I'd say that's how you define a hardcore fan - willing to buy and read novels - in any franchise. (Going to conventions and/or dressing up as characters are other qualifiers.)

Lookit me, I've never read a single Star Wars novel. I may have suffered through the PT and I may watch TCW, but I would never call myself a hardcore Star Wars fan. Watching movies and TV shows is just too easy to qualify for hardcore status.

 

[Admiral_Young]

I'll chime in here since I've started to re-watch Atlantis reruns again, random ones mind you not in order. I think the first two or three seasons of this show were really strong, while the fourth and fifth series dipped in quality. McKay is my favorite character by far but I also liked Col. Sheppard despite the fact that Joe Flannigan gets a lot of flak for being a poor actor. I don't think he's a poor actor, he reminds me of Tom Welling who has become very familiar with his role and kind of just going through the motions. I got the same sense from Flannigan's portrayal of Sheppard.

 

[JarodRussell]

It's not without reasoning though is it? Who else is going to buy relatively poorly written novels based on a TV series unless they're hardcore fans?

Haha, ouch.

I was just about to QFT that one. Of course only hardcore fans buy novels. I'd say that's how you define a hardcore fan - willing to buy and read novels - in any franchise. (Going to conventions and/or dressing up as characters are other qualifiers.)

Lookit me, I've never read a single Star Wars novel. I may have suffered through the PT and I may watch TCW, but I would never call myself a hardcore Star Wars fan. Watching movies and TV shows is just too easy to qualify for hardcore status.

I was more referring to the "poorly written".

And then again, I'm no hardcore fan, and I read tie in novels. I read them as novels, I don't care what franchise they belong to. If the blurb is interesting, if the cover looks nice, if the random pages I read are nice, I buy them. I have random Star Wars, Star Trek, even seaQuest novels and I haven't even seen a full episode of that.