They're more restrictive on that now, actually. After Disney purchased Lucasfilm and its properties, the official policy of the studio was to decanonize the extended universe works. The current policy is now much like what Paramount/CBS has treated Star Trek - it's only canon if they make it.
No, that's not right. Before, no matter how much the
Star Wars novels and comics were claimed to be canonical by Lucasfilm Licensing, the films freely ignored or contradicted them, and Lucas himself is on record as saying that he never considered them canonical after all. They were required to be consistent with
each other, but the onscreen material was under no obligation to acknowledge or stay consistent with them. But now, under Disney, the policy pursued by the Lucasfilm Story Group led by Pablo Hidalgo is that literally
everything is the same level of canon. Movies are incorporating characters and storylines from the animated TV shows, and elements introduced in novels and comics are showing up in both, because they're all working from a common blueprint.
Whereas in the case of
Star Trek, tie-ins have
never been canonical. That's the default definition of canon -- it's a nickname for the stuff from the original creators or owners
as opposed to the tie-ins and fanfic done by other people. As a rule, the only times that tie-ins can really be canonical is if they're from the same creators as the original work, because that's the only way to really keep them consistent with the original work (short of a dedicated operation like the Story Group, which is pretty much unique). The only Trek novels that were
ever considered canonical were the two
Voyager novels written by
Voyager's showrunner Jeri Taylor. But as soon as Taylor left, her successors ignored her novels and contradicted them.
