U.S.S. TITAN -- THE WINNER!

[Cary L. Brown]

As far as "tech manuals" being published, there haven't been ANY recently, and when you look at the "companions" or "encyclopedias," the later versions didn't sell so well because they were exactly what I described... slight updates to preexisting works. Few people bought them because there was very little new in them, and certainly not enough to make it worth the $50 or so. An "addendum" book, smaller but in the same format, would have been great. But someone thought that more money was to be made from reselling the whole thing, and as a result less copies were actually purchased. I know that you can still find old copies of the later versions of these things sitting at the local Borders... with dust on top. It's a great book, but it's not enough NEW to qualify the purchase price.

This is, indeed, what happened as far as "companions" and "encyclopedias" went.

The DS9 companion didn't sell well... well, that's no surprise to me, personally, because I never buy "companions." On the other hand, I have a VAST collection of "technical" books of various types. Those interest me.

I also have a copy of the various "fantastic cross section" and "visual dictionary" books I mentioned above, and the "Kong" book, among others.

Bookstores are filled to the brim with copies of various guidebooks that certainly sell far less copies than a Trek book would sell, and yet those continue to be published and sold.

Is the problem that Paramount requires an unreasonably high "piece of the action" and that's what's making it unfeasible? For a well-done work, the sales have GOT to be as good as those for, for example, Corvair owners!

I don't buy that fans wouldn't buy a well-done work. That's the same line that Paramount marketing held back in the late 70's and early 80s... and fan-publishing took over and proved that entirely incorrect. Books like "Starship Design" or "Ships of the Starfleet" or "Starfleet Prototypes" came along and proved that there was, indeed, a market... IF the quality was there.

I haven't bought any Trek technical books for a long time... because there haven't been any worth buying. The closest thing is the "maps" booklet from a couple of years ago. On the other hand, I DID buy two copies of the "Ships of the Line" calendar this year... one to hang on my office wall at work, and one to keep clean and safe, since it's really a work of art!

If there were anything worthy of my money, I'd be there to buy it. All that has to happen is for someone to create something like that... it'd be nice if the "official" folks made it, but if not, hey, it's not Paramount, or S&S or Pocket that I care about... it's Star Trek, something I grew up on!

 

[Dayton Ward]

Cary L. Brown said:
As far as "tech manuals" being published, there haven't been ANY recently, and when you look at the "companions" or "encyclopedias," the later versions didn't sell so well because they were exactly what I described... slight updates to preexisting works. Few people bought them because there was very little new in them, and certainly not enough to make it worth the $50 or so. An "addendum" book, smaller but in the same format, would have been great. But someone thought that more money was to be made from reselling the whole thing, and as a result less copies were actually purchased. I know that you can still find old copies of the later versions of these things sitting at the local Borders... with dust on top. It's a great book, but it's not enough NEW to qualify the purchase price.

This is, indeed, what happened as far as "companions" and "encyclopedias" went.

Well, sort of.

Yes, the TOS and TNG companions, the Chronology and the Encyclopedia were updated and rereleased. That's a consequence of creating reference works while the source material continues to receive additions, modifications, and enhancements (I assume you don't still use the same dictionary or encyclopedia you used in junior high school, but instead prefer to utilize a more up-to-date reference.).

The DS9 and VGR companions were issued only once, as they were created after their respective series had finished their runs.

As for the Encylopedia, only the third (and last, to date) revision utilized the "addendum" format, as it was decided by the number crunchers that said format would A) keep the unit price reasonable, thereby resulting in B) more units sold. As I recall the 1999 (third) edition was priced at $28 in the US for the trade paperback version, but I don't have my copy handy to verify.

 

[KRAD]

Ah yes, the logic of the Internet -- "I'd buy it, so it would sell well."

 

[TerriO]

*bangs the side of the record player*

 

[Titan Designer]

I know I want to flesh out the Interior, shuttle compliment and other secrets that she may be hidding. If I did not work on it at all I would still love to see it happen, and I would buy it.


I know I want to see what the crew looks like.

 

[RookieBatman]

I second the motion for a fold-out poster of the Titan. And a fold-out poster in Crucible, of the three covers together. Heck, from here on out, let's just have a poster in every Star Trek book! (Okay, maybe I took that too far.)
No, but seriously, the more Titan, the better.

 

[Brynthe2]

RookieBatman said:
I second the motion for a fold-out poster of the Titan. And a fold-out poster in Crucible, of the three covers together. Heck, from here on out, let's just have a poster in every Star Trek book! (Okay, maybe I took that too far.)
No, but seriously, the more Titan, the better.

Okay.. since you seconded my idea.. I'll second yours.. here's to every Trek book coming with a fold out poster from here on out.

But seriously, a poster in the next novel wouldn't be so hard.. would it? Maybe a nice profile pic on one side (enlarged from the cover to save time and expense of multiple artwork) and then some of the interior on the other side (bridge, engineering.. one or two of Titan's rather uniquely designed living spaces.)

 

[Rosalind]

I would love to see a poster of Titan in the next book as well.

 

[RookieBatman]

Brynthe2 said:

RookieBatman said:
I second the motion for a fold-out poster of the Titan. And a fold-out poster in Crucible, of the three covers together. Heck, from here on out, let's just have a poster in every Star Trek book! (Okay, maybe I took that too far.)
No, but seriously, the more Titan, the better.

Okay.. since you seconded my idea.. I'll second yours.. here's to every Trek book coming with a fold out poster from here on out.

That would be really cool, wouldn't it!
Actually, one problem is that if they were really good-sized posters, especially if most were of ships, it might possibly diminish from the Ships of the Line calendar sales. I don't know, I think I'd still buy both, but I certainly can't speak for the masses.

 

[Trent Roman]

Hate to be a fun-killer here, but it seems to me that the cost of the glossy paper required for such a poster (particularly in colour!), and then insetting it into the book's binding, would be considerable. I like the maps and schematics that we've had accompanying certain novels in the past, printed straight onto the pages, and that's something I'd like to see more of (and would consider more feasable).

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[Titan Designer]

It will probably be the most cost effective to do it the way they did Vangaurd.

But I would like to see maybe something like the e-book Idea, that way you can
still keep the richness of the Images.

If they were to print a poster in the books that would be to costly.

 

[fleetcaptain]

Sounds like a good idea but some of us don't have e-book. I mean I do like images have that richness to them too. I mean Vanguard's layout poster looked good itself. But I for sure would like to see a poster of Titan too. Maybe even a cutaway eventually too.

 

[Trek]

Maybe we'll get to see Titan in a "Ships of the Line" calendar at some point...

 

[Titan Designer]

Ellory and I are trying to convince Marco to try and get the girl in next years calendar. Who knows maybe she will make it in there.

 

[RookieBatman]

That would be awesome!
EDIT: It's not like the calender only has canonical, onscreen ships anyway. This month's picture in '06 SHIPS is something that looks like a transitional stage between the NX-01 and the Constitution. Given that they give artists that kind of freedom, I see no reason why the Titan shouldn't have her time in the spotlight. :thumbsup:

 

[Rosalind]

except the calendar comes out in July-ish, and the book won't come out until Jan, guess it depends on when Marco want to unveil the ship.

and i would love to see Titan in Ships, especially when next year is TNG's 20th.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

KRAD said:
Ah yes, the logic of the Internet -- "I'd buy it, so it would sell well."

Ah, the logic of those in denial... "the reason that things aren't selling well has nothing to do with what's being offered."

The point made, if you'll recall, was that there have not been sufficient sales of "trek books" in recent years to support any "tech manuals," or for that matter audio books, or many other things.

But those types of items are selling very well in other, non-Trek areas.

So, there can only be two explanations:

1) The market... specifically the TREK market... simply no longer exists, or
2) The market is there but the product is not (or, more precisely, the product offered does not meet the demands of the market).

Instead of doing a smart-aleck "roll eyes" thing, can you suggest a different reason why sales have been too low to support any publishing, as has been stated to be the case here? Or do you believe that the market is simply gone (and if so, why?) I've heard the "Trek Fatigue" argument repeatedly... but I've never seen any actual evidence to support that, only heard it from people who, for the most part, have a vested interest in "demonstrating" that the fault must lie with the consumers, not with the product (ie, those who are involved in MAKING the product).

Trek Fatigue? We'll see... if the release of the Animated Series later this year on DVD has poor sales (relative not to some phoney Paramount "weighted scale" but instead relative to other DVDs on the market), that might support such a claim. But I think we'll see just the opposite.

Look... my point is still there and you, "rolling of eyes" notwithstanding, haven't addressed it. The statement was that "tech manuals haven't sold well enough to justify them." My response was "how can you say that when there hasn't been one in years, and most of the stuff that was published before that dried up was rehashing of prior works, not new works."

I hold that a QUALITY new work based upon the 1701E, the NX-01, or even the Titan... heck, just about ANYTHING... would sell well enough to justify it's creation and publishing, unless the Paramount "cut" is so out-of-proportion that NOTHING (short of "The Bible, Part 2" or "The Other Half of Shakespeare's Works") could make money for the publisher.

Roll eyes all you want...

 

[Christopher]

Cary L. Brown said:
Look... my point is still there and you, "rolling of eyes" notwithstanding, haven't addressed it. The statement was that "tech manuals haven't sold well enough to justify them." My response was "how can you say that when there hasn't been one in years, and most of the stuff that was published before that dried up was rehashing of prior works, not new works."

I keep hearing that argument, but I think it ignores one vital point. As I understand it, the reason those last few tech/reference books were so bare-bones is because the more ambitious, full-fledged tech/ref books that preceded them had sold too poorly to offset the high cost of creating such books. You're reversing cause and effect here.

 

[RookieBatman]

Rosalind said:
except the calendar comes out in July-ish, and the book won't come out until Jan, guess it depends on when Marco want to unveil the ship.

and i would love to see Titan in Ships, especially when next year is TNG's 20th.

Okay, that's a good reason. But it could still be there in 2008.

 

[KRAD]

The reason I roll my eyes is not because I'm in denial. The reason I roll my eyes is because I'm tired of people who don't work in the publishing industry refusing to believe that the people who do it professionally know what they're doing.

The reason why the books aren't being done isn't because they're not selling a certain number per se, it's that they aren't selling enough to justify the incredibly high cost of producing them. Pocket did everything they could to make Star Charts as nice a package as they could as cheaply as humanly possible. It was a wonderful book, one that is glossy and detailed and nifty and one that has proven very useful to pretty much every author I know.

Pocket lost money on it.

Simon & Schuster is a business. They need to make money on a product in order to justify doing it. The market is there for Star Trek fiction. The market isn't there in sufficient numbers for Trek nonfiction to keep doing it.

You don't want to believe that, fine, but the people in the Trek at Pocket have an aggregate 50+ years' experience in the publishing industry. I trust their judgment a lot sooner than I'd trust someone outside it.