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ViacomCBS Selling Simon & Schuster

iarann said:
I just don't see anything that suggests there will be multiple companies releasing adult novels simultaneously, and I can't even think of a modern license that does that. .
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Funny story. Several years ago, as a Tor editor, I tried to acquire the book license to a certain popular property. Let's call it SPACE VIXENS. The deal was all worked out when, at the last minute, the licensor declined to offer us "exclusive" rights to adult novels unless we paid them a lot more money.

"Whoa there," I protested. "Without exclusivity, what's to stop you from licensing a competitive line of adult SPACE VIXENS novels at Roc or Del Rey or wherever."

"Oh, we would never do that, Greg."

"Great. So put that in the contract."

"Not for this amount of money. You'll just have to trust us."

"I don't think our Contracts Department recognizes 'trust us' as a sound legal principle."

Needless to say, those books never happened. :)
 
Damian said:
For all my own talk about how I like a tighter continuity--I recognize it'll never be perfect. Sometimes it can be as simple as a mistake.
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And there are strategies for dealing with it even then. One section of my shared-universe best practices lecture is titled "Eat Your Mistakes," exploring the tactic of turning a continuity error into a plot or character point in something later on. You see it even in Frasier, when Sam Malone brings up that Frasier had said on Cheers that his father was dead and that he was an only child. By embracing the error, it's no longer a mistake.
 
JJMiller said:
And there are strategies for dealing with it even then. One section of my shared-universe best practices lecture is titled "Eat Your Mistakes," exploring the tactic of turning a continuity error into a plot or character point in something later on. You see it even in Frasier, when Sam Malone brings up that Frasier had said on Cheers that his father was dead and that he was an only child. By embracing the error, it's no longer a mistake.
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And Trek is no stranger to it either - just at the front of my mind is Laris addressing the Romulan forehead ridges by saying "he's a northerner," this being the first time since the forehead ridges were introduced (in 1988) for them to be brought up on screen.

It's why I personally have the whole idea of "don't sweat the small stuff" when it comes to continuity gaffes. There are always going to be discrepancies, even if Trek didn't have fifty plus years of history that it could trip up over. It's just human nature, and they're gonna happen. If you can come up with a one line explanation and move on, go with it. If it could later fuel a story (like the Klingon forehead ridges ended up doing), that's even better. But if it's not breaking the story or setting, you can probably just accept and move on, and better to do that than be hung up on it.
 
JJMiller said:
There are so many other factors involved it's very hard to draw straight comparisons. The Story Group era Star Wars comics far outsell those before them, but a huge part of that comes from the house effect. The average Marvel comic well outsells the average comic book from anyone else (as will be observed by anyone looking for long at my historical research site).

That said, the goal of synergy is a much larger one: promoting the brand, and by extension creating new opportunities for products across the board. There are video game novels and comics whose readerships are almost exclusively made up of players of the games, and in many cases those are the ONLY novels and comics those readers buy. Their interest is solely in the shared universe, and so it makes sense for the various pieces of the property to work together as much as possible.
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Thanks for the insight, @JJMiller.
 
hbquikcomjamesl said:
But on the other hand, Bantam and Ballantine/Del Rey split the license before Pocket.
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Bantam did TOS, Ballantine did TAS. I figure it's like how Malibu had the DS9 license while DC had TOS and TNG. Plus, Ballantine only did novelizations, not original novels (well, technically -- several of Foster's books had more original than adapted material, but they were still expansions on the adapted episodes' concepts and stories).
 
Christopher said:
Bantam did TOS, Ballantine did TAS. I figure it's like how Malibu had the DS9 license while DC had TOS and TNG. Plus, Ballantine only did novelizations, not original novels (well, technically -- several of Foster's books had more original than adapted material, but they were still expansions on the adapted episodes' concepts and stories).
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I kind of figure it was like how the Superman/Superboy series can split one character into 2 seperate entities, and the Salkinds were able to sell the Superman movie/TV rights in the 80’s but retain the Superboy movie/TV rights.
 
Damian said:
At first I was sort of ignoring this CaptainXavi, but he seems pretty insistent that the current contract with S&S is basically null and void (at least that's the gist I'm getting).
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I didn’t say that. I would have no idea either way.

What I do know is another publisher is doing books like the ones written by the writers in this thread. It could be a couple years away.

I don’t think there are going to be exclusive merchandisers going forward. Perhaps different types of books and toys and collectibles, but no category exclusivity. That’s how all Nickelodeon managed brands work, including the ones I work with.

So say hypothetically, Untitled Nickelodeon Animated Series will have action figures from COMPANY A targeting smaller kids and sold at Walmart, and from COMPANY B targeting older collector-types and sold at comic book stores.
 
CaptainXaviOfEarth said:
So say hypothetically, Untitled Nickelodeon Animated Series will have action figures from COMPANY A targeting smaller kids and sold at Walmart, and from COMPANY B targeting older collector-types and sold at comic book stores.
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If so, that might apply only to the Nickelodeon show, not to other Trek tie-ins. As mentioned above, there have been plenty of cases where different individual Trek series have been licensed separately. That's more the rule than the exception.
 
iarann said:
I just don't see anything that suggests there will be multiple companies releasing adult novels simultaneously, and I can't even think of a modern license that does that. The example given with Rebels seems odd considering Star Wars does has those same kinds of contracts regarding exclusivity as Star Trek, with Del Rey having the license rights for the adult novels, Marvel for the adult comics, etc.
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It may very well be Young Adult license. That distinction hasn’t been made to me, but it seems like that’s how they could circumvent whatever agreements are in place now, based on the information in this thread. It could also be YA in name only, but actually just a regular book. That’s a little underhanded but I’ve seen it done before.
 
Christopher said:
If so, that might apply only to the Nickelodeon show, not to other Trek tie-ins. As mentioned above, there have been plenty of cases where different individual Trek series have been licensed separately. That's more the rule than the exception.
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I can’t talk about what I know the book is for.
 
Christopher said:
You're doing an awful lot of talking about what you can't talk about. When I have a business secret I can't talk about, I just don't say anything.
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I haven’t said anything beyond there being something. That’s not a secret. NYTF already confirmed this. It’s like knowing there are 2 more shows and a movie coming. Knowing it exists is fine. Confirming they exist is fine. Actually talking about what it is, that’s the restriction.

Instead of critiquing me, people should focus on themselves and their professional relationships. I’d be downright embarrassed and somewhat angry if I didn’t know something as substantial as Star Trek merchandise moving under Nickelodeon’s watch, and the first I had heard about it was on a forum by a random poster, about 6 weeks after it already happened.

As I said, I know exactly what I’m allowed to say and what not to say. The stuff I talk about, they don’t care. That’s the simple truth. The new stuff they’re doing, they care about. But it’s Nickelodeon. They’re less precious about it, versus say, Disney or Hasbro.

But regardless, this stuff clearly upsets so many of you and I don’t intend it to, so I’m just going to stop posting about this stuff now.
 
tomswift2002 said:
I kind of figure it was like how the Superman/Superboy series can split one character into 2 seperate entities, and the Salkinds were able to sell the Superman movie/TV rights in the 80’s but retain the Superboy movie/TV rights.
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Granted, with really long-standing properties, it's possible to slice off different variations of the same character. When the Antonio Banderas ZORRO movies came out, Pocket got the rights to the movie novelization, but I did an end run and published a series of ZORRO novels based on the original novels by Johnston McCulley, as opposed to the new movies.

Pulled a similar stunt with the AVENGERS remake (Steed and Peel, not Marvel). Another publisher got the book rights to the new movie version with Uma Thurman, so I reprinted a cool old novel based on the original TV series. (Written by Trek's own John Peel).
 
S&S is chugging along with Trek novels, so bringing in another publisher to basically offer "more Star Trek novels just like the ones that other group does" seems counterproductive, and there's no compelling reason for ViacomCBS to "revoke" an agreement already in place and which will (assuming it's not renewed) expire within a set timeframe, anyway. If Licensing wanted a change of direction from S&S so far as how to tie into the shows with the books they're licensed to publish, they'd ask for it....as they have every time a new iteration is introduced to the mix. For Discovery and Picard, those books (and the comics from IDW) have been developed in close coordination with Kirsten Beyer representing the show side of things, enjoying an unprecedented level of attention and assistance.

Yes, there are other publishers that currently produce other types of Trek books - reference works, oddball stuff like the travel guides, kids books, etc. - but those have been happening for a while now and as has been pointed out, all of those are already outside of what S&S currently does for Trek. If a new show like Lower Decks or the animated show slated for Nickelodeon lends itself to these sorts of "other" books then it makes sense those publishers will be engaged, but we already have that even with books based on the existing shows that aren't novels, like the Little Golden Books, humor and gift books, etc.

In short, situation normal. Everybody relax, and breathe regular.
 
CaptainXaviOfEarth said:
I thought “Space Vixens” was code for Star Fox. Nevermind.
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Nah. SPACE VIXENS is just my go-to name for an imaginary sci-fi series when I don't want to name names or am just talking about licensing in general. It actually dates back to an ALIAS novel I wrote ages ago in which Sydney had to go undercover at a "Star Vixen" convention.

It's my personal sci-fi equivalent of "John Doe." :)

Although maybe I should retire it since apparently there's actually something called "Star Fox"?
 
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