Have you seen the amount of insanity in bookstores right now over Watchmen? It's barely going to be in the public's eye for two weeks.
What happened to "episode" books?
- Thread starter AuntKate
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Have you seen the amount of insanity in bookstores right now over Watchmen? It's barely going to be in the public's eye for two weeks.
Didn't know you had precognitive abilities. But since most book shop employees don't have them, they can only look at the trends from the past.
But anyway, I'm sorry for posting something your box office senses have already disproved with 100% certainty.
Yeah. The shops would be smart to ignore the new movie, and hope it just goes away and stops bothering anyone.
Seriously, nobody said they should/would ignore the movie, only that it is unlikely that they would do anything of the magnitude you seem to accept as a given only because it was done 20-30 years in the past.
Didn't know you had precognitive abilities. But since most book shop employees don't have them, they can only look at the trends from the past.
But anyway, I'm sorry for posting something your box office senses have already disproved with 100% certainty.
Whoa, dude; chill. The numbers won't decline with this one, it's all but certainty. This is not because it is better in any quantifiable way, but rather because the studio has invested a lot more money in it than in the last few, and it is thus being advertised far more heavily and convincingly to its target demographic. Advertising money = movie earnings, not in a strictly 1:1 relationship, but it makes a difference. Paramount is extremely invested in this film being successful, and absolutely no offense intended, but it only takes a pretty basic understanding of Hollywood to get that, making your snark rather entirely uncalled for.
That kind of thing (advertising money) is also what the bookstores will be paying attention to (again, just look at Watchmen), not past trends involving a separate series of films made with an entirely different cast of characters under a creative team having no one in common with the current one.
Didn't know you had precognitive abilities. But since most book shop employees don't have them, they can only look at the trends from the past.
But anyway, I'm sorry for posting something your box office senses have already disproved with 100% certainty.
Whoa, dude; chill. The numbers won't decline with this one, it's all but certainty. This is not because it is better in any quantifiable way, but rather because the studio has invested a lot more money in it than in the last few, and it is thus being advertised far more heavily and convincingly to its target demographic. Advertising money = movie earnings, not in a strictly 1:1 relationship, but it makes a difference. Paramount is extremely invested in this film being successful, and absolutely no offense intended, but it only takes a pretty basic understanding of Hollywood to get that, making your snark rather entirely uncalled for.
Thing is, I haven't seen much advertisement for the movie (beside the trailers and stuff on sites that are already trek related and therefore unlikely to bring in new people), be it on the Internet or in real life. Granted, I live in Germany and can't say how much it is advertised outside the Internet in other countries.
For better or worse Star Trek is a "franchise", and it's history will always play into how it is seen and treated, no matter how much it actually still has to do with past incarnations.
And history has shown that the chain book shops supported ST movies I, IV, VI, VII and VIII, plus TNG Seasons 3-7 by increasing the visibility of ST books to members of the general public.
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Sadly, the most recent of those is now 13 years ago - and much as I hate saying it, things have changed a lot. In the space of four weeks in the States there's Wolverine, Trek and Terminator... much as I'd love to think (and very much hope for obvious reasons) that this will be a resurgence of the franchise, I really don't think we'll see the effect of that start to filter through at least until the early part of 2010.
As mentioned above in the thread, there's a massive amount of material out there about Watchmen at the moment, but do you expect that to lead to a huge increase in sales of all other Alan Moore books? The movies based on them on DVD, probably yes. And the box set of the previous Trek movies is likely to do well -but books have gone down the list of people's priorities. A new TV series in the wake of, and emulating the new film - yes I can see a massive amount of spin-off potential there, as has been evidenced by the Doctor Who industry since 2005. But in the wake of one film? I'd love to think so, but I suspect not!
Paul
Well, I dunno. ST books sold in huge numbers in the latter years of the TOS movies and TNG. Some of those fans may not have bought a ST novel since the Richard Arnold days, and this new movie may send a lot of lapsed ST fans foraging in bookshops to check out what they've missed.
Operative word there, though, is "may" and in a cutthroat environment, particularly in a worldwide recession/depression, are booksellers going to take that speculative leap... or simply put more copies of the latest Tom Clancy/depression porn book out, knowing that it'll sell more copies?
I was attempting to make a hypothetical statement without allowing my personal bias to overwhelm. After all, why would I say that interconnectivity would continue, since I so obviously loathe it.
I think you risk putting all your eggs in one basket if you expect this movie to single-handedly inject new life and attract new readers to the Trek Lit line. Obviously the movie will have to be good. Something that won't be realised until the night it opens. Second it will have to pull in the numbers, beyond just the opening week, sufficent enough to tempt new readers with the movie novelisation.
That movie novelisation will have to be the gateway into Trek Lit. That's where the rejuvenation of the Lit franchise will have to succeed. That's where in my opinion, it won't. There hasn't been a decent movie novelisation in years, of any movie. The last decent Trek novelisation that I read was for Star Trek V, although given the source, it actually improved on the movie. Trek VI's novelisation was good, but not great, but all the others since then have been lacklustre. A lot of things have changed in the adaptation process, most of all time from solicitation to shop shelf. I think the days when writers like Vonda N. McIntyre could flesh out and build upon spec scripts are long gone.
Nowadays movie tie ins must be as close as possible to the actual movie, as people in suits being paid a lot for doing very little get confused when a bit in a book isn't in the movie. Most tie ins read more like pamphlets. I hope this novelisation is different, but I'm not crossing my fingers. In fact I'm hoping this movie is different, but again, I'm not crossing my fingers.
You should visit TrekMovie.com more often; they report on this all the time. This movie is getting more promotional hype than any ST film ever, or at least since the first one. And it's getting promoted in ways that are specifically designed to attract new viewers. There was a trailer aired during the Super Bowl, a high-profile spot that's very expensive to buy. There are ST Barbie dolls coming out. There's going to be a major promotion for the movie on Kellogg's cereal boxes. There will be toys at Burger King. There are promotional tie-ins with Esurance and Intel. There's so much commercial hype accompanying this film that it's starting to make me a little uncomfortable. And Abrams went on a worldwide tour to promote the film in countries where ST has never been popular. Paramount is pulling out all the stops in its efforts to promote and publicize this film.
But we're not talking about how the audience sees it, we're talking about how the studio promotes it, and how merchandisers react to that promotional effort. This movie is getting more PR than any Star Trek property in the past 30 years.
While I have high hopes for the new movie, it's also worth pointing out that even an unsuccessful movie can boost book sales enormously.
Look at INKHEART. The recent fantasy film was a box-office flop, but it still put the book on the bestseller lists for weeks. And that's not a fluke. This happens all the time. Publishers have made a ton of money off movies that disappointed at the box office.
The difference, of course, is that books don't cost $100 million to produce, so they have a much lower threshold for success. A blockbuster movie that only sells, say, 500,000 tickets is a disaster. A book that sells half a million copies is cause for celebration.
And we're not just talking a temporary boost. Tor is still selling copies of THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES . . . .
Look at INKHEART. The recent fantasy film was a box-office flop, but it still put the book on the bestseller lists for weeks. And that's not a fluke. This happens all the time. Publishers have made a ton of money off movies that disappointed at the box office.
The difference, of course, is that books don't cost $100 million to produce, so they have a much lower threshold for success. A blockbuster movie that only sells, say, 500,000 tickets is a disaster. A book that sells half a million copies is cause for celebration.
And we're not just talking a temporary boost. Tor is still selling copies of THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES . . . .
There is a difference though between books adapted for the screen, and movie tie-ins.
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True, but MOTHMAN had been out of print for years before the movie came along. Then we reissued it, slapped the movie poster on the cover, and, voila, the book hit the NYT bestseller list. Ditto for WHAT DREAMS MAY COME, which had also been out of print before the Robin Williams movie. Neither had been bestsellers before. The movies, neither of which blew the box office away, made them successes. And both are still selling to this day . . . .
And, weird as it seems, my experience is that there are LOTS of readers out there who don't make a distinction between novels and novelizations, and don't even realize there's a difference.
If I had a dime for every time I've had to explain that the UNDERWORLD novels are based on the movies not the other way around . . . !
Well, *I* bought a ton of Alan Moore's other books as a result of Watchmen. It's probably not a "huge increase in sales", but remember Ordover's thing about how only 2% of the fans of anything read the tie-in novels to begin with. We're working with small numbers in the first place.
If a quarter of one percent of the people who see the Trek movie try out one novel (I mean, of the people who wouldn't have bought one anyway), even just the novelization of the film or Troublesome Minds or whatever, that's a substantial increase in novel sales.
When I was at B&N the other day, they had a whole display of Alan Moore graphic novels set up, with a placard: "If you like WATCHMEN . . . ."
I haven't seen V FOR VENDETTA or LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN pop up on a bestseller list yet, but I haven't been looking.
I haven't seen V FOR VENDETTA or LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN pop up on a bestseller list yet, but I haven't been looking.
I've seen several similar displays here. Comic shops and bookshops.
Ditto both "Fantastic Four" movies and "Superman Returns", with the movies as a springboard to sell "The Making of..." books, novelizations, plus trade omnibus reprints of comics.
Oh, and also, regarding "Wolverine, Trek, and Terminator" - which of those three has the most marketing potential for a bookstore? Wolverine and Terminator come from non-book media. Well, I suppose Wolverine comes from comics, but the movie is pretty loosely based on them; mostly, that's gonna sell the X-Men movies & novelizations, and Terminator has a few novels but again not that many.
But Trek has a huge, already published, already display-ready set of novels they can just pile on a table.
I mean, I'm not expecting this to be all that an enormous bump either, but from a promotional standpoint, the Trek novels seem like an easy and cheap way to capitalize on the success/marketing push for a tentpole film. Like, even when Indiana Jones came out, they had tables full of the old Indy novels from the 90s all backordered and on display. You really think they won't push Trek at all similarly?
But Trek has a huge, already published, already display-ready set of novels they can just pile on a table.
I mean, I'm not expecting this to be all that an enormous bump either, but from a promotional standpoint, the Trek novels seem like an easy and cheap way to capitalize on the success/marketing push for a tentpole film. Like, even when Indiana Jones came out, they had tables full of the old Indy novels from the 90s all backordered and on display. You really think they won't push Trek at all similarly?
Ian, I don't disagree with your premise. But unless Pocket has something up their sleeves, I fear that the newly minted fan is going to be completely baffled by everything in bookstores except the novelization and Troublesome Minds, because Pocket's output has had jack to do with the new film they've just seen. They're going to have to get their fix from used bookstores, which helps Pocket, to say nothing of the cause of Treklit, not at all.
Ideally, Pocket should be releasing a series of reprints to coincide with the film, with the same look and feel as the novelization -- trade paperback, movie-derived photo cover. Do Best Destiny with a Chris Pine image, Spock's World with a Zachary Quinto cover, Uhura's Song with a Zoe Saldana cover, maybe even Vulcan's Glory or Where Sea Meets Sky with a Bruce Greenwood cover. That's what Pocket should be doing to tie into the film and promote the line.
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