Disgruntled Janeway fans: try a carrot

[Steve Roby]

There are two ways to motivate people: the stick (punishing them for doing the wrong thing) and the carrot (rewarding them for doing the right thing). There's a whole lot of stickwaving going on in recent topics, in which ardent Janeway supporters talk about the large silent majority of Janeway fans out there who are unhappy about her death. We're told that they won't buy any more Pocket books, that the sales will plummet, and there will be wailing and lamentations and gnashing of teeth at Pocket. But these posts are sometimes being written by people who haven't really been regulars here; we don't know if they ever actually bought any Voyager books before.

So, here's a simple suggestion: if you want to prove the power of your mighty Janeway army, if you want to state your concerns in a way that will affect Pocket's bottom line, if you want to reward them for what you think they should be doing... pick a Voyager novel that you think is a good example of what Pocket should be doing, and have all your followers buy it in the course of a single month. Buy print copies and ebook copies. Buy a lot of them and do it in a limited amount of time so that it shows in Pocket's accounting as a really anomalous event. Show the purchasing power of the Janeway army. Show them that you're serious about buying a certain kind of Voyager book.

After all, for all anybody knows, the Defenders of Janeway are three or four people with a lot of time on their hands. For all anybody knows, the people who are complaining never bothered to buy Voyager novels because they're too busy reading J/C fanfic. For all anybody knows, the threats about boycotting the books are empty and idle posturing.

So, try a carrot instead of just a stick. "Wrong thinking is punishable. Right thinking will be as quickly rewarded. You will find it... an effective combination." (That's a TOS reference, by the way.)

 

[Capt_Piett]

"talk about the large silent majority of Janeway fans out there who are unhappy about her death."

WAIT?!? WHAT? They killed Janeway?!?

 

[OmahaStar]

"talk about the large silent majority of Janeway fans out there who are unhappy about her death."

WAIT?!? WHAT? They killed Janeway?!?

I know. They could have simply court-martialed her. *shrug*

 

[-Brett-]

Disgruntled Janeway fans: try a carrot

Wait a minute.

Janeway has fans?

 

[captcalhoun]

they did. she was executed afterwards.

 

[Lynx]

I don't know if "Mosaic" by Jeri Taylor is still avaliable but that book is a good example of how a good Star Trek book should be.

The same for almost all of the 15 first books in the Voyager series.

Anyway, I already have "Mosaic", "Pathways" and all the books I think are good. Should I buy them again?

And if we really did what you suggest, would those in charge of Pocket Books react? Would they care? Isn't it a risk that they would do the same thing as when there was a "bring back Kes" campaign and those in charge of the show did bring back Kes-only to ridicule and destroy the character in "Fury"?

OK, your suggestion is worth to discuss but I'm not sure if it would work.

 

[Steve Roby]

It's a case of putting your money where your mouth is. If there really are a lot of Voyager/Janeway fans being represented by you, Brit, kimc, et al., show Pocket your economic clout.

 

[Brit]

It is an erroneous assumption that everyone involved in Fan Fiction is not involved in buying books and reading them. I was reading science fiction before many of you were even born. We are book buyers and book readers and that’s why we are driven to produce fic, we write what we want to read. Incidentally that is pretty much true for anyone that writes.

We want to read good character driven novels that at the very least acknowledges said people have both relationships of friendship and yes even ones of an intimate nature. We are not only boycotting Trek Books, we are directly telling the Publishers and Editors of Pocket Books that we are and why we are.

Again that is the reason we are here.

You say you have no influence in this forum, but you do. I think you know this and are making a concerted effort to dissuade us from bringing our very real protest to the playground that you have staked out as your own. If the authors of Trek Books post here then there is influence and there is no argument you can make that will persuade us we are wrong in this assessment.

Any and all logical arguments supporting “Dead Janeway” can be made for any other Trek character. Why not Picard, or Worf, or Sisko, or any other character? Because of that, we believe the death of Janeway was done for political reasons and poorly thought out. It was based on the erroneous idea that Janeway and Janeway alone was expendable, and that Janeway had no fans to protest, or worse that Janeway fans were too busy with their own fan fic and wouldn’t notice.

I find your ridicule of the fanfic writers at the very least shows your ignorance of the subject. You wouldn’t be even reading Trek Books at all if not for the fanfic writers. The second Trek book published (and I am not counting Whitman’s “Mission to Horatius”) was a compilation of already existing fan fiction, and the fourth book published was an expansion of again already existing fan fiction.

There would not be Trek Movies, or “The Next Generation” for two critical reasons, one is the fans that wrote letters to get the critical third season of The Original Series, and the people (by and large female) that wrote fan fiction and produced fanzines.

Is the majority of fan fiction poorly written? Yes, but from that same pool came Jacqueline Lichtenberg, Jean Lorrah, Juanita Coulson and others including some of the best of the science fiction/romance authors like Linnea Sinclair. There are others of us with the ambition to climb out of that pool too, and some that produce professional quality stories that wish to remain in the comfort of that pool.

We write what we want to read it’s as simple as that and in this day of diminishing profits, or in the case of this year, no profits at all, publishers are going to look at what sells, they are going to pay attention to the letters written to them and they are going to pay attention when someone says “I’m not buying your books because.”

One of you mentioned that “Before Dishonor” was seventh in the trek books, well I did a little research and “Before Dishonor” is actually 90,863rd in over all sells on Amazon. It was published in October of 2007. Janeway fans are buying other books, one of which is Susan Grant’s “Moonstruck” it was published in June 2008 and it is ranked 57,943 in overall sells.

Guys, what we want to read also sells, and it sells better.

Brit

PS, most of us don’t like Carrots, but with some you might offer peas or even wet celery and flying helmets.

 

[KRAD]

A few general points:

Amazon rankings are useless in determining overall sales of a book. They're the equivalent of the sales to a couple of very large bookstores, but that's it.

Similarly, the people who post on Internet bulletin boards are a tiny, nonrepresentative sample of the larger community. If Internet discussion were actually representative of anything, Serenity would've had higher grosses than The Phantom Menace, Articles of the Federation would be in its sixth printing instead of out of print, Secret Invasion and Final Crisis would've both tanked, and Snakes on a Plane would've been the most popular movie ever made instead of a major flop.

There are many thought processes involved in the creation of tie-in novels, but the desires of the fanbase never enter into it. For one thing, "What the fans want" is impossible to categorize because "fans" are not a monolithic group. Hell, "Janeway fans" are not a monolithic group. Stories are worked out based on what the writers and editor think will be a good story, not on the basis of how some fans will react on an Internet bulletin board.

 

[elaithin]

Which is exactly how it should be.

Every character has their fan base, after all. I'm sure someone out there - I don't know who, but someone - is still upset over the "horrible treatment of Tasha Yar!"

It's stories. The people telling them do the best they can to make them interesting. Good enough for me.

 

[Steve Roby]

I find your ridicule of the fanfic writers at the very least shows your ignorance of the subject. You wouldn’t be even reading Trek Books at all if not for the fanfic writers. The second Trek book published (and I am not counting Whitman’s “Mission to Horatius”) was a compilation of already existing fan fiction, and the fourth book published was an expansion of again already existing fan fiction.

Are you talking to me? I made one remark about fanfic in passing. Your several paragraphs of indignation completely missed the point I was making, which had nothing to do with fanfic.

I'll restate it.

Some of the militant Janeway fans around here are saying that lots of Voyager fans will boycott the books, to punish Pocket for its editorial decision. Past experience shows that a few noisy people don't always have the mass support they claim to have. If you want Pocket to take notice of your threat, prove your vast legions of fans exist by using some positive reinforcement.

I'm trying to make this simple. but since you don't seem to understand the carrot vs stick metaphor, I don't know if this post will clarify anything at all. Hint: I'm saying you should offer Pocket a carrot in the form of buying a Voyager novel you like instead of offering the stick of a boycott.

 

[Brit]

No I don't have to prove anything; I am not here to prove how many of us there are. Why don't you prove we don't exist? The attitudes expressed here are meant to belittle and disenfranchise us, and I am not going argue who's is the biggest. There are significant numbers of us and all one has to do is look at the number of authors in the Trek Voyager section on Fan Fiction.net. It doesn't matter if we are good writers or not, we are fans.

Now you can take this two ways, you can believe that I am embellishing the number of Janeway fans, or you can simply believe me. Doesn't matter because either way I win. If you take the first route, you will be sticking your head in the sand.

For a good long time you all have sat here insulated from the scope of the true fandom and it's time that you take the blinders off. We are fans, we have the right to post here, and we have the right to boycott. Our desire is as valid as any of yours.

And as for the carrot thing, well that is pretty lame. The attitude that we need to read the book before judging it is rather like telling McCain supporters that they should have put Obama signs in their yards if they wanted to win.

Like I said before, most of us were not born yesterday.

Brit

 

[captcalhoun]

say 20 million people watched VGR.

of them, probably 1 million were Janeway fans.

srsly, how many of those 1 million Janeway fans write fan fic?

about 2, 300 tops.

how many Janeway fans read the books?

probably 50,000

how many of those Janeway fans who read the books AND write fan-fic?

maybe 100.

and of them, how many are pissed about Janeway being dead?

20.

get the picture? an incrediby tiny amount of people compared to those who watched the show.

that's facts, not trying to belittle and disenfranchise people.

 

[kimc]

Anyway, I already have "Mosaic", "Pathways" and all the books I think are good. Should I buy them again?

The OP has an interesting idea but I'm in the same boat. I even when out and bought "Distant Shores" when I heard about "Isabo's Shirt".

say 20 million people watched VGR.

of them, probably 1 million were Janeway fans.

Whoa! That's some creative math you have going on there. You honestly believe that only 1 out of 20 Voyager viewers are actually a fan of the captain of the show?

 

[kimc]

show Pocket your economic clout.

Who has any of THAT nowadays?

 

[Steve Roby]

No I don't have to prove anything; I am not here to prove how many of us there are. Why don't you prove we don't exist?

I'm not the one claiming that Pocket's going to lose money as a result of your boycott.

we have the right to boycott.

Absolutely. But if you haven't been buying the books so far, your boycott is meaningless because it won't affect the sales of the books.

And as for the carrot thing, well that is pretty lame. The attitude that we need to read the book before judging it is rather like telling McCain supporters that they should have put Obama signs in their yards if they wanted to win.

You still don't get it. It has nothing to do with reading a book before judging it. I'll try this one more time.

The stick approach: we're going to boycott the stuff we don't like, so you make less of it.
The carrot approach: we're going to financially support the stuff we do like, so you make more of it.

If a given book sells fewer copies than expected, there are a lot of possible reasons why. The economy has people buying fewer books. People don't care about Voyager right now, they're more excited about the new movie. Bookstores aren't getting the books in stock because they're on the verge of bankruptcy. There'll be no way to prove that your boycott was responsible. But a significantly anomalously large number of sales of a backlist title would send an unambiguous message: that you exist, you care, and you're voting with your wallet. (To really make an impact, buy the ebook version. There's no stock shortages of those and you can buy a hundred thousand of them right now.)

I'm not trying to belittle anyone. I'm offering what seems to me to be a practical approach to getting Pocket to take you seriously.

 

[Brit]

and of them, how many are pissed about Janeway being dead?

20.

You are not anywhere close, LOL

Keep right on believing that.

Brit

 

[krillmeed]

Which is exactly how it should be.

Every character has their fan base, after all. I'm sure someone out there - I don't know who, but someone - is still upset over the "horrible treatment of Tasha Yar!"

It's stories. The people telling them do the best they can to make them interesting. Good enough for me.

This i cannot agree more, with a total lack of trek on the TV at the moment, Fan fiction has kept the dream alive. We all have our favourite characters, hasn´t the main idea of Star Trek since the beginning is to accept differences? Discussion is one thing, but insulting people with different views is another thing. Not Trek at all

 

[William Leisner]

say 20 million people watched VGR.

of them, probably 1 million were Janeway fans.

Whoa! That's some creative math you have going on there. You honestly believe that only 1 out of 20 Voyager viewers are actually a fan of the captain of the show?

Actually, the creativity is in proposing 20 million people ever watched Voyager. The real numbers are less than half of that, and that's at the show's peak popularity; at the end of VOY's run, we're talking closer to a quarter.

And while the 1/20th figure is clearly pulled out of thin air, I think it's very safe to assume that "Janeway fans" are a fraction of "Voyager fans" -- after all, there are plenty of Trek fans who liked Spock more than Kirk, Data more than Picard, Kira more than Sisko, Porthos more than Archer. How large a fraction? I don't think anyone can say... but between her, The Doctor, Seven, and Tuvok, I feel safe in supposing none of them have a majority of fans.

 

[kimc]

And while the 1/20th figure is clearly pulled out of thin air, I think it's very safe to assume that "Janeway fans" are a fraction of "Voyager fans" -- after all, there are plenty of Trek fans who liked Spock more than Kirk, Data more than Picard, Kira more than Sisko, Porthos more than Archer. How large a fraction? I don't think anyone can say... but between her, The Doctor, Seven, and Tuvok, I feel safe in supposing none of them have a majority of fans.

I'm just curious why do you feel it's safe to say that?