Young Adult Star Trek 2009 Spin-off Books
- Thread starter CaptainMatt
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Why would Bad Robot be paying authors to write tie-ins? That's Simon & Schuster's license - a license that gives them the exclusive rights to commission and publish ST fiction and fact books. Bad Robot just happens to be the current production company entrusted to make a trilogy of ST movies for Paramount, but they have the power of veto over tie-ins based on their movies.
Perhaps Bad Robot gets a cut of royalties on tie-ins. Depends on their contract.
My invoices say "Simon & Schuster" on them.
And where the money comes from doesn't matter. The publisher is obliged to pay us for our work, but once we turn in our work, it belongs to them (or ultimately to CBS) and they can do whatever they want with it -- including not publishing it. Books get cancelled sometimes. It is not a unique event in the annals of publishing.
The parent company, ie. owner of the property being licensed, isn't going to take a risk of losing any money on official tie-ins. When a licensee buys the license, the financial risk is all theirs, although the resulting profits might get shared, depending on the agreement at time of the license. I imagine some licenses would be an upfront amount outright, while other deals could involve a smaller advance with later profit sharing. But then the parent company would have to be confident that the licensee declared sales accurately.
Sometime a licensee realises they paid too much for a ST license, eg. the second Marvel Comics deal. Marvel was unable to make a reasonable profit due to paying a lot for the license and yet sales not meeting initial expectations. The only time Paramount, and now CBS, loses out is if the license lies fallow, or if they set the license fee too low and the company buying said reduced license is suddenly enjoying maximum sales.
Is it really Bad Robot that vetoed the novels? Can't say I understand the company relationships. And why Bad Robot has anything to say with novels. Did Bad Robot buy Star Trek licenses?
If Pocket bought the exclusive rights to commission and publish Trek fiction, it sounds to me like they could do pretty much anything they want.
Did they have to ask Berman & Co for permission to resurrect Trip Tucker or to kill off Janeway?
If Pocket bought the exclusive rights to commission and publish Trek fiction, it sounds to me like they could do pretty much anything they want.
Did they have to ask Berman & Co for permission to resurrect Trip Tucker or to kill off Janeway?
^ Every tie-in product has to go through CBS Licensing. In the past Paula Block was responsible for that, these days it is John Van Citters. He actually talked about the cancellation of the books in an interview in 2010.
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Looks like, YA books aside, this has failed to materialize.John Van Citters said:
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No, but they're the ones making the films. They're the ones who created this incarnation of ST and are responsible for where it goes next, so if they tell CBS and Pocket what they want to do with regard to that incarnation, they're going to get their way. After all, the movies have made the studio hundreds of millions of dollars, and the books make them a much, much smaller amount of money. The movies are watched by millions of people, the books read by thousands. The books are a small tail on a very large dog. The screen franchise takes the lead, the tie-ins follow. Why is that so hard to understand?
They bought the exclusive license to commission and publish Trek fiction in prose form. Since it's a license, that means they do it with the permission and approval of the company that actually owns the property, CBS Corporation. Pocket initiates the projects, but everything has to be approved by CBS Licensing, and before that Paramount Licensing.
No, because by the time those things happened, Berman & Co. were no longer producing Star Trek, so there was nobody to answer to except the studio licensing department. But when there was a Trek TV or film series in current production, the creators of that series had approval over the tie-ins as well. They were the ones who ran the show, the primary creators whose lead the tie-ins were obligated to follow, so naturally they had a say.
You've been on this board for years, so surely you've heard about Richard Arnold and the tight control he had over the tie-ins, the way he ordered novels and comics rewritten or cancelled if they didn't fit what he thought was Roddenberry's vision. But Arnold didn't work for Paramount Licensing, he was the assistant to Gene Roddenberry while GR produced The Next Generation. He vetted the tie-ins on Roddenberry's behalf. Roddenberry didn't own the rights to Star Trek anymore -- he'd sold them to Paramount many years before -- but he was the one producing TNG, and so he, through Arnold, had approval over the tie-ins based on his show.
And yes, during the time that ST was still in production, its various executives had some oversight over the tie-ins. I don't think they oversaw the tie-ins as closely as Arnold did, or as Bad Robot is now, but that was a matter of their own preference and priorities.
Van Citters. And he and Paula worked together in Licensing for several years (since 2004 or earlier, JVC was the one who handled my first Trek novel), but now Paula's moved on.
Corrected the typo, must have thought of the Critters movies.
As for the the other part, I probably should have said something along the lines of PB was the "face" of that department before him, as I was aware that Van Citters worked there with her before.
No, as Van Citters said in the interview, "JJ [Abrams] and his team tell the stories of what happens next for these characters".
As in, seemingly: they have chosen to do work through IDW's "ST Ongoing" comic, retelling a few TOS episodes, deliberately planting Easter eggs for the next movie, and even announcing some upcoming original comic stories.
It's probably more efficient/feasible for busy screenplay writers to dabble in a few comic stories every few weeks than to be involved in the plotting of whole novels. Even the fourth YA novel seems to have been put on hiatus. IIRC, it was originally supposed to have been out by now, but I think its new publication month is now a long way off.
It's currently listed for June 26th on Amazon.
Yep. I recall Richard Arnold being very critical of many things that slipped through in those early days, such as the Enterprise being depicted upside down in books, shirt colours switched on publicity material, smoke trails out of nacelles, Rand's hair coloured like a red hat (Gold Key), Chapel's collar and insignia drawn as a knotted scarf (a colouring book image), etc, not to mention the strange licensing agreement offered to Franz Joseph that allowed him control over sub-licensing his designs to a war gaming company, etc.
Susan Sackett vetted the Bantam, Ballantine and early Pocket tie-ins on Gene Roddenberry's behalf, through till ST IV and the 20th anniversary celebrations, when Richard Arnold's job as Archivist was created for him at the Star Trek Office.
Not to mention Uhura being depicted as a blonde white woman and Sulu as a Caucasian....
^Umm, that was Therin's quote, not mine.
If you're referring to the Peter Pan record/comic sets, that was seemingly a deliberate change. A few of the stories were written by Alan Dean Foster, who'd been adapting Filmation's TAS scripts for Ballantine's "Star Trek Log" series. For his record/comic scripts, ADF had decided to add references to the original subplots he'd done for the "Logs", and he included Mr Arex, another of his Edoan musical instruments, plus M'Ress the Caitian into the stories.
Suddenly, there was some clash of licensing between these record/comics and Filmation, probably over who had the rights to the appearances of the background characters (particularly Arex and M'Ress). Kirk, Spock and McCoy weren't a problem, but...
Uhura was quickly recoloured (to look more like Palmer), Sulu received an affro wig (even curlier in the second story) and dark skin (not caucasian), M'ress was redrawn to resemble Marta the Orion (only blue), and Arex became a blond caucasian male human. If you examine the art carefully, you can find panels where Arex's third arm and leg would have been, and Mr Connor's name squeezes awkwardly into word balloons. Leaving us to wonder how a two-legged, two-armed being could manipulate a complicated Edoan pedal keyboard.
Sorry, my bad.
Therin: I also saw a Star Trek children's table online at http://www.plaidstallions.com from the 1970s that probably would've been released around the time of the Filmation TAS series, which also had the blonde white Uhura on it. The likeness conflicts you mentioned probably also affected this too.
Well, sometimes it was because the approval people weren't being diligent.
I have these paper tablecloth and napkins with TAS-inspired artwork (ie. the running shot is from a TAS publicity image). The logo is lifted from Gold Key comics. Spock and McCoy are redshirts, seemingly to balance out the blue Enterprise:
Star Trek partyware by Therin of Andor, on Flickr
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