On an #Aliens fan group to which I belong, there is a discussion going on about a particular plot point, the kind of endless dissection #obsessive #fans know well. I know this very well, because I’m one of them. Someone said “read this tie-in novel, it explains everything!” Then someone else called it “fan fiction,” and a third participant objected strenuously. Ah, #fandom: God help me, I do love it so.
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The most money I ever made from writing, by far, was by co-authoring a #StarTrek novel†. It did quite well, as Star Trek novels tend to do. I lived for the better part of a year on the advance, and the royalties were a nice supplement to my income for several years afterward. Over the decades since, many people have told me it was one of their favorite novels ever. I don’t know how many copies I’ve signed. Feels good, man.
But I don’t kid myself—it’s fan fiction. So is all tie-in fiction to TV and movie series, unless an episode or a movie takes the story and puts it on screen. I’m not sure if that’s ever happened with Star Trek, in the very long series of novels based on multiple iterations of the show, and I know it’s never happened with the #Alienverse. All the tie-in novels, comics, and games are non-canonical. They just kind of exist out there in the realm of what-if and might-have-been. Maybe someday someone will stumble across them, floating in the deep, and do a salvage operation …
#StarWars is the one partial exception I know of, with some portions of the extended universe making it at least into the animated series. In general, though, screen franchise owners don’t think much of novels etc. They figure tie-ins are of interest only to hardcore fans, and there aren’t enough of those to make up the audience needed to justify big-budget productions. To them it’s just a way to squeeze a few extra bucks out of the property.
I’m not happy about this, because a lot of really great worldbuilding happens at the edges of known space. In the case of the Alienverse, for example, I think the #DarkHorse comics would have made a much better foundation for a third and fourth movie than what we actually got. But it’s a sadly consistent pattern.
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†ST:TNG # 8, The Captains’ Honor, by David and Daniel Dvorkin, in case you were wondering. David is my father, who has also written a few other Star Trek novels and a lot of original novels. Despite the money, neither of us has any desire ever to go through the experience of dealing with Paramount ever again.
How does that work when you write a novel for a franchise like that? Do you just get a license from them like if a company produces a product under the brand? Or do they commission you to write the novel? Or does an author write something on spec and try to get it blessed by the studio? How does that work?
@Pat The way it worked then, and I assume still does, is that the property owner licenses a publisher to publish franchise books (Pocket Books, at the time) and then authors submit a query to the publisher for any other novel. Our proposal consisted of an outline and maybe a sample chapter—I don’t quite remember since it’s been thirty-five years!
It didn’t hurt that my Dad had already written a couple of other Star Trek novels and worked with the same editor. But with Next Gen novels, Paramount was exerting steadily more creative control, so we had to satisfy the studio too. Before that, it was pretty free-form: as long as the editors and authors were happy, they could do just about anything. There was a lot of innovation in the original series novels of the ’70s and ’80s.
