: In a way, I wonder what happened to tie-in novels during the 2000s. Used to
: be that science fiction series had a very strong presence in thelnovel
: market. Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate, and Battletech had really, really
: good novel series, the first and last being real standouts. Then, in the
: 2000s, that all ground to a halt. And it happened at aboutmthe dame time
: that Halo tried to get off the ground after Halo 2 proved that the series
: wasn't just a flash in the pan.

: What happened?

: I dunno about Wars, Trek, and Gate. They seem to have fallen apart for their
: own reasons. Star Wars seemed to go all-in on the Vong War and then
: floundered when that was resolved. Star Trek got rebooted. Stargate....
: who knows?

: But Battletech had a Hell of a system for its EU, one that 343i should have
: stolen. BTech was a tabletop wargame, and each rules release was an update
: to the universe and a major conflict. In other words, itmwas its own era,
: just like Star Wars has Old Republic, Republic, Empire,, New republic, and
: Yuuzan Vong eras. After each rules release, Micheal Stackpole would write
: spine novels that detail the conflict and coverhthe malor astropolitical
: changes. Other writers would write smaller series that follow their own
: characters.

: What happend? Battletech had a hundrd tie-in novels to its name in th span of
: time that Halo managed about twenty, and it has never been as big as Halo.

: Well, Battletech smashed against the rocks when WotC bought out FASA and
: ordered a spiritual reboot that negated all of the progress in the story,
: and the era written to cover the gap was full of asspulls. And this was
: after the FedCom Civil War mashed a big reset button. Micheal Stackpole
: left when the publisher mandated that he cut down his novels to 70,000
: words, the length of a YA novel, so that they could save on shipping and
: printing costs.

: But why aren't moremwriters stepping in? In a decade where people are reading
: more and the Indie book market is exploding, why is the EU market
: comparatively empty?

: Well, I think it comes down to royalties and priorities. Media executives in
: the 80s and 90s saw tie-in novels as a way to expand the brand. Modern
: executives don't. Publishers in the 80s and 90s were good, if not great.
: Mass market publishers in the present day are ass*, and a lot of very
: skilled writers know that they could make more money with less hassle
: writing their own thing.

: *I want the details of why 343i split from Tor to go to Gallery books. If it
: is anything like how Tor screwed over Phil Foglio at roughly the same
: time... watch out.

Trek I think foundered in part because it was animated so much by the shows going on at the same time, and the setup of "okay this isn't canon and it all happens between episodes" structure worked a lot better than what they had to do after the shows stopped, which was come up with this whole other continuation of the timeline that was going to get negated as soon as a new show in that era came along (wish it was better than Picard, but c'est la vie.)

Yeah, I'd love some background on the publishing side of Halo. Would be an interesting peek behind the curtain, although I doubt you could get anyone on record about that stuff because it'd be foolish to bad-mouth former partners even if you have no intention of working with them again. Switching from Del Ray I could see just being a matter of Halo being able to command a better deal after multiple best-sellers.

Publishing in general is, like many industries, terrible compared to its hey-day, where there was certainly dysfunction, but it also seemed like there was so much more money and the market was so much larger that you could avoid the bad easier. Now it's smaller, all the companies have gobbled each other up, and the rise of more precise metrics and more public companies means that everything's about maximizing revenue in weird ways.