I've only read one other book which is "media fiction," in the modern sense. I'm a casual Star Trek fan, not a fanatic. When Star Trek fell in love with itself I lost interest. But there are some of the original series and Next Generation episodes I'll still watch occasionally. About fifty years ago I got two Star Trek novels. One was Mission To Horatius by Mack Reynolds, the other was Spock Must Die by James Blish. Both were good reads, although Mission To Horatius is a book for kids, which was fine, because I was a kid at the time.
There have been a gazillion Star Trek novels since then, and a couple of years ago I decided to try one that was set in the world of the original series. It had many of the same elements I've criticized The Family Corleone for. Namedropping of bit characters from the television series, ego feed for readers to feel "in the know." Even though it had the entire galaxy as its backdrop with trillions of sentient beings, it seemed like everybody knew everyone else. "Encounters with greatness" -- all sorts of people who had come into contact with the Enterprise and had gone on to do remarkable things. And one utterly absurd moment when an adult, human man, here on Earth, leaped four hundred feet. He was a genetically enhanced man but even so, that's ridiculous.
I know a writer and asked her about it. She's never done media fiction but knows something about the industry. What she said was half from her knowledge, half guesswork.
Fiction writing is generally not a lucrative occupation. Successes like JK Rowling and Stephen King are rare exceptions. If an author can simply make enough money to do writing as full-time work, that's a hell of an accomplishment. The typical advance for a novel is in the high four figures. Most novels never sell beyond their advances.
Media fiction pays well. For example, it's an open secret that there are about 100,000 people in the US who are so fanatical about Star Trek that they buy everything -- every book, every Captain Kirk action figure, every set of Enterprise blueprints, et cetera. If they're missing something, it's agony to them. Well, assuming $10 per book and a 6% royalty rate, that's a million bucks in sales and sixty grand for the author. So of course the authors and publishers love that part of it. Makes the typical book look pathetic.
But that million in sales is tiny compared to what the movies make, and the licensing fees the publishers pay Paramount are utterly insignificant by that scale. The owners of Star Trek have no reason to care about the licensing fees from the book publishers, and might even charge as little as a dollar. But they do make a hell of a lot of money from Star Trek generally. It's their golden goose that keeps laying platinum eggs, day after day. They know how to manage it and they do it well. They almost certainly view those books not as creative works in their own right but instead as being like action figures and such -- items to keep fans interested until the next movie or television series. And they probably impose very strict guidelines on what the books are like. They're not intended to be good stories. They're intended to extol the greatness of Star Trek and make readers feel like insiders.
So, authors write them. They make a lot of money. But they feel like such whores that occasionally they'll show contempt for their readers by putting in stupid things, like a man leaping four hundred feet.
That's her theory. Again, half knowledge, half guesses. But it sounds reasonable to me.
What puzzles me is why The Family Corleone was written in this way. If there was another movie planned, or perhaps a television series, it would make sense. Maybe at that time they were toying with the idea of a movie, who knows?
Anyway, I don't think I'll be reading much more of that genre.
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