Classic EU is out, Prequel EU is in ...

[DvdJervs]

... for those of you that haven't heard, Del Rey has already cancelled one of the upcoming NJO novels and from now on are going to concentrate mainly on Prequel EU.

Novels based around the original characters are still going to be released, but there will be less of them and thus the release time between the novels of this time period will be greater apart.

This news is a tad old (it was announced a few weeks ago) but I thought I'd mention it. I'll try and get hold of the actual press releases and such if I get time shortly.

Obviously many an EU fan is upset (myself included - who cares about the Prequel era when they the Prequel films are still being made?).

[Darth Taxes]

It all has to do with money, friend.

Their prequel book, "Rogue Planet", though it sucked amazingly, was very successful, with no publicity campaign.

"Vector Prime", with big publicity campaign, did about the same numbers, and was highly criticized for lots of good reasons.

The NJO is proving more difficult and expensive to produce than they expected. Note the very short books. Note the cancellation of the middle book of the Dark Tide and the "Knightfall" trilogy.

I'm not particularly sorry, since I consider the NJO a thorough miscalculation and the less of it, the better.

[Darth Turbogeek]

Oh thank the Force for good news. The NJO sucked.

[Jedi Master Carr]

I haven't heard that and kind of doubting it. They are only planning on two prequal books that I have heard of one is a Darth Maul and the other deals with events leading to TPM as far as I know they will continue with the NJO they have cancelled that series but I think for other reasons, I thought I heard it had to do with the storyline. Last I read minus the two they canceled they were going to have the same number of books that were planned for the NJO. Actually I love the New Jedi Order and think the Vong are the best villains since the empire. Truthly I think they meant when the NJO was completed then they might concentrate on the prequals, I doubt Lucas would allow prequal books before the prequals are done that is just my opininon though.

[DvdJervs]

I haven't heard that and kind of doubting it.

I still haven't been able to get a hold of the press release but they did indeed say that they were seriously putting the old EU on the backburner. They said something like "due to production limitations we have decided to concentrate our efforts on stories set within the Prequels timeperiod and less on the post ROTJ era." That's not the exact quote but that was basically what the meaning was. In the same release they also announced the cancellation of the next post ROTJ EU book (I'm not sure if it was a part of the NJO series or not - I would assume so).

They do intend to continue on with post ROTJ novels, but the amount of them is going to be seriously cut (at least by 1/2 I heard).

[Jedi Master Carr]

They cancelled the knightfall trilogy here was a reason that I found on another site "It was decided, after much dialog back and forth about ongoing story development, to shift a portion of the NJO's focus. We also felt that reducing the number of NJO books next year would allow us to better spotlight the 'prequel' novels, which constitute another exciting new direction for Star Wars fiction. Mike Friedman had completed only JEDI STORM, and believe me, none of us felt good discarding even that much work. But on the whole, it was agreed that this was the best thing for the overall Star Wars publishing program."
I guess they partly canceled the three novels so they could concentrate on these two new prequle novels, the ones I mentioned. Still it does not look they are reducing it by half they just got rid of those three novels I am guessing they are moving on with the others. Right now there are tree scheduled to come out in 2001, one in april one in August and one in November, this one site has listed question marks for two other books (not sure what that means. Here is the page if you want to see it.
unjoh.com/schedule/
The site says that excluding the cancled triolgy that there will be 21 books in the series not counting the two ? books they are 19 listed with 13 maybe 15 still due out. It looks like they are still going foward with the series but decided to cancel those three books so they could market the Maul and the other book better.

[DvdJervs]

Sorry I scewed up my wording. I meant that now that roughly only half as many books are going to be released in the same time period than normal for post ROTJ novels due to Prequel EU now being concentrated on. Not that they've cut the number of books to be released by half.

As your quote points out though they are budging off other novels, either by cancelling them or putting off their release, in favour of Prequel based novels, which was what my original point was (though looking back over my first post I might have stuffed up some wording here and there).

[Jedi Master Carr]

No Problem, I have to admit that I was wrong as well at least they are not giving up completely on the NJO they just want to focus their marketing on the two new prequel books which I think is stupid why not just release as many Star Wars books as possible we know they sell Balance Point was on the best sellers list for three weeks that proves they sell.

[Hart Kenobi]

I'm not too crazy about prequel eu either.

[Jedi Master Carr]

Its not that I am against prequel EU, personally I would like to have both, but that there is so little of it to begin with. Unless if you want to count the comics, which I won't here, there has only been one book Rogue Planet and a series of children books the Jedi Apprentice series. I have not read any of the children books and Rogue Planet was not what I was looking foward to the best part about it was it had Tarkin in it otherwise the story was very boring and almost no action in it. I am looking foward to the Darth Maul book though I want to see how much info they have of his background. The other book that is due out next summer, I have read very little on it seems that it is going to be about Valorum and his struggles in power and also the economic situation that occurs right before the the federation puts their blockade on Naboo. It appears that Palpatine is going to play a major role in the book and if you believe the cover so will Qui-Gon Jinn (we can only hope) the book has possibilites but I am afraid it might get too much into the economic crisis and have very little action to satisfy Star Wars, now if Qui-Gon is one of the central characters then maybe it might be a very good book. But I guess we will have to wait and see.

[Bromine]

I think we're going to see Classic EU phased out, not because it's neccessarily not as good as Prequel EU but simply because there's already been so much of it written. There's only so many scenarios and storylines you can have before you get a little repetitive ("Luke finds yet another person incredibly strong in the Force", "Empire returns", etc) or end up removing the story so far from the movies that fans complain it "isn't Star Wars".
Unlike something like Star Trek where episodes take pplace at some unspecified point in time and you can have twenty years of stories about their five-year mission, the stories in Star Wars take place along a specific timeline. Each story affects the ones after it, and while it's enjoyable to read, I'm sure it's difficult to come up with a story when you're limited to the circumstances at the end of the previous novel in the series.
Bottom line is I think after the proliferation of EU, we're going to see less stories, or at least less good stories, for a while.

[Admiral Kettch]

"There's only so many scenarios and storylines you can have before you get a little repetitive ("Luke finds yet another person incredibly strong in the Force", "Empire returns", etc)"

Fortunately, this may not be a problem. Once the NJO is finished, IF Del Rey decides to do another series(and there's a lot of money out there for them still), Luke and many of the other classic characters can be phased out or go into retirement. This wouldn't please classic fans very much, but at least there's hope of good stories for those of us who really enjoy the classic EU.

Personally I don't like the prequel books at all. I've yet to read any of the DA books, and the only reason I read Rogue Planet was for its NJO references.

As for the NJO being cut in half, thats not going to happen. Only the knightfall tril has been canceled, and DR promised 4 paperbacks between each harback. Thats why there are still two question marks after the Edge of Victory duology.

pub12.ezboard.com/bunjohdiscussionforums

[DvdJervs]

No one said that the NJO will be cut in half (if my posts implied that I'm sorry) rather that the rate at which they will be released will be seriously toned down, perhaps as much as half. Most of the books planned will more than likely still be released - it'll just be a longer wait for fans to get hold of them all.

[Ash Longbaugh]

I want X-Wing books! And Boba books! And Kyp books! And KJA books! I don't care what era!