Lit Sword of the Jedi by Christie Golden

Well, based on the research I've done -- which I guess I could improve upon -- that really hasn't been the case and book sales have been dwindling for the past decade.

I think Denning's idea of "setting up" good stories though is making sure Jaina doesn't become an Imperial Knight, or otherwise marry Jag in a way that removes her from the Jedi temple. He was talking about Sword of the Jedi and other, unannounced stuff under the premise that SOTJ and other plans were still possible despite the Disney acquisition. I'm of the opinion that Dark Nest and the early LOTF was a response to the New Jedi Order series, "righting the ship" from its perceived flaws, and that the ending of LOTF and FOTJ are a response to SW Legacy -- getting Jag out of the Empire and with the Jedi so he can marry Jaina without taking her out of the temple to found the Imperial Knights.

My perception of the EU in general is that since the NJO ended, it's just been a continuation of the authorial battling that occurred at the end of Bantam, with the post-NJO trying to sweep the consequences of the NJO under the rug, and then playing tug-o-war with SW Legacy.

 

Well, for this to happen the Mortis connection would have had to be planned before the final book interim between the penultimate and final books of the series.

 

It would have required FOTJ to have been planned in any capacity.

 

Except, the ST, and spin offs are happening, and that's put Del Rey's plans on hold, until they get the script, and can decide what do do post ROTJ,
Plus with the Story Group, new books have to be approved by the movie, tv, comic, game, and toy people.

 

The more I learn about this the more I think Disney's ownership is a mercy kill by itself.

 

I just did a quick check to see if the NYT bestsellers list would be useful in gauging sales beyond sales figures at the conclusion of the fiscal year. Star Wars Apocalypse sold 26,140 hard copies last year, and sold less than 25,000 e-books (not enough to be listed). The Unifying Force sold 107,775 copies in the year of its release. Additionally, Apocalypse was released March 12, 2012 while The Unifying Force was released in November 4, 2003 -- Apocalypse had sold its 26,140 copies as of January 11, 2013 while The Unifying Force had sold its 107,775 copies as of March 22, 2004. Id est, Apocalypse sold 26,140 copies in ten months, while The Unifying Force sold its 107,775 copies in under five. And I don't know for sure whether the cutoff is the time the lists were put out or the calendar year, or some publishing fiscal year I don't know about, so TUF might have done it in two months while Apocalypse did it in nine.

Despite this, The Unifying Force only hit the NYT bestsellers list two weeks, ranking #10 and #13 before dropping off. Apocalypse hit the NYT bestsellers list three weeks, ranking #2, #9, and #16 before dropping off. The list is relative -- TUF was going against The Da Vinci Code, Anne Rice's Blood Canticle -- the final book in her Vampire Chronicles, and Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. I've never heard of the books that Apocalypse is listed with, except the Stephen King novel 11/22/63.

 

Any idea how TUF did compared to The Joiner King and Betrayal? You can tell I'm curious how readership dropped off as the EU progressed.

and too lazy to research myself

 

I don't have the numbers for books that weren't released in hardcover, but Betrayal and Sacrifice did not sell 100,000 copies. No SW hardcover has since 2008, when Invincible, The Force Unleashed, and Traviss' novelization of TCW film all did. 100,000 is the cutoff my source uses for listing book sales since it's listing the books that sold well. The e-book cutoff point is a bit lower, and the only reason I even have Apocalypse's numbers is because it was one of the top sellers in the genre that year and so it was listed.

The Phantom Menace: 1,419,852
Attack of the Clones: 784,750
Revenge of the Sith: 431,426
Vector Prime: 200,000+
Rogue Planet: 200,000+
Balance Point: 150,000+
Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter: 150,000+
Dark Lord, the Rise of Darth Vader: 137,661
The Approaching Storm: 125,000+
Cloak of Deception: 100,000+
Star by Star: 100,000+
Destiny's Way: 100,000+
The Unifying Force: 107,775
The Force Unleashed: 103,232
Star Wars: The Clone Wars: 101,146
Invincible: 101,034
Darth Plagueis (hard copy) 31,543
Darth Plagueis (e-book) 25,000+
Apocalypse: (hard copy) 26,140

 

Very interesting research there.

Every NJO hardcover sold over 100k, only the finale of LOTF did, and NONE of FOTJ's 9 hardcovers came close.

Seems like there was a drop after NJO, and an even greater one after LOTF. Seems that that series is where they shot themselves in the foot.



And I've never seen the Denning interview that you mentioned before. Really? The last decade-ish was "setting up" really cool stories? What part of setting up really cool stories involves killing Jacen and Mara and subsequent fallout? introducing the Confederacy as a political stress point, and the lost tribe, and even abeloth I can understand for sure. But the whole "Darth Caedus" thing was really where we jumped ship.

 

Yeah, it looks like Invincible might've been the final straw for a lot of people. I guess Del Rey had too much money stuffed in their ears to hear the clarion call. Assuming Outcast sold just under 100k, that still suggests huge attrition between FotJ's beginning and end.

 

I think Sacrifice (Mara) probably had most people on the very edge of done, and Invincible (Jacen) just capped it. FOTJ, though it actually had quite a few merits, worked off a really flawed premise.

 

I was going to note that Betrayal and Sacrifice may not have appeared because of their release date -- but all three LOTF hardcovers were released in May. It's also noteworthy that another potential cause for the decline in sales was due to the prequels. 2003 is the first year that any Star Wars hardcover since Vector Prime failed to make the 100,000 copies sold list, with both Tatooine Ghost and Shatterpoint not reaching that milestone. 2004 continued with the Clone Wars novels not making the list, as well as Labyrinth of Evil in 2005, however the Episode III novelization sold fairly well -- though not as well as I or II -- and Dark Lord also sold rather well.

I'm also unaware of the general trend of the market, but it seems books are being bought less in general, which might explain some drop off as well. But the e-books don't reflect that Apocalypse sold well -- it was outsold by Plagueis in both formats. I think SW book buyers have become niche, and the niche has mostly turned against the post-NJO. As for Denning's intentions as to setting things up, I think he's explained himself better than I could in why Jacen was turned evil and was killed off in his blog entry at TOS back when Crucible was released. I can't explain why Mara was killed off, except that they wanted to continue that trend from the NJO?

I'll try to find the interview, I'm pretty sure it was a podcast one. I don't remember the name but I'll know it when I see it!

Edit: I found it, I'll transcribe the quotes when I get a chance to listen through it.

 

It sure was for me.

 

It probably should have been for me as well. I was too stubborn to give up then. What stupid thing could they possibly do next? I did hit a minor burnout point sometime early in FOTJ.

 

Heh, I kept coming back for more until FotJ was over. I look back and wonder if I subconsciously hated myself.

 

"One of my goals with Apocalypse was to bring the Jedi around and to leave the galaxy in a place where we can tell a lot of different kinds of stories and not end up being kind of roped into telling the same big political stories that erupt into wars all the time, you know? And to do that we had to move the pieces around a bit and that's a lot of what Apocalypse did was move those pieces into position and I think Crucible we saw as being the book that passed the torch to a new era."

I remember when I heard this, thinking "what did Apocalypse do that wasn't already the case after The Unifying Force?" I really have no clue what Denning means when he says Apocalypse moved pieces around. Okay, it put Jag at the Jedi temple. How was Denning "roped into telling the same big political stories that erupt into wars all the time" after the NJO? Jacen wasn't in the GAG or part of the Galactic Alliance infrastructure at all after the NJO until LOTF put him there. Jag wasn't head of state of the Empire until Denning put him there. Luke wasn't the Galactic Alliance's lapdog until Dark Nest made him so. And I don't understand why pieces needed to be moved around to not have to tell galactic war stories either.

I dunno, man. I dunno. The podcast is Star Wars Action News Episode 398 from July 9, 2013. The quote is exactly an hour into it.

 

I'm not exactly sure what Denning was trying to accomplish here either, and I don't think I want to know. What kind of future stories were really going to benefit from the death of Mara and Jacen, the GA hating the Jedi, wannabe Sith running amok, Daala back on the stage, and the search for a meta-monolith?

I mean, did I read the same LotF he did? Was a "big political story that erupted into a war" not a part of that series? As for Apocalypse, was there anything in there that needed eight preceding novels for setup? If they wanted to assassinate Hamner, turn the GA against the Jedi, make Saba balls-to-the-walls annoying, and charge Ben with domestic violence, they could've done that in a couple books.

 

That makes precisely zero sense.

After NJO, the entire galaxy was open for ANY story to be told. The only thing that had to be worked in somewhere was the galaxy rebuilding from the Vong. Precisely zero part of that involves big political stories that erupt into wars. In fact, its likely that there should't be any political wars simply because the galaxy was united by the vong.

Passing the torch to the new generation occurred in NJO and was completely reversed in LOTF (DN was at least sort of balanced between the generations, though it still skewed older)

As Lightsaber says - Jacen's, Mara's, Kenth's and so many other deaths make no sense. The GA hating the jedi runs counter to...everything since ANH. (And I've never understood where the animosity from Omas that started in DN actually came from). Daala was completely random, but at least not a breaking point by itself.

Lost Tribe and Abeloth both have potential, but both were already basically wiped out in FOTJ so they won't be too much of a threat.

So...the only piece that got moved was separating the Jedi from the GA. Oh, and separating jag from the Chiss. Both of which could have been managed in a half a book after NJO (and the first makes no sense).

I don't get the logic here in the slightest.

 

I'm not sure logic enters into at all levels of the planning process. If there is a planning process. FotJ, in particular, felt like one of those "tell a story" threads where one person posts something, then the next poster has to do something with that, and so on. Connections were tenuous at best, and the Mortis insertion at the end makes plain that one of FotJ's pivotal characters, Abeloth, was not well thought out.

 

double post

 

Yeah, I don't think Fate of the Jedi had very much thought put into an actual narrative, it was just a bunch "cool ideas" that the writers came up with during the planning and tried to throw together in a nine book series with absolutely no planning for where the series would conclude. In fact, if you look at Luceno's novel Millennium Falcon, he was obviously given some advance information, as Luceno tends to get. I find it extremely difficult to believe he wrote the Seff scene in that novel, in which Allana believes that Seff is Jacen, based on foreknowledge of anything even resembling what became FOTJ's "plot." Remember, the first two novels implied a connection between the Jedi psychosis and Jacen, with the Jedi that went nuts using techniques which only Jacen knew. Given the explanation which we ultimately got, that the insane Jedi were being influenced by Abeloth, and she knew all Force powers and thus so did they, why did Allana think that Seff was Jacen? Because he telekinetically threw blaster rifles into a wall? Okay.

They just came up with these ideas of a dark side entity, Ben and Luke doing their odyssey, a lost tribe of Sith, and Daala doing what Daala does best, and did the "tell a story" with novels instead of message board posts, as you said.

 

Abeloth and Mortis does make some sense. But showing up in the last half of the last book is ... abrupt to say the least.

The idea has promise (much though many hate mortis), but was yet again poorly utilized.

Forgot about Seff in Falcon. That's a VERY interesting point. And would have been much more intriguing to explore. interesting.

The sad thing is any of those four ideas -Abeloth, Luke and Ben investigating other force traditions, the Lost Tribe, and even to a certain degree an ex-imperial becoming head of state (not necessarily Daala) all have merits that could have made for an interesting trilogy on their own. But throwing all 4 together in one series without WAY more structural planning that was done just fell apart.

 

Abeloth and Mortis makes about as much sense to me as if Denning retconned it so that this:


Was actually Abeloth.

 

This is, of all the things that bother me about FOTJ, the one that bothers me the most. Allston clearly had a very specific plan in mind because according to an interview with Denning, he was the one who did a lot of the brainstorming for FOTJ–and Golden and Denning just modified it significantly. Allston's plan clearly included a connection between Jacen and the psychosis, with Abeloth or whatever was in the Maw at the time (remember on Kessel, Allana sensed it), being either a side story or...I don't know, but IMO, in Allston's plan it seemed like Luke and Ben would've found the explanation for the Force psychosis' connection to Jacen during their journey–and then it got switched to Abeloth.

And also, how could Allana mistake Seff for Jacen? Apparently, he's space Fabio.

 

The way she interpreted his 'Sense' in the Force, maybe?