Project Luminous

[Username taken]

I remember there was this old Shakespeare quote, about a story that was full of sound and fury and signified nothing. Guess this's what the old Bard was talking about.

Quoted in agreement.

I can understand being negative but it seems some people are literally pulling stuff out of thin air to make a non-existent point.

[ChrisIII]

The designs and colors remind me a lot of the KOTOR comics, one of Dark Horses's best. (They were a "sort of" prequel to the game series, but mostly told it's own standalone story).

[SuperiorIronman]

The sales of new Star Wars novels never recovered after Disney unceremoniously scrapped the EU. In fact reprints of EU books regularly outrank Disney's meagre efforts on Amazon's bestseller lists. This is what a damaged brand looks like, where no matter what they do new Star Wars products sell less then under George Lucas' leadership. I very doubt the High Republic will do any better to reverese this negative trend. One day Disney will just quietly cancel all remaining High Republic media and pretend this project never happaned.

I actually want to put a pin in that.

Amazon Best selling Star Wars novels are primarily Legends material, a lot of them are re-branded Legends material. So even if you don't like what Disney had done, they're still reprinting the old content and making money that way (most of the old novels are reprinted). So even if they are this success story then it still doesn't stop Disney, Marvel, Del Rey, and Lucasfilm from producing High Republic because the overhead would be helped immensely by reprints. But Amazon also doesn't account generally for who is selling it so much as the product is passing through their doors. So while Showdown at Centerpoint could be a best seller, it's also because it's currently less than 10 dollars in most shops, 121 copies are available for ten cents and up, and this book has been out in the wild since the 90's with a pretty healthy population you could likely still find in it's original form at your average bookstore. This also doesn't account for which copies are reprints so much as the reprinted cover is the most up to date version.

Essentially being that a healthy chunk of best sellers have been out for years (decades even) with price points relative to their age and sheer number in the marketplace with no real way to track the sales because everyone and their grandma has a copy to sell you of Heir to the Empire. There's no real way to tell if it's pre-Disney or post-Disney seeing as Legends has a decade plus of content to sell and had been selling second hand since release. This is made even harder to gauge if something is a success because there exists multiple novel distributors and we generally don't have access to sales data. This isn't a problem with comics seeing as Diamond has essentially a monopoly over the industry and we can see that data month to month. We'd be better suited to seeing if the High Republic comics are a success than the novels since we can actually see the data.

[Aahz]

It's a publishing push...why does it need to move a lot of merchandise? If it sells books and comics than its a successful project.

I'm sceptical if books and comics, without a game or TV Show attached will really create much interest out side of the existing fan base.

[ChrisIII]

I think it's pretty much mainly just intended for the novel/comic fans, a bit of "synergy". The Alphabet squadron novels for example, tie-in with a few Marvel comic series here and there. Del Rey did a few similar projects with Dark Horse.


It's not quite on the scale of Shadows of the Empire or all the Clone Wars stuff from 2003-2005 which was a bit similar.

[thwhtGuardian]

The sales of new Star Wars novels never recovered after Disney unceremoniously scrapped the EU. In fact reprints of EU books regularly outrank Disney's meagre efforts on Amazon's bestseller lists. This is what a damaged brand looks like, where no matter what they do new Star Wars products sell less then under George Lucas' leadership. I very doubt the High Republic will do any better to reverese this negative trend. One day Disney will just quietly cancel all remaining High Republic media and pretend this project never happaned.

Amazon judges based on units moved in total and as most of amazon is second hand sales its very obviously not a good gauge for actual best sellers as obviously books that one can buy fot=r as little as a dollar are going to out sell titles selling at full hardcover retail value, which is why when people talk about book sales figures they use the NY Times or Bookscan which are based on units sold to end readers from the publishers. And when you look at Bookscan you see very clearly that no legends material out sold new Star Wars fiction... so once again you're dead wrong.

Why do you make up such fictions? Does it make you feel better somehow to erroneously believe that Star Wars is doing poorly financially under Disney?

As an aside for those wondering, the actual top five Star Wars books of 2019 were Resistance Reborn, Thrawn: Treason, Alphabet Squadron, Queen's Shadow and Force Collector.

[Kintor]

Amazon judges based on units moved in total and as most of amazon is second hand sales its very obviously not a good gauge for actual best sellers as obviously books that one can buy fot=r as little as a dollar are going to out sell titles selling at full hardcover retail value, which is why when people talk about book sales figures they use the NY Times or Bookscan which are based on units sold to end readers from the publishers. And when you look at Bookscan you see very clearly that no legends material out sold new Star Wars fiction... so once again you're dead wrong.

Amazon is the biggest bookstore in the world, to the extent it just about renders all other marketplaces irrelevant. The New York Times list is worthless precisely because they ignore Amazon and other online sites, instead relying on the sketchy reporting from a handful of legacy retailers with physical storefronts. The truth is that in sheer scale the EU dwarf Disney’s books, the EU regularly earns more money overall even at a cheaper price point through the power of volume and there’s no shame in that. Just watch as the High Republic media share the same fate, being outsold by old EU and Darkhorse reprints.

[jcl100]

There are no Darkhorse reprints outselling current Marvel Star Wars material. If you're trying to argue otherwise you are factually incorrect, and will have no means of supporting your claim whatsoever.

[thwhtGuardian]

Amazon is the biggest bookstore in the world, to the extent it just about renders all other marketplaces irrelevant. The New York Times list is worthless precisely because they ignore Amazon and other online sites, instead relying on the sketchy reporting from a handful of legacy retailers with physical storefronts. The truth is that in sheer scale the EU dwarf Disney’s books, the EU regularly earns more money overall even at a cheaper price point through the power of volume and there’s no shame in that. Just watch as the High Republic media share the same fate, being outsold by old EU and Darkhorse reprints.

It's not sketchy reporting, they're actual sales data from publishers on end users(paying readers)...Bookscan and the NYtime are both literally the most trusted reporters in the print world. And again, used books selling at well below market value don't help publishers at all so why count them?
You are objectively wrong here. There is literally no support for your claim from any industry source, but then again there never is with your claims so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

[Kintor]

It's not sketchy reporting, they're actual sales data from publishers on end users(paying readers)...Bookscan and the NYtime are both literally the most trusted reporters in the print world. And again, used books selling at well below market value don't help publishers at all so why count them?

When it comes to tracking book sales the New York Times is a joke. As I said before, all their data comes from a handful of retailers in metropolitan area. It's hideously easy for publishers to manipulate that list, as they often do, because the New York Times doesn't reflect market realities. Conversely, Amazon is able to sell new books at volume and at a much cheaper price, that's not even counting the huge readership that Kindle users represent. This is how the EU continues to outsell Disney's book, Amazon puts the EU in the hands of people who actually buy books.

[thwhtGuardian]

When it comes to tracking book sales the New York Times is a joke. As I said before, all their data comes from a handful of retailers in metropolitan area. It's hideously easy for publishers to manipulate that list, as they often do, because the New York Times doesn't reflect market realities. Conversely, Amazon is able to sell new books at volume and at a much cheaper price, that's not even counting the huge readership that Kindle users represent. This is how the EU continues to outsell Disney's book, Amazon puts the EU in the hands of people who actually buy books.

Curiously it almost always seems to line up with Boookscan's numbers though, which tracks sales right from pos systems in book stores across the country..so I guess it does reflect market realities contrary to your opinion. You're just wrong here, and you haven't provided any evidence to show that you aren't other than your own opinion.

Why be silly about this?
It's in black and white that your supposition that the new novels weren't selling well was dead wrong, so what do you gain by trying to pretend otherwise? Is it so hard simply to admit your error? You can still not be impressed by the project, that's personal taste, but so far despite all your best efforts you haven't come up with a single objective reason why anyone should see the project as a disappointment.
It's like trying to argue that the sky is green and decrying those that say it's blue as wrong...when we can all open our windows and see we're right and the sky is in fact blue, not green.

[Xalfrea]

For a lot of the criticism the project is getting so far (Disney in general, not doing The Old Republic instead, nobody reading books and comics, etc), one thing that's constantly brought up that I can understand why but feel is being approached wrong is how far back this is going, at 200 years. Arguments say that 200 years is still too close, that things won't be that different.

To that I say: Compare everywhere in the world between 2020 and 1820 and see how much the world has changed in our 200 years. If we as a single planet can change so much, just imagine how much an entire galaxy of scores of different planets and worlds can change in 200 years.

[Kintor]

Curiously it almost always seems to line up with Boookscan's numbers though, which tracks sales right from pos systems in book stores across the country..so I guess it does reflect market realities contrary to your opinion. You're just wrong here, and you haven't provided any evidence to show that you aren't other than your own opinion.

Bookscan is again a limited system and not much better then the New York Times at gathering information, as they only have access to physical book sales and only in North America. This does nothing to account for the perennial success of the EU on Amazon, both in print but also on Kindle. Especially in the aftermath of TROS which has seen a massive surge in EU interest, most notably with the Thrawn Trilogy in any version people can get their hands on. Which is ultimately the final refutation of Disney's universe, that Star Wars already had a better sequel to ROTJ in the EU and readers know this.

[WebLurker]

As an aside for those wondering, the actual top five Star Wars books of 2019 were Resistance Reborn, Thrawn: Treason, Alphabet Squadron, Queen's Shadow and Force Collector.

Thought Resistance Reborn, Treason, and Queen's Shadow were pretty good. Was disappointed with Force Collector and never read Alphabet Squadron.

For a lot of the criticism the project is getting so far (Disney in general, not doing The Old Republic instead, nobody reading books and comics, etc), one thing that's constantly brought up that I can understand why but feel is being approached wrong is how far back this is going, at 200 years. Arguments say that 200 years is still too close, that things won't be that different.

To that I say: Compare everywhere in the world between 2020 and 1820 and see how much the world has changed in our 200 years. If we as a single planet can change so much, just imagine how much an entire galaxy of scores of different planets and worlds can change in 200 years.

Funny, that's actually been a "problem" with the Old Republic -era stuff in the franchise for years; with very few exceptions, the general technological level of the Galaxy Far, Far Away is exactly the same across the thousand generations before the movies as it is in the movies themselves. A few stories did try to show a less advanced era or create scenarios that would reflect less advancement, but basically, the Legends Star Wars Universe was one where few advancements were made in the past. Hope the new series averts that.

...Star Wars already had a better sequel to ROTJ in the EU and readers know this.

As one of those readers, I have to disagree on all counts. I hated the post-ROTJ Legends stuff from New Jedi Order on. Even before that, the Legends timeline was disjointed due to it being made up as it went along without much planning ahead (something the new EU is killing it at). The sequel trilogy, for whatever faults it may have had, was a better post-ROTJ continuation then anything we'd gotten prior (it actually let the new generation be the heroes of the story, for one). On top of that, the new canon EU is proving superior to the old one on all counts (far more consistent in quality, it actually plans ahead and creates a truly interconnected world between medias, and a wider range of projects). I do like a lot of the old Legends stuff and I do think that that iteration does have its place in the history and franchise, but I cannot agree that it was better then what we're getting now.

[SuperiorIronman]

For a lot of the criticism the project is getting so far (Disney in general, not doing The Old Republic instead, nobody reading books and comics, etc), one thing that's constantly brought up that I can understand why but feel is being approached wrong is how far back this is going, at 200 years. Arguments say that 200 years is still too close, that things won't be that different.

To that I say: Compare everywhere in the world between 2020 and 1820 and see how much the world has changed in our 200 years. If we as a single planet can change so much, just imagine how much an entire galaxy of scores of different planets and worlds can change in 200 years.

Supposedly there is even a KOTOR remake or reboot in the works.
But in addition to that, even KOTOR got flack for how much it resembled the prequels. It's thousands of years in the past and we had to come up with excuses like technology being stagnant to explain why everything is superficially different.