Saxton and Star Wars

[Mr. Oragahn]

It's all the fault of that damned Evil Warsies conspiracy!


ynori

[Jedi Master Spock]

Can we tone it down in this thread, please? Thanks.

[2046]

"Yay me"? Sorry, no. Kor was correct provided you ignore everything that was said.

EVERYTHING?, or just your exhagerated interpretations of what i said?.

Ugh.

and then did the exact same thing they'd done before but this time instead of targeting the mass market they were gonna target an esoteric subculture of a subgroup of a submarket of fandom, and gee-whiz that's superb strategy!

No, sorry.

Maybe you should reread my posts where i clearly do NOT say that "INSTEAD of targeting the mass market they were gonna target an esoteric subculture of a subgroup of a submarket of fandom"........

*****
Star Wars Episode I: Incredible Cross Sections bombed so massively (pulping 9 million copies) that it brought DK to virtual financial ruin causing them to be bought out by Pearson PLC.

So they needed the next book to have a major selling point, they got a individual with few qualifications and a known personal bias to generate highly inflated statistics for the book. Using rather dubious material for referance and ignoring several contradictory facts and disgarded laws of physics the AOTC: ICS was born and hit the market like a thunder bolt.

I doubt there has been a more discussed tech manual in all of sci-fi history and speaking as a former sales person i have to admire the audacity of the marketing strategy as it was superb.
*****

You state that they needed a selling point, and refer to their grabbing an individual with a known bias (known to whom and biased compared to what?) and inflated statistics (who would know that?), resulting in a tech manual more discussed than any you know (who's discussing it?).

(The answer to all those questions? Internet fanboys. They're the only ones who would know the name of Saxton, and only a subset of those would find him controversial, and only a subset of those would care enough to talk about it.)

(( Not to mention, the idea that book sales would increase as a result of dubious reference material, intentional ignorance of facts, and disregard for the laws of physics . . . I mean, good lord, that's most every book, especially in the non-fiction! More than a few other publications and broadcasts, too. Jumping the shark as a selling point? Really? ))

I would argue that it was only more successful than the Ep1 guide (assuming it even was) because Ep2 was simply better and cooler. And these were children's books . . . having a real physics-y guy who can put words together and that you can get on the cheap was a deal for them, and served the overall purpose of exposing children to science terminology and concepts (however twisted for partisan purposes).

Why do you think stats would ONLY appeal to VS debaters?, ok the trumped up crap he put in was a obvious indication of his bias but having stats is not going to be interesting to read for JUST/ONLY vs debaters.

Yes, but it's only controversial to Vs Debaters.

Now i do think that the addition made it the most discussed technical manual in the history of SW in VS debates or not. Now to say they MAY have done so to increase the awareness of the book within the fandom is hardly a big leap.

Except you claimed it to be the main selling point of the book and the way toward redemption of the company's fortunes.

Is it possible some geek worked at DK and said "wow, the geeks at SpaceBattles are gonna squee"? Sure it is. But to imagine that as a primary, secondary, tertiary, quaternary, or even googliary consideration in the editing or marketing of the book just doesn't make sense.

It wasn't one book, it was everything they thought would sell with Episode I, from sticker books to Ready, Set, Podrace! to the Ep1 ICS children's book.
It wasn't 9 million of one book, it was 9 million of all of them.

The material i saw regarding this did not mention any of the other books but it did specify the ICS book.

No problem. Sounds like that point's all fixed up now.

you are exhagerating my comments to the point of absurdity so you can dismiss them as such.

No, you're just defending your claims in an offensive manner. Except the claims are silly.

I don't dislike you and am not upset with you, so there's no need to dig in the heels and be all "that rat-bastard dismissed my statement out of hand!", if that's what you're doing. I'm not really interested either way. It's just that your concepts of marketing in the publishing world were waaaaay off, to the point of utterly astonishing me with just how incredibly not-right they were. I'm not claiming to be a publishing or business expert, but I know that the so-called 'audacity of their marketing strategy' was neither.