Book question
- Thread starter Shaggy
- Start date
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
The best way to get into a position to write a licensed work is to succesfully write an original novel first. Publishers generally do not take submissions for media licenses, because of how such books are negotiated.
Wing Commander (and most other licenses) are "packaged". A publisher buys a certain number of books from the rights holder (EA, in this case), and then assigns the titles to authors. There were four 'packages' of Wing Commander novels (3/2/2 books for Baen and 5 books for HarperCollins).
Baen bought the ability to publish three books and then offered the slots to authors with whom they had an existing relationship. Since the reaction was best to the Forstchen works (a novella and a novel), he was offered more Wing novels in the next two licensing sets.
When the novels have two names on them (End Run excepted), it's generally because one author wrote the outline and one wrote the actual text of the book. This is done when they think one name will sell the book more than an unknown... Bill Forstchen didn't write the adaptations of WC3 and WC4 (or False Colors) -- but he was hired to write the initial outline of the book in order to remain assosciated with the series (since fans wanted to see his name). This was also the case with Mercedes Lackey on the first book. Ellen Guon was an unknown (she wrote Wing Commander II), so they attached a very famous fantasy author to the book in order to attract a larger audience.
Wing Commander (and most other licenses) are "packaged". A publisher buys a certain number of books from the rights holder (EA, in this case), and then assigns the titles to authors. There were four 'packages' of Wing Commander novels (3/2/2 books for Baen and 5 books for HarperCollins).
Baen bought the ability to publish three books and then offered the slots to authors with whom they had an existing relationship. Since the reaction was best to the Forstchen works (a novella and a novel), he was offered more Wing novels in the next two licensing sets.
When the novels have two names on them (End Run excepted), it's generally because one author wrote the outline and one wrote the actual text of the book. This is done when they think one name will sell the book more than an unknown... Bill Forstchen didn't write the adaptations of WC3 and WC4 (or False Colors) -- but he was hired to write the initial outline of the book in order to remain assosciated with the series (since fans wanted to see his name). This was also the case with Mercedes Lackey on the first book. Ellen Guon was an unknown (she wrote Wing Commander II), so they attached a very famous fantasy author to the book in order to attract a larger audience.