Lucasfilm just approved the cover art for a soon-to-be announced STAR WARS novel. (FP)
— StarWarsBooks (@DelReyStarWars) January 8, 2013
So, erm, the EU Twittersphere went a little nutty over the above tweet this afternoon.
(Yes, it was a bit of a slow news day.)
It’s “nothing we’ve mentioned before” Jennifer Heddle says, so no, not the mystery Paul S. Kemp books. I figure the chances of it being something I find completely unexciting (like yet another The Old Republic book) are fairly high, but you never know. It could be, well, pretty much anything.
This may seem like an odd sentiment for a news blogger, but I’m actually glad to see that Del Rey has held onto this, whatever it may be. Even if the book doesn’t come out until fall 2014, there being a cover bodes well to us getting some basic idea of the plot from the start… And I am so unbelievably sick of seeing fandom worry at Kemp’s duology like a sore tooth when I suspect it was announced with the contact ink still wet. We’ll find out what that one is eventually – and this as well, very soon. Time to gather a bit of that Jedi calm.
I’m also happy Del Rey didn’t announce something (presumably) the instant a contract was signed and waited until at least the project was ready for a cover. Like you mentioned, the Kemp duology is a case of announcing a book way, way, way too soon.
Announce it too soon without any followup information other than “We’ll tell you more when it’s ready” for several years and it will almost always fall into this literary version of vaporware where fans get annoyed, freaked out that it’s been silently axed, or anything in between.
Also, obligatory announcing-an-announcement annoyance.
Well, its not an Episode 7 novel either (which isn’t as daft as it sounds with release only 30 months or so away) or a pre-announced book. With Scoundrels on the way I wouldn’t be surprised if its another underworld novel. Del Rey have been living with the book for a while, and are clearly happy with it. Then again it could be another Old Republic/X-Wing book, which is cool. With Kenobi coming out it could be another standalone novel. Maybe that Leia novel folks have wanted for so long.
It really cracked me up to watch how that one simple little tweet got everyone going crazy yesterday. Del Rey definitely knows how to get the Star Wars fan base talking. That one tweet was better than any official press release they could have sent out as a teaser. Hats off to them for that.
But again, like the Ep7 bits of news, they haven’t really held on to this news now that they’ve made this tweet. I still think it would be better to sit on the whole thing and then go “BLAM! Here’s a new book with the cover and author and you guys never even knew we were working on it!” I’d love that to happen one of these days.
Ehh. It does imply we are going to get the actual news fairly quickly. But yeah, I’d prefer a surprise announcement, as I hate vague teases and (mostly) how fandom tends to build them up. There’s a reason I didn’t run a speculative laundry list of all the stuff it ‘could’ be.
So here’s a question…does Lucasfilm always have to approve the covers of books? Could there be some sort of a hint there or am I reaching?
They have to approve pretty much everything.