Via wsj.com:
Walt Disney Co. is so determined to maintain the secrecy surrounding its hotly anticipated “Star Wars” movie that it asked its publishing partner to delay the release of a hardcover book tied to the film and forgo a potential holiday sales bonanza.
“Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” the franchise’s first new installment in a decade, will reach theaters Dec. 17. But the print edition of the novel, which will be published by Penguin Random House’s Del Rey imprint, won’t be released until Jan. 5, after the lucrative holiday gift-giving season has ended.
The unusual delay reflects Disney’s fears that printed copies of the book, which would have to start rolling off presses long before they hit store shelves, could be purloined by people who want to spill plot details online. The e-book will be released Dec. 18, since it is easier to control digital files before they go on sale.
Movie tie-ins have been a particularly profitable segment of the book business. Publishers often issue them two months before the related movie’s release to take advantage of the excitement over movie trailers.
Opportunities like a new “Star Wars” movie are rare. The most recent trailer for “The Force Awakens” was watched 128 million times in just 24 hours and advance ticket sales are breaking records.
A spokeswoman for Lucasfilm, the Disney unit that oversees “Star Wars,” confirmed that the company requested that the hardcover edition’s publication be delayed “in an effort to keep as many surprises as possible for audiences seeing the movie on the big screen.”
Books—including a prequel to “The Force Awakens” that was released in September—are just one of the many products Disney has unleashed ahead of the movie. They also include toys, such as a moving Droid, videogames and costumes.
A spokesman for Del Rey declined to comment on the publisher’s licensing arrangement with Disney. Typically in such deals, a publisher pays an advance plus a percentage of book sales after the advance has earned out.
Publishers and book retailers rely on holiday sales for a big chunk of their business. December accounted for 15% of last year’s total unit sales of physical books, as tracked by Nielsen BookScan, which covers about 85% of the print book market in the U.S.
David Moench, the Del Rey spokesman, said the publisher would have preferred to put out the hardcover edition out on the day the movie opens in order to capture more sales.
“We would love to release both formats of the novelization simultaneously and not miss the holidays,” he said, “but we recognize the importance of protecting the story for the fans.”
Though e-books will be available the day after the movie’s release, they are less likely to be given as a gift. Moreover, “Star Wars” readers have long preferred physical copies that they can put on their book shelves.
“It’s a collector’s mentality,” said Scott Shannon, Del Rey’s publisher. The “Star Wars” titles the publisher has issued have “way over-indexed” in terms of physical book sales to digital copies, said Mr. Shannon.
Del Rey has published more than 150 “Star Wars” titles, including the first in the series, based on the original 1977 movie. Although George Lucas is credited as that book’s author, it was ghostwritten by Alan Dean Foster, who also wrote “The Force Awakens” novel.
Del Rey and sister imprint Bantam Books have sold 70 million copies of “Star Wars”-related titles in the U.S. and Canada in physical and digital formats. Del Rey has sold more than 1.2 million copies in the past 12 months, led by titles such as “Star Wars: Aftermath” by Chuck Wendig and “Star Wars: Lords of the Sith” by Paul S. Kemp.
The size of that publishing franchise offers some insight into what Del Rey might be sacrificing by missing the holiday season and a chance to capitalize on the trailer’s buzz.
“You don’t know what the reviews will be, or how the movie will ultimately be received, but if you are out with the trailer when people are beginning to get excited, that’s a terrific opportunity to sell books,” said Jamie Raab, publisher of Grand Central Publishing, an imprint of Lagardere SCA’s Hachette Book Group.
J.J. Abrams, director of “The Force Awakens,” has long been obsessive about withholding plot details of his movies before they launch, and Disney has revealed very little about the plot of “The Force Awakens” so far in trailers and other promotions. Before shooting started, Mr. Abrams’s Bad Robot Productions in Santa Monica, Calif., held the only physical copy of the Star Wars script, putting it on red paper, to make it difficult to copy.
Mr. Abrams said in an email that he wasn’t previously aware of the delayed publication of the novel based on his film. “First I’ve heard of this,” he said. “But look forward to reading it!”
The delayed release of the hardcover edition struck some as a disappointment. “It would have been nice to have the book for the holidays,” said Linda Tonnesen, the buyer for the Mysterious Galaxy bookstore in San Diego, which hosts several “Star Wars”-related events each year. “I have no control over what publishers do.”
The last “Star Wars” movie was released in 2005, before e-books became popular and Internet spoilers were common. A novelization was published more than six weeks before “Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith” hit theaters.
