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(written from a Production point of view)

Schuster & Schuster, Psi Fi Movie Press, Movie Publisher Services, Pioneer Books, New Media Books, New Media Publishing, Inc., and Couch Potato Inc. were a series of imprints of the publishing company formed by Hal Schuster in the United States in the early-1980s through to the mid-1990s to specialize in non-fiction books about film and comic book entertainment. His brother Jack acted as President. Typically, their, often more critical, output was not licensed by the entities who owned the properties, but instead relied on unauthorized reflections by the participants to the production of the entertainments. Even though unlicensed and unauthorized, therefore often deemed undesirable from the respective franchise's point-of-view, they were not illegal as they made fullest use of the "works of journalistic/academic nature" exemption clauses in copyright laws, though this meant these publication could not legally feature any copyrighted imagery. They published on a wide variety of properties, including Star Trek, Batman, Michael J. Fox, and Calvin And Hobbes.

Schuster began with publishing the Enterprise Incidents magazine, published under the imprint "New Media Publishing, Inc." for which Paul Newitt, Dennis Fischer, and James Van Hise (who also served as editor for the publication) submitted articles. Contrary to what the name suggested, articles about other science fiction productions were at a later stage also included in that publication. The magazine started out in 1976 as a fanzine published by The Science Fiction Comic Association and the Star Trek Federation of Fans, but was taken over by Schuster in 1979. A similarly-conceived magazine, the Star Trek Files Magazine series, began its run in 1985, with several volumes a year published. Each issue was 40-60 pages in magazine form, but was bound in the style of a paperback book. Each issue was written by, besides Van Hise, John Peel and Edward Gross. Most of the issues were published under the "Psi Fi Movie Press" name, but some were also published under the "New Media Books" name. After a few years, this approach was changed to larger compilation books. These compilations contained some material from the prior Star Trek Files Magazine issues along with some new material. The company names changed with each revision, and books under the "Pioneer" umbrella were even distributed to regular bookstores.

One of their unusual forays into the world of fiction publishing sparked controversy in that author Jean Airey claimed that they never had permission to publish a substantively altered version of her work, The Doctor and the Enterprise. [1]

Releases[]

Star Trek books published by the various imprints included:

External link[]

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