Template:Realworld Schuster & Schuster, Psi Fi Movie Press, Movie Publisher Services, Pioneer, New Media Books, New Media Publishing, Inc., and Couch Potato Inc. were a series of publishing companies 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 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. They published on a wide variety of properties, including Star Trek, Batman, Michael J. Fox, and Calvin And Hobbes.
Schuster began with the publishing of the Star Trek Files Magazine series, publishing several volumes a year. Each issue was 40-60 pages in magazine form, but was bound in the style of a paperback book. Each issue was written by John Peel, Edward Gross, or James Van Hise. Most of the issues were published under the "Psi Fi Movie Press" name, but some were also published under the "New Media Books" name. A similarly conceived magazine, Enterprise Incidents was published under the imprint "New Media Publishing, Inc." for which, besides the above mentioned authors, Paul Newitt also submitted articles. Contrary to what the name suggested, articles about other Science Fiction productions were also included in that publication.
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 book 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:
- Schuster & Schuster
- Movie Publisher Services
- The Man Between the Ears: Star Trek's Leonard Nimoy
- The Man Who Created Star Trek: Gene Roddenberry
- Trek: The Unauthorized Behind-The-Scenes Story of The Next Generation
- The Classic Trek Crew Book
- The Trek Crew Book
- The Trek 25th Anniversary Celebration
- Trek vs. The Next Generation
- The History of Trek
- Trek: The Next Generation
- Trek: The Next Generation Crew Book
- Trek: The Printed Adventures
- The Best of Enterprise Incidents: The Magazine for Star Trek Fans
- Deep Space Crew Book
- The Special Effects of Trek
- The Trek Celebration Two
- Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Unauthorized Story
- The Trek Crew Companion
- Pioneer
- New Media Publishing, Inc.