Lucasfilm asked Star Wars publishing licensee Del Rey to delay the release of the hardcover novelization of Star Wars:  The Force Awakens, by long-time Star Wars writer Alan Dean Foster, until January 5.  The delay, Lucasfilm told the Wall Street Journal, is “in an effort to keep as many surprises as possible for audiences seeing the movie on the big screen.”  That pushes the release of the book, probably one of the biggest hardcovers of the year, past the entire holiday season, a sacrifice Disney’s epic-scale licensing program was willing to make to keep the film’s key plot elements secret. 

The concern, according to the report, was that copies would leak out prior to the release of the film in the production and distribution process (as happened with merch being released on Force Friday, see “Early Releases of ‘Star Wars:  The Force Awakens’ Products Proliferate”). 

The ebook version of the novelization is being released the day the movie premieres on December 18, but in the past, ebooks have been a disproprortionately small share of Star Wars book sales, Del Rey told the Journal, as Star Wars purchasers have more of a collector’s mentality.  Del Rey has sold 1.2 million physical and digital copies of Star Wars books in the last 12 months, and over70 million copies over the history of the license.   

Some Star Wars titles are being released on the day the movie opens (see “’The Art of Star Wars:  The Force Awakens’ Plus”), presumably because their contents are not as sensitive as the contents of the novelization. 

Ticket sales are breaking records (see “’Force Awakens’ Ticket Sales Break Records”).