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Memory Alpha
Real world article
(written from a Production point of view)

A partwork is a magazine publishing format which is designed to market an ongoing collection to the public, based on a particular subject. It is Eaglemoss Collections (née GE Fabbri) and its sub-licensed partner De Agostini that have become the most prolific partwork publishers in the 21st century, where the Star Trek franchise is concerned.

Usually geared to establish a strong subscriber base, partworks are typically released on a weekly, bi-monthly, or monthly basis, and commonly require the purchase of more than one hundred issues to complete the collection. In the UK, Spain, Italy, and Japan in particular, partworks are among the most popular types of magazines. [1]

Strong subscriber loyalty is considered paramount in order for any partwork publication to succeed commercially. The North-American market though, has traditionally been considered to be primarily price-driven – resulting in weak corresponding subscriber loyalty – , and has, in combination with more favorable postal regulations overseas, led to the partwork format being a relatively unknown phenomenon in North American. (see main article)

However, within subscriber, or rather, customer loyalty also lies the partwork publisher's Achilles' heel, being an additional reason for North-American customers to be wary of partworks as well; a real fear that partwork collections will never be completed, for whatever extraneous reason there may be. This fear was proven all too pertinent, painfully so even, when Eaglemoss was out of the blue declared bankrupt on 5 August 2022, leaving scores of frustrated collectors – who had been kept completely in the dark about the impending demise of the company – behind with their incomplete collections, not in the least those of the various still ongoing Star Trek collections. A plethora of very displeased Eaglemoss customers vented their anger over what they perceived as a grievous betrayal by Eaglemoss of their trust on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube as well as on the new sites of their respective media franchise fanbases, which in Star Trek's case concerned among others TrekCore and TrekMovie.com. As Eaglemoss had been one of the most prolific partwork publishers in the world, it is yet to be determined in regard to the badly handling of the customer base, how damaging its demise will become for the remaining parties in the partworks industry like De Agostini.

The commonly published partworks can be composed of, or concurrently include, the following elements:

  • A reference archive, with each issue solely consisting of a magazine, each issue or individual folio thereof usually to be collected/organized in dedicated magazine binders; note: many other types of partworks also offer dedicated binders for their magazine components.
  • A DVD collection, with each issue including a DVD of the relevant presentation
  • A model kit-building series, with individual issues containing parts which eventually combine to create a single, complete model
  • A collectible models collection, with each issue including a finished, standalone display model
  • A subscription box series that includes a model with each release but omits a magazine

Star Trek partworks[]

Star Trek partwork publishers[]

See also[]

External link[]

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