[Editor: The following was sent to us by French reader Cyprien, who kindly gave us permission to publish here. He wanted to share his feelings on French publishers losing their licenses to republish Legends stories. He also offers a helpful resource for French speaking fans looking for translations of EU short stories. If you'd like to share you feelings on the actions taken by Lucasfilm in France - or if you have any additional details on why it happened and whether we'll see more Legends in France in the future - please write to us at contact@theexpandeduniverse.com]
I'm French, a fan of EU Legends, and I'm sad today.
After reading your article below, I wanted to give you more info about what is happening in France:
Basically, our French publisher 'Pocket' lost the right to publish and translate Star Wars books published before 2015, meaning the EU Legends books.
Disney removed their right to publish Legends. Why? We don't know. We have some speculation: "the past must die" & "burn the books" (The Last Jedi reference).
Disney has also forbidden our comics publisher 'Delcourt' to republish "Tales of the Jedi" and "Dawn of the Jedi," and they are not allowed anymore to speak about the movie comics adaptation as "Episodes" but only with their titles; for example ESB instead of "Episode V: ESB". Strange, isn't it?
It's seems unlikely that an another French publisher will get the right to publish new translation of Legends, because 'Pocket' was doing a really good job (and had been doing it since 1996)! Disney seems to want to eradicate the Legends Universe, step by step. It wouldn't be surprising in the US that Disney by 2021 would forbid Del Rey from republishing EU Legends books too.
'Pocket' translates around 85% of all the EU Legends book material. Our big issue about our French EU books was they were really few re-publishings of it and so books like "Cloak of Deception," "Bounty hunters" trilogy, or the NJO series sell for as high as 80€ on second-hand website like Ebay.
But since 2015, 'Pocket' were re-publishing older Legends books like "Darth Plagueis," "Han Solo" Crispin trilogy, "Bane Trilogy," "The Thrawn trilogy" and the Thrawn duology. They were really good, and they were republishing newer Legends book translations of titles like "Millennium Falcon."
But now it's over....
We will never have french translations of: Knight Errant, Lando Calrissian Trilogy, Shadow Games, The Ruins of Dantooine, Splinter of the Mind's Eye, Scourge, Crosscurrent/Riptide, X-Wing: Mercy Kill, Razor's Edge/Honor Among Thieves, anything from the Tales of/from series.
Nor will we ever have the young adult novels series: Jedi Quest, Boba Fett and The Last of the Jedi.
(Neither publisher ever translated the short stories, but the EU French fans make and continue their own translation on this website: https://www.starwars-universe.com/livres/chroniques_oubliees/ A really good job!).
So from now on, the French EU book price will increase on second-hand website like crazy. (But French readers who are not rich and can read on ebook, they can get them easily and freely if they know where to find.)
Regards,
And long live the EU rebellion!
To read more about events related to this story, read our on-going series here.