Star Trek Fotonovels
Star Trek Fotonovels were a series of twelve softcover pocket photonovel books, produced by Mandala Productions and published by Bantam Books during the years 1977-1978. These books were essentially re-tellings of the  episodes in question, with word balloons and text being arranged over the stills from the episode in the style of a comic book or graphic novel. Something of a short-term fad, such books were conceived in the days before the advent of home video, most notably VHS, and quickly fell out of fashion thereafter. No specific order was observed, be it production, or broadcast order-wise. Instead, a random selection, stemming from all three seasons of the Original Series was selected for adaptation, resulting in all three seasons being represented in the twelve-issue run of the publication.

Five of the first six titles have seen a reprint run around 1979/1980 ( being the exception) in order to make the most out of the fervor surrounding the premiere of , and were endowed with new ISBNs. It was in conjunction with the event that these first six titles of the Bantam editions also saw translated international releases in the Netherlands and Germany, as well as two in Japan, these two actually featuring a heavy use of imagery from the film on their covers. For Latin-America, a pan-American produced – involving companies located in the USA, Panama and Venezuela – Spanish-language version was released in 1979 of the first seven issues as monthly outings under the "GeoMundo" imprint, and distributed in, among others, the USA, Mexico, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Panama. Each of these editions had a price imprint representing the local currency.

A somewhat out-of-the-ordinary release concerned the 1980 Indonesian versions. These editions had their origins in the efforts  had undertaken in the late-1970s/early-1980s to introduce their former colony to the phenomenon of the European comic. It is very hard to ascertain how far the publication effort extended due to the low status of comics in Indonesian society (creating imagery of living creatures, including men, is frowned upon in Muslim culture), but an Indonesian release of the eleventh title is known, implying that the Indonesians went farther than the Dutch, who ceased publication after the first six titles – as did the Germans for that matter. Conceivably unlicensed,  the Indonesian releases differed from all the others in this respect, that they were executed in black and white instead of full color.

Releases

See also
Star Trek Photostories
Fotonovels