Heyne Heyne is a German publisher based in Munich , noted for having been a prolific publisher of into German language translated " Star Trek " book titles . The company was originally founded on as Wilhelm Heyne Verlag by its namesake in the city of Dresden , the " Wilhelm " part of the name thereafter dropped . The publisher specialized in releasing books in the fiction genre , but the publishing house was destroyed in the bombing of the city by allied bombers in World War II in February of 1945 . After the war , in 1948 , founder Heyne decided to relaunch his company in Munich , then located in the by the Western allies occupied part of Germany , in an effort to avoid being caught in the then - communist part of Germany , which was later formalized by Germany becoming two separate nations . In the early 1960s and under auspices of son Rolf Heyne , the publisher introduced the mass market paperback format for which it became renowned , in the process becoming Germany ' s second largest publisher of paperbacks , even though the hardcover format was never abandoned . In this , Heyne took its cue from the release strategy of its American counterpart , Ballantine Books – incidentally the publisher of the very first " Star Trek " ( paperback ) reference book – who had already done so in 1952 . Heyne remained a prolific publisher until 2004 , when the company was sold to , and merged as an imprint of , the publishing conglomerate Random House , thereby becoming a sister company of its paragon Ballantine Books in passing . Ironically , Heyne had already been a sister company of Ballantine Books in the period 1998 - 2000 , as it was from 1974 until December 2000 a part of the German Bertelsmann media conglomerate , the current owner of Random House – which itself had already purchased Ballantine Books in 1975 – acquired by Bertelsmann in 1998 . The " Star Trek " license . Between and Heyne published a huge variety of translated " Star Trek " novels and reference works – mostly originating from Pocket Books . Noteworthy was that Heyne became one of the very few foreign - language publishers to commission and release a number of original German - language " Star Trek " reference books for the home market , predominantly written by author Ralph Sander , who had in the 1980s and 1990s been Heyne ' s chief translator for their " Star Trek " reference book releases . The of was the first recorded " Star Trek " publication by Heyne , released in the same year as the source publication as " Star Trek II : Der Zorn des Khan " . Nevertheless , in the mid - 1990s , Heyne Verlag started to show declining interest to publish " Star Trek " reference works , but entered into a joint venture with German publisher VGS Verlag , which was slated to pick up the slack . Somewhat unusually , the cooperation entailed that Heyne continue to publish the translated versions of the " Star Trek " novels as mass market pockets , whereas VGS was responsible for hardcover versions of those titles that were concurrently released as such . Yet , foreshadowing things to come , Heyne canceled its part of these releases , but had them released as digital Kindle editions in 2014 after all . VGS also released a small line of translated , unauthorized " Star Trek " ( softcover ) reference books , which Heyne had no interest in publishing themselves , including two by authors Mark A . Altman and Edward Gross . The cooperation turned out to be short - lived however , only lasting for a few years and had already ended when Heyne ' s interest to publish translated " Star Trek " reference works ceased altogether by the time of the takeover by Random House , the publication of these works henceforth taken over by relative newcomer Heel Verlag . After this , pursuant the acquisition of Heyne by Random House , interest in publishing " Star Trek " novels ultimately ceased as well . When the number of new releases dropped significantly in 2006 , Heyne answered , in a response to an email request of trekzone . de , that because of lowering sales Heyne would not publish many more " Star Trek " novels any longer . Following the announcement of the 2009 movie , Heyne published an anthology " Die Anfänge " ( " The Beginnings " ) , a collection of thee randomly picked TOS novels which they had already published earlier . Since then Cross Cult acquired the license to publish " Star Trek " novels in Germany .