LFL was a bit all over the place in the early days - around the time of the Zahn books and the Dark Empire comics, and again the prequels meant they had to go back and change a lot of things, but yes at least they pay attention and try to correct errors where possible.
even the first book they started off with Splinter of the Mind's Eye has been retconned since Vader was using lighting, though this would malfunction his suit for breathing. With all the publishers changes(Bantam to Del-Rey, Marvel to Darkhorse) and no knowledge of the prequels being made, it has been dicey but they have fix it. (Dark Empire is one my favorites out of SW EU) Though I'm starting to dislike how they keep adding on new canon with a new project, like Force Unleashed following the footsteps of Shadows of the Empire, being released in all media formats except the movie itself. Still looking foreward to the game itself and possibly the book. Sounds like your an EU fan, you still keep up with the new books ?
And yet Lucas doesn't consider the comics/ novels/ games etc. canon either. As far as he's concerned Boba Fett is dead.
From what I have heard he believes that after ROTJ, everything ended happily ever after. Though he wasn't blind to fan opinions, so he veto Fett to be brought back, also personally veto Luke not to die in the NJO series(this I'm thankful for).
And I don't have a problem with John Shirly not calling Predators yautja - yes, he was given his brief and - afaic - stuck to it. Without a continuity department these current crop of books are more all over the place than the original comics - and Dark Horse had strict guidelines too.
all I want is a series of legit books in league with the movies. what-if stories are nice, SW has their own batch called Infinties and SW Tales. What we need is some canon in our stories.
However, there are immense amounts of fan created resources that these authors could refer too, because let's face it, they can't be expected to read a dozen other books to make sure theirs fits.
I figure that when Shirley started researching on wikipedia for his Alien book.
Yet these resources appear to be roundly ignored.
what do you think of John actually using research from other then movies ?
(And that's not sour grapes because I researched/ wrote a lot of the Alien resources... Well not only because of that...)
lol, longtime fan I see.