First and foremost, Star Trek forever shaped and dominated our perceptions of what space travel would be like. Martin Cooper, the chief engineer at Motorola who invented the cell phone, was inspired by Kirk’s communicator on the Original Series. Star Trek also influenced the concept of voice recognition dialing, text-to-speech engines, and that wonderful voice-prompt hell many of us find ourselves in. I’ve looked at the new onslaught of smartphones and marveled at how closely they look and perform like the PADD (Personal Access Data Device) from The Next Generation. I personally picked the T-Mobile Dash 3G, a Windows Mobile smartphone, because it almost exactly matches the physical design of the PADD I’ve seen in countless Next Gen episodes.
The big push in digital media is shaping our future around us. The MP3 format revolutionized the music industry and set off a digital copyright hell-storm. There have always been copyright concerns with every new technology. Cassettes made it possible to record your favorite songs straight off the radio. Radio stations worked around this by playing commercials or having DJs talk over the beginning and end of popular songs to provide you with a “less-than-perfect” copy. I made plenty of mixed tapes in my day and I couldn’t care less about a few seconds of interruption just to sing along to my favorite tunes. If I really liked it, I’d buy the damn album. The invention of the VCR made television networks and movie theatres freak because they thought no one would watch TV anymore and just record movies and shows. We didn’t; and we continue to spend countless hours at night in front of the boob tube. Tivo and Netflicks are changing how and when we watch our favorite shows and movies but we’ll still watch the original episodes and we’ll still dish out $30 (with popcorn and drinks) to see the latest blockbuster on the big screen.
The MP3 put the lid on the coffin of the physical cassette and CD format. The latest iPod and Zune player certainly put the final nail in. The DVD killed the VCR. Even the DVD player itself is optional at this stage. Consumers buy the new album or movie and rip it to their hard drives to take everywhere. The original stays safe and scratch-free at home. Many movie companies have conceded and now package a download code with movies like The Hangover for a free digital copy available to the legal owner of the physical DVD.
Star Trek has now changed the literature world. Remember the joy and pain of carrying 100 pounds of school books around campus? I remember long hours at the public library on weekends with a stack of dusty books just reveling in the feel of each page as I learned about science and nature, and lost myself in the latest adventure story. But those days are numbered, too.
For years the publishing world didn’t think digital books had a place but the iPad is changing all that. Amazon launched the Kindle and the tech and publishing companies gasped and scratched their heads. Soon there was the Nook from Barnes & Noble, the Sony eBook reader, and now the iBookstore for your Apple drug of choice be it the iPod, iPhone, or iPad. iThis, iThat- Apple sure is egocentric, but I digress…
Just as Picard and crew of the interpid USS Enterprise would read about the latest plot to Federation security on a PADD, you can now read your favorite newspapers, magazines, and books as if they were the real thing. The iPad and its eBook app have pushed digital publishing
into the forefront of business and society and made the digital book a serious contender in the book selling world.
MySpace revolutionized the discovery of the latest musical acts as countless artists uploaded their digital music onto their personal MySpace page for all to hear, share, and enjoy. The word-of-mouth approach worked and many such artists made it to the top. Some signed record deals while some stuck to their independent roots and churn out their latest CDs as a download to millions of fans. By cutting out agents, productions costs, and the various middle men today’s music stars can reap a greater profit margin while making their material more accessible and more affordable for their fans.
Self publishers, like myself, get dismayed by the countless query letters we send out in hopes of landing that huge book deal that will make us the next Tom Clancy. Often these letters go from an agent’s inbox straight to the recycle bin without being opened. If they do get opened, along comes that pretty form letter: Dear Writer, We Regret to… blah, blah, blah.
Print on Demand companies like Lulu and Createspace made for a welcome retreat. Here we could upload our content, design a cover, and have an actual copy we could hold in our hands. When I received the very first printed copy of my first title, Musings from a Candlelit Chamber, I was like a kid on Christmas morning. I grinned and thought to myself “This is it. I’m on my way.” Boy, was I in for a shock.
Writing it and printing it out is the easy part. The marketing and selling of that new book is the hard part. If no one knows about you or the book then you’re never going anywhere. Many of the POD companies have partnerships with Amazon, Borders, or Barnes & Noble to display and distribute your titles on those sites or via direct order from your local mom-and-pop bookstore. This is usually at a high cost and writers see little, if any, profit from such sales- as low as $1 for a book that retails for $15.
Star Trek once again changes the world through the iPad. This device is rapidly changing how the world receives and reads news and information. Apple has posted an online application for authors looking to publish and sell their own works on the iBookstore. Apple’s iTunes Connect developer/media portal provides the technical requirements for distributing content on the iBookstore. The marketing potential and profitability for self publishers is very promising, to say the least.
Here’s a quick rundown of the technical requirements for uploading and managing your content and sales: an Intel-based Mac running OS X 10.5 or later, at least 1GB of RAM, QuickTime 7.0.3 or later, at least 10GB of available hard drive space, and a broadband Internet connection. Your book’s content must include an ISBN and be submitted in the EPUB format, capable of passing Epubcheck 1.0.5. My books are all available in the universal PDF format but free conversion tools are available online to swap back and forth between formats. Publishers will also need a U.S. Tax ID and a valid iTunes Store account. Be mindful that Apple does not pay partners until they have reached certain “payment requirements and earnings thresholds in each territory”.
© 2010 R. Wolf Baldassarro/Deep Forest Productions
