Watching The End Of The World As We Know It

Okay, the post title is a little melodramatic, but lately I've been feeling like I'm one of the few dinosaurs left with the impending Ice Age. No, I don't feel a catastropic disaster is going to kill us all, but then it's not 2012 yet ;-P.  And no, I'm not depressed or overwhelmed or even panicky; it's just a strange floaty feeling, as if anything I'm doing now can change at any moment.

Let's look at what's happening around us in ways Big and Small.  First, the Middle East, starting with Egypt.  Thousands of Arabs are standing up, demanding to have democracy, this coming after centuries and centuries of autocratic rule.  They say, in times past, it was easier for dictators to stamp out the kind of demonstrations we saw on TV, but with the use of social media such as Twitter and Facebook (and the Internet), the immediacacy of any kind of news doesn't give them much time to quell an uprising.

Whether that is true or not, one can't deny that there is change going on in that part of the world, and there's a feeling that something different will emerge in Egypt, Sudan, Bahrain, Libya, and other Arab states.  It's confusing times because we don't know what's coming, but we know we'll be affected by it, be it in small ways, like the price of gas, or bigger ways.

Second, the Space Shuttle program is coming to an end tomorrow.  It will take its last flight and will be retired.  Thousands of people will be without their jobs and for the first time ever in a long while, the US will have no space program.  We are going to hitch a ride with the Russians when we need to go to the space station.  JFK is spinning in his grave.

Again, it's not as if DOOM is going to befall us all now that we can't go up in space, at least, not for a while, but it's sign of the times that we're no longer IT.  Other countries are working on their space programs, and we're shutting down ours.  Of course, realists would say that we never found anything on the moon anyway, and landing that thing on Mars was a waste of money, but still, we've lived so long in the Age of Expansion, that we've grown to think that Space is ours, you know? 

Ray Bradbury was the first science fiction writer that gave me an awareness of what was possible with rocketships and space travel.  When I first understood what the space shuttle was, the idea of space travel for the masses became more real, that maybe...oh well, not in my lifetime.  I know there are other things being experimented on by scientists, like the space escalator, but that's still a concept.  As it is now, there are many at Cape Canaveral who aren't happy campers right now.

The third thing I'm bringing up affects me personally.  It's the publishing industry.  Everyday, someone out there is blogging about the impending doom of the system as we know it now.  Print books aren't selling and ebooks are becoming more and more popular.  Publishers are scrambling with new models while box stores like Borders announced bankruptcy.

The days of big contracts being offered to new authors are over.  That's what they're saying.  Those who are on top have nothing to lose, but those who are new will have to struggle harder to be heard among the thousands of new voices that are cropping up among the self-publishing and e-publishing venues.

Someone like me, in the middle (we're called mid-listers), has to find new ways to get new readers.  The Internet is a great place to find them, but to me, it's also a place in which to get lost, especially now that we're expected to learn how to put our ebooks out in different formats for different e-reading devices, become our own publishing houses, and also stand out enough to get readers to buy them.  For those who are tech-savvy, yeah, it's easy and fun, but for someone like me, it's basically lots and lots of time doing stuff I don't like doing.

Many have pointed out that we could hire people to do that for us.  Yes, there are services to set everything up, and the cost varies, and believe me, it still takes time even if you have someone to do everything for you while you write.  As someone with a day job, it's time I don't have, and it's also a lot of money involved.  If you start out with a minus $300-$600 (hiring someone to do the formats, cover, looking for stock pics, set up accts, professional editing, ISBN #s--just off the top of my head) per book, you'd better be damn sure that there are readers out there who will pay for your book for you to recoop those expenses.  Unless, of course, you're just rich enough to treat this as a hobby, and have the extra money to spend.

I don't know what's coming up, but definitely the world of publishing as I know it is changing.  Agents are questioning their roles.  Publishers are cutting back.  Anyone can self-publish and make it into the NYT and USAToday lists. 

There is a possibility that the future generation won't even be familiar with a print book because their parents are starting them out with a Kindle, Nook, or I-Pad.  I was telling my business partner that, if I do decide to open that bookstore, I probably have a ten year window because there are still readers of my generation who do enjoy browsing bookstores and buying physical books and checking for backlists.  There are also, surprisingly, many, many readers who don't go online at all, and still depend on their local bookstore owners for recommendations.  But for sure, the Kindle and the Nook are changing the reading world.

Change can be exciting and scary at the same time.  The cynical part of me says that old saying, about the more things change, the more they remain the same.  The hopeful part of me says that I'll have lots of fun being the new kind of author.  The lazy part of me says that I'll just have to pray to win the lottery so I can do all this as a hobby ;-).  Because, you know, the more I have to work at being an author, the less likely I will have time to write.  Not with a day job as a roofer.

Is there something in your world that is affecting you in a life-changing way?

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