Reinventing the Wheel, part 2

There is an old artist saying, “Well, back to the drawing board.” (I hate that saying). But I needed to redo my work in such a fashion that it would be original again. My old cartoons were based on now copyright iconic images from 40 years in the past and I had to tread carefully. There are a lot of lawyers on the lookout for people trespassing on their clients territory these days. So just forget the old stuff and reinvent it for these modern times. Okay, fine.

My cartoon work was never really about Star Trek, I had just used the ships as an readily identifiable image to speed the comics along. The humor in the books were actually about space travel, from my first interest in the US space program in the 60s and what it would be like out there for us in the universe, though with a bit of a twist. Okay, great, the space shuttle is gone, what is NASA doing for future space travel? Ok, look, something resembling a space vehicle and it is a real thing that is going to be used someday and it is called the Orion. Just the ticket, done. The monolith became a megalith, (you know, those big rock thingies that ancient peoples used to make calendars with 4,000 years ago, before we had printing presses to create the zillions of them every year around Christmas). (And yes, I also got involved long ago in working with some people who self-published Trek calendars).

Update the humor, bring it in to the 21st century, not the 1960s. Create new material and characters, explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new… Okay, we had better not go there, dangerous waters and all that. Just format it and put it up on the great Amazon again and wait for the money to roll in. And wait, and wait. There is something else needed, I know, I got one of my degrees in it a long time ago. Advertising and marketing. But that takes time and money which I don’t have, and no idea of how to go about it in these modern electronic times. My education is 45 years out of date and a century behind in technology. (Sounds like a good subject for another blog).

So I checked Amazon today and Field Trip is 3,216,845 on the best seller list. But is 6,328 on the Kindle hard SF list. My Stars and Galaxies is 3,398,003 on the best seller list. But is 2,887 on the Kindle humorous SF list. So it looks like I have an awful lot of work to do to compete with all of those millions of other self-publishers.

(This book cover was a lot simpler. A photo from NASA for the background. But hey, why did I spend all those years painting astronomical illustrations? Just use one of my own, copyright free of course.)

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