Thursday, June 5, 2008

Always A "Pioneer"

I've been a "pioneer" in many things, one of which is "desktop publishing," which I was doing before it even had a name. I published several different tabloid newspapers back when typesetting was VERY expensive and I had to use an "executive typewriter" like an IBM Selectric® and type my copy twice: once on the left to determine how many spaces to leave to get "justified copy" (even margins on both ends), then have it Photostatted down to a 2-1/4" column width with approximately 12 pt. type, which I'd "paste up" in my "flats" as camera-ready copy. When Macintosh came out with the first DTP software, I thought I had died and gone to heaven, it made my job so much easier. I immediately went to a "service bureau" and rented time on a Mac to do my copy. Soon after, I owned only the second such software platform in existence that year, the Atari ST, and started a typesetting business, able to charge prices so low in comparison to "normal" typesetting charges at the time that many either got their own DTP software and lowered their prices, or went out of business. I led the nation in sales of a carbon paper replacement called "Copyfax," that obsoleted carbon paper before that. Today, I'm yet again a "pioneer" this time in publishing, my new book being published in "print-on-demand" form, making it unnecessary for bookstores to carry lots of copies (unless they wanted to) with the book available (so far) only on the Internet through Barnes & Noble and Amazon, among others, but not yet (maybe never) available on a bookstore shelf. I expect this to obsolete new bookstores as we know them, as the Mac did "cold" typesetting and Copyfax did standard carbon paper. (Outskirts Press)

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