Well, things are gearing up for the multiple book signings, I have lined up with fellow indie author, Cynthia Brubaker. My appearance at the Game Chamber Geek Craft Fair was a blast. As an interesting side note: of all the sales I had at the event, only one person paid in cash. Every other sale was by card, using my Square device. A true sign of the times. It also kind of symbolizes how things have changed.

When my brother and I first entered the self-publishing arena with our graphic novels, Print-On-Demand was just barely more than an idea and the piece of the market for Indie artists was considerably smaller – or at least, less populated.

However, the rise of POD and devices like the Square, have definitely thrown open the floodgates and made “side hustles” a much more available option for an increasing number of creative entrepreneurs. This has, of course, had a seismic effect on the entire publishing industry and set up a strange tension between indie authors and traditionally-published authors – backed in some part by big publishing houses. It’s an absurd opposition as both approaches hold value and can actually compliment each other. It’s my belief in the future most authors will be ‘Hybrid Authors’; they’ll have books self-published and traditionally-published.

For myself, I prefer the control of self-publishing and there are now, plenty of services and platforms on which to promote your work. Self-publishing can also be done on the cheap – depending on how much of the process you take on yourself – or it can be more costly if you hire services to help get your book to market. The challenge is getting noticed amongst all the truly good, even great, work present in the marketplace. That’s where sometimes traditionally-published authors can have more of any edge. Big publishing houses have bigger marketing budgets. However, they won’t necessarily spend much on a new, untested author. In the end, we love our art but we also need to make money in order to continue.

This is really just a roundabout way of saying that we are currently in a state of flux or change in the publishing market. Things may look exceptionally different in 5, 10, or 20 years from where we are today. Don’t even get me started on the effect of AI on this whole scenario. Maybe your favourite novel in the future will have a person’s ‘face’ as a cover for an AI ‘author’ (like a Mrs. Butterworth or Betty Crocker?) under a big publisher’s control of course. Or maybe you’ll find books divided into AI or ‘Bio-organic’ categories?

What book would you prefer to read? Indie Author or Traditionally-published? AI or Real person? It’s going to be … interesting in the coming years and not all the changes can be foreseen.

In that vein, the feature design below may be somewhat fitting.

FEATURE DESIGN OF THE MONTH

The Mistress of Autumn or the Autumn Sorceress, has come to usher change into your life. With her guidance, it will be smooth and abundant. Claim her magic for this season of letting go. She’s available on lots of cool merchandise like stickers, mugs, t-shirts and more in our Redbubble store. The site frequently has sales too, so it pays to check in regularly to get in on some of the best of indie artists’ work.