So, sticking with the title of this blog you can guess what’s been my focus for the last month. Things are progressing with the release of my second novel, The Secret Cage. This has been amidst an eye-rolling surprise from Redbubble, the POD company who is our main provider for our merchandise. That’s mugs, t-shirts, stickers and more. In between that and trying to push for reviews for The Witch’s Foundling and The Secret Cage, it’s been a busy month.

This might be why I came up with our latest design for our store: Not today, Bear! Not today! If you’ve heard of the old saying, “Some days you get the bear and some days the bear gets you.” Well the latest design deals with sounding off about that struggle. It will be available (for now anyway) at our Redbubble Store.

With this new change, SillWill Studios is a bit better off than a lot of accounts in that, under the new Tiered system, we qualify as a Premium Account. It means we’re exempt from most of the new fees. Many creators will not be. This has prompted many artist to leave Redbubble. It’s a tense time and another example of the challenges faced by Indie artists.

So, what does this mean for SillWill Studios? Partly, that we’re looking into offering our designs on a variety of platforms. Whenever we get things sorted out, we’ll let you know here or in newsletter. While P. O. D. has been a complete game-changer by opening up avenues for artists and authors to get their designs and stories in front of an audience, there has been a foreseeable downside.

With everyone getting a kick at the can, the marketplace for designs and stories can be immense. That’s where the challenge of marketing comes in. With the limited budgets faced by Indie artists and authors taking the potential pay-cut represented by Redbubble‘s changes will leave many people scrambling even more to grab a piece of that audience-pie.

Speaking of Marketing, in a broad digital landscape, sometimes the personal touch means a lot more. So, if you happen to be in London, Ontario on May 20th, come and say Hi at The Bread and Roses Bookshop. It’s on the second floor of the Western Fair Farmers’ Market. We can talk novels and illustration and how to get your work out there. It would be great to hear what you might be working on too.

I plan to discuss Print On Demand in more detail in a further blog but if anyone has any questions about the process, feel free to shoot us a question. You can do it here or reach out to us on Facebook or Instagram. It would be great to hear from you. Until then, when you see that Bear coming at you just say: