When I travel to a new city these days, I sometimes catch myself thinking: somewhere out there, in one of those apartments behind a lit-up window, my book is sitting on a shelf. I say it quietly to my wife, and she smiles. Maybe that's hard to relate to. It's one of those small joys of being a self-publisher.
Honestly, moving a print run of a thousand copies was not easy. With my first two books, bookstores still played along, the press covered it, everything ran smoothly. These days, the press and the book trade have gone cold. Bare skin? No thanks. Nobody feels responsible for that anymore. Even the museum shops ghosted me without exception, which genuinely disappointed me.
Social media won't let me advertise my work, bookstores wave me off, the press stays quiet. So the only road left was the direct one. Sell every book myself, one at a time. For 834 days, I’ve been a bookseller. Maybe now you understand why I'm so happy today.
That's all in the past now. No more creative block, no more box in the storeroom giving me dirty looks. I'm free again. Free for what's next, free to step on the gas. And I can promise you, I'm ready.
Whether there will be another book, I don't know yet. Maybe someday, is what I'd say as of right now. What I do feel is an appetite for large-format work, for something solid alongside the digital worlds of my Patreon. Something you can hold, something with weight, something that won't fall victim to the next algorithm.
That leaves me to thank everyone who now calls Mellow their own. You're allowed to feel a little special. Limited means limited. I'm not reprinting. What you have on your shelf stays a rarity.