Political cartoonist and blogger Tom Tomorrow (né Dan Perkins) has decided to branch out into kidlit with a picture book entitled The Very Silly Mayor, due out in September. On his site, This Modern World, Tomorrow makes it clear the kind of book he was aiming for … and not aiming for:

I wanted it to be a book that would be amusing enough for adults, so that parents could stand to read it for the fiftieth evening in a row without feeling like their heads were going to explode. But at the same time, I wanted it to be a book that was genuinely for children, not one of these alleged kid’s books whose author revels in his own cleverness, winking knowingly at the adult and leaving the child almost irrelevant to the experience.

Given that the book is being published by a small press in the U.S., Tomorrow lays out the stakes of indie publishing:

It’s hardcover, with a dust jacket, interior wallpaper “ should be a lovely package. But as I also pointed out previously, what this means is that I have much more of a personal stake in this “ rather than getting most of the money I will make from it up front in an advance, as I’ve been able to in the past, most of what I’m going to earn will be after the actual sales. And my publisher “ did I mention they’re small? They don’t have a skyscraper. They don’t really have an office. They’re two people working out of an apartment in Brooklyn. Which may actually be the wave of the future, as far as publishing goes “ low overhead, keep it simple. But sales of this book will impact their lives, and mine, directly.

Of course, most Canadian indie publishers and authors would see this “wave of the future” as being more like the “wave of the past three or four decades.”