When I started publishing patterns a few years ago part of the reason was the ease of online publishing.
I choose to tackle the challenges of pattern production in a pretty safe way. I had a corporate buyout package. I worked for five more years,banking everything I made during the last year. Then I quit my job.
I did a fair bit of pre-work while assessing my plan to become a professional knitter. I purchased some of the items I knew I would need while I was still working. I published a few patterns. I started writing my blog. I took some small business courses.
After I went full time, I established a professional networking group as a way of continuing to educate myself.
I publish interviews with other professionals almost once a week. Many of the interviews have been done with designers I admire. In other cases the knitting pros invited to do an interview are suggested to me by friends. I look at knitting books for additional leads and obviously I use the Ravelry database as well.
I'm noticing a shift in that I've recently had a number of invitations turned down because the recipient is no longer actively designing. This isn't always obvious because they keep their patterns available online. In a few situations I've gone to the designers site only to discover it is no longer active. I've also heard about several established designers who have switched to part time knit design while taking full time jobs.
I'm well aware that people leave specific industries for all sorts of reasons, however the rejected invitations are a new experience. In the past the most common reason for not doing my interview was the invitee didn't have time because they were so busy with other obligations. This is definitely a business that freelancers find it difficult to make a living in. I worry that there may be a trend that I'm becoming aware of due to the interview series. I hope I'm wrong because I believe the online publishing world has allowed some amazing designs to be created and many fresh, innovative ideas to revitalize the knitting world.
I've kind of noticed a similar trend, but the way I viewed it was that the people who have left or are leaving we're just going through a phase. If you look at some of the other designers who were up and coming just a few years back (Ysolda and Jarrod Flood for example), they're now heavy-hitters in our industry.
ReplyDeleteKnitting went through such a massive surge when it was the new, hip thing to do and now that people's tastes are changing (I'm noticing the mega trend toward crochet lately), I can only assume that some designers are having a change of heart as well. Plus, designing knitwear has to be something that you have a high commitment level to because it does take a lot of work to put together a good pattern. Look at some of the interviews that you've done and listen to some designer interviews on podcasts over the last few years and you'll see that a ton of the up-and-coming designers just kind of fell into the role because they were altering every pattern they used anyway or they figured that they would just wright it down the next time they made up their sweater pattern. It's wonderful that things fell into place so nicely, but you have to wonder how much they missed just getting to sit and knit another designer's pattern. Also, with such an influx of new designers over the past couple of years, it's harder to stand out from the crowd. So, you may have an amazing pattern, but it's likely that someone has already designed almost the exact same thing as you and that can be very discouraging (not to mention the possible lack of sales because the customer has options now).
I'm not so concerned with designers leaving the industry. There will always be new ones and we will always have our knitting. ^_^
Ysolda has an interesting post on her blog: http://ysolda.com/blog/2014/8/18/new-patterns-an-ebook-completed-and-some-thoughts-on-pricing about pricing of patterns and the challenges we designers face.
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