A Future Direction for Stellagama Publishing

2026 was a rough year so far for me, Omer Golan-Joel, owner of Stellagama Publishing. Apart from obvious horrible political events I prefer not to discuss here, I went through a lot of tough times. Across 2024 and 2025, I was in a deep marital crisis which almost led to a divorce.In December 2025, I broke my elbow and had my arm in a cast for a week. In January 2026, I had to go twice to a psychiatric ER due to a long hypo-manic episode, which (among other things) involved me writing poetry obsessively and spending much money on publishing my poems (with no profit or compensation).

In May 2026, I had a (thankfully minor) stroke leading to three days of hospitalization at a neurological department. Then, again, in early July 2026, I had another suspected stroke, this time with six days of hospitalization and inconclusive results. As a result of this brush with death, I reconsidered my previously-hardcore secular worldview, which led to me (partially) observing Shabbat and eating Kosher food (I am Jewish).

On top of that, my financial situation turned to the worse, both due to the hypo-manic spending and to greatly disrupted work (both in my day-jobs and in Stellagama Publishing). My funds are now extremely tight and from having three bank accounts and several credit cards, I now have one account and two cards which I will soon convert to ATM or Direct Debit cards to prevent improper spending.

Stellagama Publishing, along with my wife Einat, were my anchors in these turbulent waters. However, handling major medical and financial stress took its toll from my writing and publishing work. I had several projects slated for 2026, and only a very few came to fruition (such as Pocket Barbarian). Now that the hardship is (hopefully) subsiding, I want to return to full work on Stellagama Publishing with its wonderful team and many titles.

There are three main considerations here. First, I need to curtail spending to a bare minimum, which is paying royalties to partners and paying for an Adobe Stock subscription for affordable (only human-made) stock art. Second, I want to maintain Stellagama's identity despite recent years' changes in the small-press TTRPG market.  Third, I want to further dedicate our work to our customers and to the TTRPG community at large.

Thus, I have made the following decisions.

1. We will use color art (mainly human-made stock art) for book covers, and use exclusively black-and white art for book interiors. We will not use any AI art or text whatsoever (we never did!). We will use as much public-domain art as possible, as well as strategically-placed (human) stock art. We will not delve into "ArtPunk" directions of excessive (and expensive) art.
2. We will focus on PDF titles, which constitute the majority of our sales. Other than major-line core books, we will not publish print titles. When offering print, we will offer black-and-white softcovers for maximum affordability for our customers.
3. We will use Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) as much as possible, mainly for ethical reasons. I am using Linux (the distribution is Fedora KDE) on my main desktop computer and work laptop, and am using the very few Windows-only programs I need (such as the Affinity Suite for major book layout) on my wife's computer (she isn't into Linux yet). We will do my writing on LibreOffice and much of our layout work in LibreOffice and Scribus.
4. We will continue to focus on the readability of our products. In technical terms, this means using the Atkinson Hyperlegible Next font, size 12 points, black text on a white background, for all body text and tables. This also means clearly separating art from text. We will be moving thicker books to A4 format, as it is easier to keep open on the table than the A5 format we used extensively in the past.
5. We will continue our commitment to the OSR and Cepheus communities. While I occasionally publish "Community Content" booklets for Traveller, almost of Stellagama Publishing's work would stay staunchly loyal to OSR and Cepheus titles and aesthetics.
6. We will reduce our book prices, for the benefit of our community and that of our loyal customers. In the past, we significantly increased our prices due to inflation, but I have reconsidered this and think no one should pay over $10 for a gaming PDF. This will also be permitting our customers to enjoy our frugal art budget: we save money, and so you do! On August 2nd, 2026, we will cut the prices of many (though not all) of our titles across the board! Print prices will be somewhat higher due to the print cost itself, though our share of the cost will remain $10 or lower.
7. We will redo the layout of some of our books following customer feedback. This will include, inter alia, a new B&W layout for Cepheus Deluxe, an A4 layout for The Sword of Cepheus, and a new Cepheus Deluxe version of The Space Patrol.

 Together, with hard work and dedication, we will publish the best TTRPG books we can for the benefit and joy of our communities and customers!