Jeff VanderMeer recently wrote on his blog about publishing in the future:
—In all likelihood, making a living as a full-time writer will be impossible unless you are already the leader of a junta, gang, or militia and have the resources to put out your own Mein Kampf. If you are in this position, you will have a built-in captive audience for your writings.
— Most writers will make their living selling metal scraps, human meat, and edible weeds.”
Jeff is being tongue-in-cheek here but I think that in the post-print-apocalypse future he envisions it is more likely that tattoo artists will become the new publishers. Like Robert Mitchum in Night of the Hunter with L-O-V-E and H-A-T-E tattooed on his knuckles or Queequeg in Moby Dick, people will still need some outward display or insignia to warn or show strangers their affiliations. Since most people in Jeff’s dystopic future will be unable to read they will see letters more as symbols and literate tattoo artists/authors can ink whatever prose or poetry suit their sensibilities. Of course, if most of humanity has becomes cannibalistic then we are talking about ephemeral editions – or, in some cases, imprinted skin can be saved like parchment, which can also be boiled down into soup stock if times really get hard.