A People's Guide to Publishing

Frankfurt Book Fair is now the world's largest publishing industry show. It's open to the public, but it's primarily for industry veterans to pen big business deals. It's largely to sell foreign rights translations of your books (or buy the same!). And we did! Check out our report from what happened there in 2023 and how it might be useful for you! ************ Thank you for watching the People's...

We live in an era where Hershey posts perspectives on trans rights and Heinz offers opinions on foreign wars. Naturally, book publishers feel pressure to talk about what's going on in the world around them. This week on the pod we look at best practices for expressing yourself.  ************ Thank you for watching the People's Guide to Publishing vlogcast!   Get the book: https://microcosmpublishi...

Popular author Lydia Davis decided that she no longer wanted her books sold on Amazon. So she tasked her agent with finding a publisher who could do this for her. Everyone said that it was impossible. But through a unique partnership between Microcosm and Bookshop.org, we found a way. And it wasn't even hard. This is how it turned out. Over 10,000 books sold in the first month and growing!  ******...

The Shop at MATTER has been an innovative bookseller and design studio for decades. For our featured bookseller of the month we invite Rick Griffith to discuss the intersection of revolutionary bookselling and radical design. ************ Thank you for watching the People's Guide to Publishing vlogcast!   Get the book: https://microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/books/3663 Get the workbook: https://mi...

In several previous episodes, we've made reference to presenting your books at a "sales conference." It's a fundamentally misleading event, since you aren't actually presenting to buyers. So this week, on the pod, we answer the reader question "What is a sales conference?" ************ Thank you for watching the People's Guide to Publishing vlogcast!   Get the book: https://microcosmpublishing.com...

How do authors find a publisher? (or how can publishers find them?) How do publishers choose which books to acquire? What does the development and contract negotiation process look like? How can the publishing process be re-shaped to be more inclusive for diversity, equity, and inclusion? What are the best practices? Why do they work?  ************ Get the book: https://microcosmpublishing.com/cat...

When we tell strangers what we do, they either bemoan the death of the publishing industry or assume that we sit around and read books all day. So this week on the pod, we take a look at what a publisher actually does and the outcome of all of this work!  ************ Thank you for watching the People's Guide to Publishing vlogcast!   Get the book: https://microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/books/366...

Taste is subjective and arbitrary, but still, everyone carries a certain amount of imposter syndrome, wondering if their book if any good. So this week on the pod, we take a look at what makes a book good, successful, and resonating with readers! ************ Thank you for watching the People's Guide to Publishing vlogcast!   Get the book: https://microcosmpublishing.com/catal... Get the workbook:...

When you are working on someone else's book, there is frequent confusion about who has the final say. Many people consider the author to be the final authority on decisions. Others look to major account buyers who essentially gatekeep the book within the industry. Yet others would look to readers themselves. This week on the pod, Joe and Elly discuss these issues and how to navigate conflict when...

In traditional publishing, sales are thought of as a steep upward curve, a peak, falling action, and a steady plateau, moving slowly downward towards the book's "resolution" and "conclusion." Jokes aside, this week Joe and Elly talk about how you can break this cycle and make book sales last forever.  ************ Thank you for watching the People's Guide to Publishing vlogcast!   Get the book: ht...

Marc Campbell, a Black, gay therapist, works with queer kids and parents to create loving and accepting homes where people can safely be themselves and parents can understand their children. This week on the pod, we welcome him as a special guest to talk about his brand new book, I Love My Queer Kid!

The Copper Dog didn't set out to be controversial; just a lovable weird bird next door to spooky Salem. However, some of their customers don't understand the curatorial powers of the bookstore and attempted to overwrite values. This week, in the latest installment of our monthly Bookstore Solidarity Project, we feature another store who carefully selects how to tell their own story. ************ T...

Too much or too little inventory is almost always a publisher's biggest problem. These are the two biggest problems facing the industry. So this week on the pod, we cast some ideas for how to wrap your head around these issues, how to manage your inventory, and how to start small and grow incrementally.  ************ Thank you for watching the People's Guide to Publishing vlogcast!   Get the book:...

Once upon a time, we were a client publisher of Independent Publisher's Group (IPG). Then, as we continued to grow, we embarked out on our own and now handle our own distribution in the U.S. Today, after that quintupled our sales, we began taking on our own client publishers that we distribute alongside our books. We take a look at what that means this week on the pod. ************ Thank you for w...

The first step of writing a book is figuring out who will read it. What else are they interested in? What attracts them to those things? What implicit assumptions are operating in how you think about people that will read your book? How are they harming you? How will they serve to determine the demographics of your reader? This week, we tackle all of this and more. ************ Thank you for watch...

Each month we feature a new bookstore that we operate in solidarity with. This month it's the Raven, a classical bookstore of many reboots, owners, and iterations. The Raven is now worker-owned and specializes in supporting its local community, while providing a safe space for people in risk and a series of local and national marketing initiatives. We talk to co-owner Chris this week on the pod! 

This is the question that just about everyone actually wants the answer to, beneath all of their qualifying questions: where are the jobs in publishing? Where is my job in publishing? So this week on the pod, we unpack the leverage of jobs, how to prepare yourself with job skills, and making yourself attractive in the workforce. Hint: it's not about being pointy-headed. ************ Get the book:...

Every trip out of the house results in sad looks from strangers about how nobody reads anymore or how the bookstores are all gone. It's not uncommon for us to tell people about thriving indie bookstores in their own towns and how sales at independents are up with more stores since 2007! This week on the pod, we welcome back Danny Caine to talk about his brand new book How to Protect Bookstores (an...

For most publishers, profit and loss statements are either an afterthought, something they "don't have time for," or a ritualistic capitalistic enterprise that they want nothing to do with. This week on the pod, we feature an extra-long episode about how to learn from them, what they can be best utilized for, and how to sort out the information from success or failure to do it better next time.  *...

Much ink has been spilt over the illusion that big publishers have different economic models. The reality is that larger publishers benefit from scale but the economic models are the same. What does that mean? More books gets more access and streamlines costs and departments, but when it comes down to each book, well...check out this week's episode!  ************ Thank you for watching the People'...

You can read many academic articles about the need to get more people reading and how wonderful this would be for critical thinking and education. But most publishers focus on fighting over the exact same shelf space at the exact same stores. So this week on the pod, we talk about how to reach new people with your books and turn them into readers! ************ Get the book: https://microcosmpublis...

Vic Liu's Bang! delivers a walloping dose of information about masturbation; probably more than most readers have ever thought about it. And we think that considering it in more depth is a good thing. So this week we talk to Vic about what led her to pursue talking about these things in public. 

It started as a joke at the kitchen table at 7 AM before AWP. We were looking at the many books of "helping sayings" that really didn't say anything at all besides repeating unhelpful wisdom of olde. We realized how heterosexual these platitudes were and before long Joe announced "I'd love to write the queer version of this book!" and here we are, less than two years later! ************ Get the bo...

Last week we presented to you the biggest problem in publishing. So this week, we present the solution. Yes, the industry is very crowded but people are reading more and buying more books than ever and willing to spend more on those books. It's downright a fantastic time to be a book publisher. This week we look at how to excel!  ************ Get the book: https://microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/b...

We've said it hundreds of times on this pod: the problems that everyone assumes and claims to plague publishing aren't programs at all. So what is publishing's biggest problem?  ************ Get the book: https://microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/books/7504 Thank you for watching the People's Guide to Publishing vlogcast!   Get the book: https://microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/books/3663 Get the wor...