Microcosm Publishing

Promote Your Book: Spread the Word, Find Your Readers, and Build a Literary Community

So you've written a book—now what? Your next step is to find your readers and get that book into their hands.

Eleanor Whitney, author of Quit Your Day Job, offers perspective, practical advice, and checklists for shepherding your new book into the wider world. Traditionally published, self-published, and hybrid authors alike will benefit from these accessible tools and frameworks. No matter what kind of book you've written or where you are in the writing or publishing process, you can always build a community of readers, strengthen your literary support system, and have fun doing it.

Combining her deep marketing and community-building knowledge, Whitney also interviews a variety of authors and publicists writing in different genres about what worked for them and what they learned the hard way. She walks readers through creating and executing a plan to promote their book on their own terms, with whatever resources and time they have available. She provides a timeline of promotional activities to consider before and after publication, while reminding us that publicity is a long game that you can begin well before your book is finished and continue long after its release. Ultimately, promoting your book is about connecting with a reader through ideas that inspire you both. And that is something we can all do.

Unfuck Your Stress: Using Science to Cope with Distress and Embrace Excitement

Stressed? Hell yeah, you are. It's part of living in this modern world. But you don't deserve to feel like you're constantly being chased by your monstrous, growing list of responsibilities—or, worse, like you have to say no to positive opportunities because you just can't take another thing. Dr. Faith G. Harper, author of bestselling books like Unfuck Your Brain, Unfuck Your Boundaries, and Coping Skills,is here to help. Stress isn't inherently bad for us, she points out, although our stress responses can really harm us over time if they get out of hand. She offers strategies for coping with intense feelings and overwhelm in the moment and for shifting our perspective, habits, and self-talk in the longer term to transform distress into helpful motivation, excitement, and action. She also walks us through understanding our physiological stress response and what happens when it turns into chronic stress and adrenal fatigue. The book is full of practical advice for understanding and managing your own stress response so that you can find solid ground and feel excited and engaged with your life again.

How to Protect Bookstores and Why

Can bookstores save the world? As bastions of culture, anchors of local retail districts, community gathering places, and sources of new ideas, inspiration, and delight, maybe they can. But only if we protect them and the critical roles they fill in our communities.

Danny Caine, author of the bestselling sensation How to Resist Amazon and Why and co-owner of the Raven Book Store in Lawrence, Kansas, makes a compelling case for the power of small, local businesses in this thoughtful examination of the dynamic world of bookstores. At once an urgent call to action and a celebration of everything bookstores can do, Caine's new book features case-study profiles of a dozen of the most interesting and innovative bookstores of today, from Minneapolis to Paris. Through a well-informed analysis of these case studies, Caine offers actionable strategies to promote a sustainable future for bookselling, including policy suggestions, ideas for community-based action, and tips on what consumers can do to help. A captivating read for any lover of books, patron of bookstores, or champion of the survival of these vital institutions, How to Protect Bookstores and Why makes the strongest possible argument for the importance of a resilient, inclusive, and progressive bookstore landscape.

Now Kickstarting: Unfuck Your Anger Workbook!

I Love My Queer Kid: A Workbook to Affirm and Support Your LGBTQ+ Child or Teen

Create a loving, accepting home for your queer kid

This workbook is for parents and other caretakers whose child or young adult has come out as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, nonbinary, or any other queer identity. It includes nine weeks of accessible, thoughtful exercises designed to help you gain perspective, challenge your assumptions and fears, and better understand and connect with your kid. Drawing on his experience as a licensed mental health counselor working with queer youth and their families, Marc Campbell provides resources and real help for parents. The world may not always be kind to queer kids, but your home and family can be, and that makes all the difference. Whether you're on board but confused or struggling deeply with learning about your kid's identity, these exercises can help you do right by your child. By embarking on this workbook, you'll increase your understanding of sexuality and gender, improve your connection with your kid, and learn to support them with love and acceptance as they navigate their unique path to adulthood.

Divine Deco Tarot

Glamorous, exuberant, luxurious decorative details suffuse this 78-card tarot deck. Inspired by the lushness of the early 20th-century Art Deco movement and the Balkan folk art of her native Albania, Gerta Egy's images draw you into a fantasy world, beautiful and rich with meaning and feeling. Sprite-like human figures dance, writhe, and play with swords, wands, cups, and pentacles against modernist patterned backgrounds. Use these cards, based on the Rider-Waite system, for inspiration, reflection, and divination.

Practical Witch's Almanac 2024: Grow Your Craft

A daily companion for exploring your spiritual path with weekly lessons in herbalism, divination, magic, and Witchcraft.

Enrich your spiritual and magical journey with The Practical Witch's Almanac. This almanac provides more than Moon phases, Sabbats, and astronomical and astrological information. Every week you'll explore lessons in herbalism, magic, divination, and more.

This practical guide gives you recipes, DIY projects, tips, and advice to keep you motivated and engaged as you grow your craft. You'll explore tarot cards, runes, tea leaves, and other forms of divination. The herbal studies mentor you through basic teas, tinctures, foods, ointments, incense, and lotions while emphasizing the synergistic union of science and magic. The magic lessons help you hone your spell casting, and the spiritual studies assist you in exploring your beliefs.

Weekly bonus material is available at http://PracticalWitch.com/My2024. The Practical Witch Talk podcast expands on each week's lessons.

Missed the Kickstarter? Rewards and add-ons are still available on our PledgeManager page!

If Animals Could Talk: An Adult Coloring Book for Adults

From the bestselling book that went viral for traumatizing a 6-year-old and her precious grandmother (google it) comes an equally off-color coloring book. Have a laugh and decompress while coloring your way through the untamed thoughts of your favorite animals. This coloring book features nearly 60 quotes from different animals, all of whom have zero say in how you color them. They're completely helpless and entirely at the mercy of your coloring utensil of choice (yes, even markers, you sick f*cks). Go wild!

Culpeper's Complete Astrology: The Lost Art of Astrological Medicine

Delve into the astrological wisdom of Nicholas Culpeper, the 17th-century herbalist and astrologer whose writing about health and herbsmade a mark on medicine that resonates to the present day. His astute eye, keen wit, and encyclopedic knowledge led him to create his definitive English Physician, more commonly known today as Culpeper's Complete Herbal. Planetary influences were key to his understanding of illness and healing. In his philosophy, each illness is governed by astrology, and the time at which a person takes to their sickbed is significant to their diagnosis and healing. His Semeiotica uranica, or, An astrological judgment of diseases from the decumbiture of the sick was a seminal early work of medical astrology and is published here as a historical document of great fascination to astrologers as well as to historians of herbalism and medicine. This edition includes modernized English spelling and expert guidance on how to decipher the work and consider Culpeper's influence in modern context.

Also included are a foreword by Alice Sparkly Kat, author of Postcolonial Astrology, and an introduction by Judith Hill, author of Medical Astrology.

Beatles Blackouts: Trips Around the World in Search of Beatles Monuments

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas meets a drunken Eat, Pray, Love in this unique tour of global Beatlemania

Did you know that there's a Beatles monument in Kazakhstan? Jack Marriott didn't, and he thought he knew everything there was to know about the storied band from Liverpool, England. He did some investigating and found that there were Beatles monuments, statues, and shrines all around the world, from Brazil to Mongolia, Peru to Japan. Meanwhile, his life in England was quickly deteriorating into drunkenness, the staff of his bar having walked out and his girlfriend having left him. So he did what anyone would do: "borrowed" a press pass and set off on a two-year quest through 23 countries, relying on the kindness of fellow fans to help him find these Beatles monuments and connect with the communities that built them. His goal: to find new stories about the Beatles, win back his girlfriend, and remind an increasingly insular post-Brexit Britain what the Beatles mean to the world. He just needed to push through the hangovers to do it. How hard could it be? Find out in this real-life account of one man's quest to find every Beatles monument.

Stress Coping Skills Deck

We live in an era when stress is a way of life and can seem inescapable. But stress doesn't have to run our lives, and it can even be our friend, according to Dr. Faith G. Harper, bestselling author of titles like Unfuck Your Brain, Unfuck Your Body,and Unfuck Your Stress. 

This 52-card deck offers exercises, reflections, and conversation starters to help us tackle the stressful situations and relationships in our lives. Two types of cards can be mixed together or used separately: Survive cards provide short-term strategies you can use to find focus and purpose in difficult moments; Thrive cards offer longer-term strategies to change your relationship with stress, helping you shift your perspective, assumptions, habits, and self-talk so that intense feelings can motivate rather than overwhelm you. 

Use these cards on your own or with your partner, a friend, or your therapist to build confidence and trust in your ability to handle whatever the world throws at you.

Monster Lovin': Smutty, Spine-Tingling Queer Stories (Queering Consent)

The pleasure of horror

Have you ever considered the erotic possibilities of loving an ancient being of incredibly inhuman power? The monstrous becomes familiar and profoundly pleasurable in S. Park's new collection of m/m queer, consensual erotica. Tentacles find their way into every crevice, a sexy stranger turns out to be part plant, part man, and a powerful demon cuddles up in bed. In these tender, sweaty, high-heat stories, horror turns to delight, the monster always turns out to be worthy of love . . . and sometimes, the monster turns out to be you.

Microcosm In Your Town!

Want to meet us in person, check out our books, or see an author speak? We've got author events and convention events coming up!

Upcoming Author Events

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Upcoming Tabling Events

• None scheduled, currently! If you want us to sell books and zines at an event, feel free to reach out!
  [caption id="attachment_4567" align="alignnone" width="640"] Microcosm at Rollercon 2023[/caption]

Upcoming Trade Shows and Industry Events

Usually not open to the public, these industry events are a chance for store buyers to peruse our books, write orders, and chat about terms. We plan to either attend or exhibit at the following events. If you'll be there too, drop us a line—we'd love to meet you.

• October 4th through 7th at MPIBA FallCon, with Imprint Group
• October 3rd through 5th at NEIBA Fall Conference, with Como Group
• October 18th through 20th at Heartland Fall Forum, with Abraham Associates
  • Special event with Danny Caine, called "The Future of Bookselling"!

Planning an event and want us to be part of it (speaking, author readings, movie screenings, setting up a book and zine pop-up shop, etc.)? Let us know!!

In the Portland area? We can set up a book fair at your workplace like the ones your school used to have.

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Blogifesto: August is #MarginsBookselling Month! (An Interview with The Word)

We got to chat with Aida Lilly, the Program Coordinator of The Word, a Storytelling Sanctuary, which organizes the annual Margins Bookselling Month.

What is The Word, a Storytelling Sanctuary?

We are a literary arts non-profit whose mission is storytelling for collective abundance. We believe in the power of storytelling, representation, and expanding models in the literary and publishing communities. Our mission is to promote voices from underserved communities and diverse backgrounds, to honor the stories of those who have faced adversity and injustice, and to provide a sanctuary space where these groups can see themselves in literature.

We host community programming and generally try to demystify the ins and outs of publishing, which is overall an opaque industry that tends towards insularity. Our major programs include: the Editor-Writer Mentorship, [margins.] Literary Conference + Book Festival, #MarginsBookselling (of course), and a host of publishing workshops and community events. 

Overall, we love books and reading and the folks who dedicate their lives to the written word, and we believe that access to books and knowledge about careers in publishing (and publishing as a whole) are important.

What is #MarginsBookselling Month?

#MarginsBookselling Month is a celebration of bookstores owned and managed by and for BIPOC, LGBTQIAP2S+, disabled, and neurodiverse communities and of booksellers who identify from these communities as well. This is a community collaboration coordinated by The Word. Booksellers are on the frontline of the industry, and we want to celebrate and uplift them!

It’s a month of spreading joy and awareness of these wonderful stores and booksellers and a way of thanking them for doing the important work they do. There’s more to being a community bookstore than just selling books, and these stores exemplify the extraordinary efforts of bookstores and booksellers actively trying to improve the lives of those in their communities. 

You can check out all the bookstores in The Word’s #MarginsBookselling network by checking out the interactive map here.

What inspired it?

Inequity is clearly visible in our industry, from the books being published to the demographics of employees in publishing itself. We recognize that books and bookstores are more than just sales and retail, and we see the power of indie bookstores. Diversely-owned bookstores are especially important to marginalized communities, and also to publishing at large. They can provide a third space and safe space to hold and share stories from BIPOC, LGBTQIA2S+, disabled and neurodiverse communities. Bookstores that center marginalized communities provide both shelter and education. 

Likewise booksellers are part of the foundation of this industry. They know what books their community members need and are looking for. Indie bookstore sales matter to their community, and to publishing as a whole. It is booksellers who know what recommendations are relevant to their area and specific customers, and those recommendations can have massive impact, especially for authors that aren’t established, “big” names. Passionate booksellers and bookstores change lives for their customers and for the authors that fill their shelves. 

There are not enough spaces where we celebrate this work and take time to learn from it. #MarginsBookselling Month is a chance to shine that spotlight and to give our cohort of bookstores and booksellers a chance to do what each does best, while also getting to know each other in community.

What's so great about indie bookstores? Why focus on them?

We love bookstore stops on every road trip we take! We cherish open mic nights at our local stores. We can’t resist stopping in for a coffee even if our TBR piles are never-ending and we swore we wouldn’t buy another book today. 

Reading is its own sort of magic. Books can be gates, windows, mirrors, doors, escape, comfort. Indie bookstores and booksellers can have a few minutes of conversation with someone and help them find entire new worlds to learn about, to love, or to live in.

Real people will always understand us better than algorithms. And indie bookstores are plugged into the communities they serve in ways that are unmatched by other industry retailers. 

What has surprised you the most in the last few years of #MarginsBookselling Month?

It is beautiful to see the members of this community lift each other up and create an atmosphere of abundance where there is room for everyone. In many spaces, retail especially, there is often an enmity toward anything perceived as “competition” --and that has not been present at all in this environment. Everyone is always excited to celebrate each other! It’s definitely become a team of its own, and we love all the love!

How can people get involved and support The Word and #MarginsBookselling Month? 

There are numerous ways to be involved:

Support #MarginsBookselling bookstores every month. Learn who they are. Spend some time with them, and see how happy they’ll be to fill your shelves with books you’d never find on your own, and are support systems that can help you find connection and community. 

If you don’t have a #MarginsBookselling store near you that you can visit in-person, check out the interactive #MarginsBookselling Map, and support these stores by shopping online, either through their own website or on Bookshop.org. If you’re an audiobook listener, you can support your local or favorite #MarginsBookselling store by choosing them as your supported store on Libro.fm. 

Additionally, here are a few great ways to get involved with The Word’s #MarginsBookselling Month:

• Make a one time or recurring donation to The Word help support programming like #MarginsBookselling Month
• Donate to the Duende-Word BIPOC Bookseller Award
• Purchase a copy of the beautiful #MarginsBookstores Month journal on Bookshop
• Buy this amazing T-shirt with a special quote from Pulitzer and National Book Award Finalist and The Word’s Writers’ Circle Member, Ingrid Rojas Contreras
• Amplify The Word’s programs and events on your social media channels, and feel free to tag us!
• Reach out to us at info@thewordfordiversity.com to learn more about all the sponsorship and partnership opportunities that are available!

What are two books you think everyone should read right now?

We love Mariame Kaba–everyone should check out her titles! And, of course, National Book Award and Pulitzer Finalist The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Rojas Contreras. Ingrid is a wonderful human who we were thrilled to collaborate with last year’s #MarginsBookselling Month, celebration and said:

"The Word is doing the labor that matters most — uplifting BIPOC booksellers and giving the floor to authors and writers who are writing from the margins. What happens when the margin takes centerstage? I feel a new literature and culture emerges, one that can define and tell of what has gone ignored or untold before. I am so thrilled to be joining The Word’s Writers’ Circle and look forward to supporting their mission."

We're grateful to Aida to take the time to answer our questions! If you want to learn more about The Word, their social media handles are:

• Facebook @wordfordiversity 
• Twitter @wordisdiversity 
• Instagram @wordisdiversity
• Youtube: @wordisdiversity

This is the first installment of the year-long Bookstore Solidarity Project, where we're featuring indie bookstores and the people that love them. Want to learn more about supporting bookstores in your community? Check out How to Protect Bookstores and Why by Danny Caine!

Summoning All Witches

Since 1996, Microcosm has published and distributed books, zines, and other goods that put your power in your hands. Including, lately, an increasing number of pagan, mystical, and othersuch witchy books, zines, and decks.

We've recently updated our submission guidelines to make it extra clear: We're looking to publish and distribute more works of magic, witchcraft, and pagan spirituality. Send us your anarcha-feminist oracle deck, your spellbook for finding queer platonic relationships, your comics journalism about the history of witchcraft, a guide to the magic your grandparents taught you, agricultural tips for witches, adorable drawings of animals on broomsticks, or whatever creative way you've found to help people see beyond the pale of normalcy to change their lives and the world.

We are always, especially, looking for submissions from authors and artists who are Black, Indigenous, people of color, mixed race, disabled, neurodivergent, queer, transgender, nonbinary, or who don't see themselves well represented in mainstream publishing.

What we publish

We're proud to publish Friday Gladheart's annual The Practical Witch's Almanac — an incredible resource and weekly planner.

Francesca Black's Year of the Witch: A Planner and Spellbook for the Novice Witch is a great resource for beginners, and also serves as a weekly planner.

Our first tarot deck, The Gold Lyre Tarot, was funded on Kickstarter in early 2021.

And we have many more books, zines, and stickers in print and on the way, like these:

To submit your work to our publishing program, check out our submission guidelines to assess if we might be a good fit. We aim to work with authors and creators who can work within our processes, so following our guidelines exactly is an important first step when submitting a project.

What we distribute

Microcosm is also a specialty wholesaler, selling thousands of books, zines, and decks from other publishers, big and small primarily to non-book-focused gift stores. We work with Big 5 publishing houses, zinesters cutting and pasting in their closets, and everyone in between. And these folks are putting out more and more books celebrating paganism, crystals, astrology, tarot, the occult, the moon, and more.

If you already have your own publishing program and want to see if our wholesale program is a good fit, check out our distribution info.

WorkingLit: Publishing Software from Microcosm

WorkingLit launches in beta on October 30th!

WorkingLit is cloud-based software developed by Microcosm Publishing that gives independent publishers tools to thrive and grow at their own pace. Our industry is run by billionaires and conglomerates, and we want to give our fellow publishers the freedom to market and sell your books, understand your business, and painlessly pay royalties.

Microcosm built our own software from scratch starting in 2002, and we owe it our survival, success, and continued independence. Now we want to share it with you. 

WorkingLit is currently in beta and open to any publisher who would like to use it in exchange for letting us know about bugs and giving us feedback on how to make it better.

On October 30, 2023, we launch in beta! Sign up for our email list to get notified when we go live.

Features

• Manage your product and author metadata
• Track your sales and expenses
• Manage your customer account data
• Calculate royalties and track payments to authors
• Understand the health of your business and what you need to do to grow

Pricing

The first month is free so you can kick the tires. Beta users who sign up before February 1, 2024 will get 25% off their first year.

Plan	Features	Price per month
Free plan	Up to 10 products	FREE
Basic Plan	11-25 products	$25
Basic Plus Plan	26-100 products	$69
Premium Plan	101-500 products	$299
Premium Plus Plan	501-1000	$599
All Access Plan	Unlimited products!	$1299

Get stuck or have questions? Check out our site documentation and instructions or email workinglit at microcosmpublishing dot com for help.

Get involved and stay in touch!

• Join our email list
• Are you a programmer? We're looking to grow our team. Email apply at microcosmpublishing dot com with your skillset and why you're interested in being part of WorkingLit
• Take the tour:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/uRj8l2paG2Y

Call for Submissions for Neurodiversity zine series

BFF Book Subscription

Be our Book Friend Forever (BFF)! For 6 months you'll receive every new title we publish. The subscription is sliding scale price $15-30/month—check it out here!  Thanks for your support!