Experiments in Publishing (and podcasting)

Hi all, things got a little wild over the holiday season. We kept posting new episodes of the People’s Guide to Publishing podcast, but we stopped posting them to our blog. So here’s a big post to catch up with what you up on what you missed!

We talked about how book publishers can experiment in order to keep their business limber and growing (but without losing tens of thousands of dollars when those experiments don’t pan out):

We answered one of the questions Microcosm is most frequently asked: “Why have I never heard of you?”:

We tackled a reader question about a pretty weird scenario that happens more often than you’d think: What do you do when a publisher pays you for your book and then never publishes it?

We gazed into our crystal ball and made some predictions about how the publishing industry will change in the next five years:

We talked about sidelines! Stickers, buttons, patches, etc. Not very many publishers make this kind of merch to sell alongside their books (unless they’re heavily influenced by punk music culture… ahem) but it’s often a good idea:

And finally, we talked about how publishers can sell translations, foreign rights, and other licensing deals: