Posts By: Abby Rice

How do you take care of your air? w/Melissa Wrolstad | A People’s Guide to Publishing Podcast

At this point, most of us are familiar with checking the air quality when we go outside during certain times of the year, or ventilating when using chemicals or it’s the flu season. But how familiar are you with the air in your home on a day to day basis? From radon, ozone, particulate matter, and more, there’s a lot you can do to keep breathing easy, and we’ve got a book to help!

This week on the podcast, “Air Self-Care Handbook” author Melissa Wrolstad joins Joe & Elly to talk about development of the book and how to take care of your air.

Get “The Air Self-Care Handbook” here: https://microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/books/987

A People’s Guide to Publishing: Building a Successful, Sustainable, Meaningful Book Business From the Ground Up

So, you want to publish books. 

Drawing on 30 years of experience operating an independent publishing company, Joe Biel has written the most accessible and comprehensive guide to running a successful publishing business. You’ll learn all the skills of the trade, including how to:

  • Develop your individual books to connect with readers on a practical and emotional level
  • Choose between offset printed, digitally printed, and ebook formats and work effectively with printers
  • Build an authentic niche so you can reach your audience and sell books directly
  • Understand if and when you’re ready to work with a distributor or large online retailer
  • Create a budget and predict the cost and income of each book so your company stays in the black
  • Decide what work you need to do yourself and what can be done by others
  • Plan for sustainable growth

Featuring interviews with other upstart independent publishers and funny anecdotes from publishing’s long history as well as detailed charts and visuals, this book is intended both for beginners looking for a realistic overview of the publishing or self-publishing process and for experienced publishers seeking a deeper understanding of accounting principles, ways to bring their books to new audiences, and how to advance their mission in a changing industry. All readers will come away with the confidence to move forward wisely and a strong sense of why publishing matters today more than ever.

How to Defend Books and Why: Book Bans and How We Fight Them

You’re invited to the book revolution!

Fight back against censorship and empower your community with this close look at the book banning movement. 

In a moving, compulsively readable call to arms for readers everywhere, Danny Caine, bestselling author of How to Resist Amazon and Why and How to Protect Bookstores and Why, offers an expertly-crafted confrontation of far-right, Christian nationalist attempts to reshape American culture through ban campaigns targeting schools, libraries, bookstores, and prisons, with the aim to silence marginalized identities in life and in literature. 

From the first-ever banned books display at San Francisco’s City Lights in the 1950s to the rapid rise of so-called Moms For Liberty during the COVID-19 pandemic to attempts to silence Palestinian authors, Caine charts the course of repressive censorship campaigns, along with the creative and sometimes unlikely activists who’ve stood up against them. Each chapter is based on a particular book banning episode, bolstered by research and legal precedent, and concludes with helpful takeaways for further reading or resistance. Throughout, Caine approaches these heated issues with gentle openness harkening back to his work as a public school teacher and a bookseller. He emphasizes our collective responsibility towards art, free speech, and each other. 

Organizing Inclusive Events & Conferences w/ Dr. Alex Ketchum | People’s Guide to Publishing Podcast

A LOT goes into the planning of conferences, signings, and basically every event. How do you make sure it’s accessible to everyone who wants to come? It goes beyond just making sure your space is ADA accessible!

Dr. Alex D. Ketchum’s new book, “How to Organize Inclusive Events & Conferences,” is full of practical tips, templates, and guidance for organizing accessible, inclusivity-oriented events. This week on the pod, Alex joins Joe and Elly to talk about accessibility, favorite feminist restaurants, and, of course, planning inclusive events and conferences.

Get the book!

Prefer an audio experience? Listen to the episode on your favorite podcast app.
Get the People’s Guide to Publishing here, and the workbook here!
Want to stay up to date on new podcast episodes and happenings at Microcosm? Subscribe to our newsletter!

The Sober Travel Handbook w/Teresa Bergen | A People’s Guide to Publishing Podcast

This week on the pod, Teresa Bergen, author of the zine (and now paperback book!) “Sober Travel Handbook” joins Joe, Elly, and Bernie talk traveling without drinking, the rise in mocktail culture, sobriety and recovery, and everything that went into developing the zine into a full book.

Get “Sober Travel Handbook”: https://microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/books/47854

Prefer an audio experience? Listen to the episode on your favorite podcast app.
Get the People’s Guide to Publishing here, and the workbook here!
Want to stay up to date on new podcast episodes and happenings at Microcosm? Subscribe to our newsletter!

How to Survive in the Woods: Camping, Fires, Trailing, Tramping, Getting Lost, and Finding Your Way Home

Connect to nature and live to tell the tale with this camping guide packed with practical knowledge from a time before ultralight backpacking gadgets, synthetic rainwear, and cell phones. The emphasis is on preparation and survival, starting with how to plan your trip, pick your companions, how to get to your campsite, and what gear, food, and clothes to bring along. You’ll learn to choose a good campsite and set up your tarp or build a lean-to, and navigate on your backcountry trek. There’s an extensive section on wilderness first aid, plus guides to backwoods housekeeping and cooking, blazing a trail, starting a fire without a match, sending smoke signals, and choosing the best axe.

In the words of the author, “Camping calls for old clothes, lack of luxuries and conveniences, primitive life, and unfailing good temper and cheerfulness under all conditions, as well as plenty of hard work and a willingness to do one’s share of anything and everything without being asked.” If roughing it is more your style than glamping, this guide will spark your imagination and help you plan your next trip.

Unfuck Your Breakup: Using Science to Heal and Thrive after the End of a Relationship or Friendship

Breaking it off? Got dumped? Parting ways with a pal? Ouch, that hurts. Even beyond the heartache, embarrassment, and logistical strain of the moment, breakups can summon up all our old baggage to play havoc with our lives and heads. Dr. Faith G. Harper, bestselling author of books like Unfuck Your Brain and Unfuck Your Intimacy, brings you a kind, relatable, and plain-language guide to all things break-up: deciding to do it (or not), doing the thing, and picking up the pieces afterward to build a life that suits you better than ever. Whether or not the breakup was your idea, or if the partnership was romantic, sexual, or platonic, no matter the seriousness of the bond or the shared responsibilities and finances involved, parting ways can be a canon life event with powerful transformational potential as you rise from the wreckage. And it’s never too late to come back to your best self.

Queer Horror: Fun and Freaky Perspectives on Macabre Media

Don’t be scared straight! Curl up on the couch with Joe and Gina for a romp through their favorite horror movies, TV shows, and books from the 1930s to today, exploring their messages, meaning, and enduring appeal for queer audiences. From The Thing to vampire porn, The Exorcist to paranormal television, Goblin Market to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, these thoughtful, conversational essays will make you think, laugh, shiver, and see your favorite media in a new light (even if you have to cover your eyes for the scary parts). 

Horror buffs and queer media mavens alike will enjoy this wide ranging journey through a genre often derided, dismissed, and misunderstood, but which offers rich opportunities to explore our culture’s ideas about gender, sexuality, and desire. Whether you relate to the monster or the final girl, enjoy sleuthing hidden queer themes, or just want recommendations for obscure, low-budget ghost movies, this book’ll be a scream.

The Practical Witch’s Almanac 2026: Green Witchcraft

This year’s edition of the Practical Witch’s Almanac will help you deepen your connection with the earth through reflections, recipes, rituals, and celebrations tailored to the energies of each season as the wheel of the year turns. Inside, you’ll follow the cycles of the moon to support your plans and goals, and you’ll discover how plants can be our sacred allies in magic and medicine making. Important U.S. dates as well as traditional witchcraft holidays are noted, along with fun and less familiar ones like Appreciate a Dragon Day. Every week, you’ll enjoy new, empowering practices that brighten the living world around you and connect you to the magic within.

The 2026 Almanac includes:

  • Lunar Planner Pages
  • Weekly & Monthly Schedules
  • Moon Phases & Signs
  • Sabbats
  • Meteor Showers
  • Eclipses
  • Spells
  • Recipes
  • Rituals
  • Meditations
  • A master list of over 200 botanicals (including vegetables and houseplants) marked with symbols for quick reference to magical properties and research-supported medicinal uses

Spectacular Spring Warehouse Sale Next Week!

We’re doing a big sale next week!!

We need to make some space in the warehouses for new stock, and figured, hell, let’s make it a party. We’ve got some great things lined up for it, including some limited-stock titles, and a bunch of Microcosm-published things! The sale will run from Thursday the 20th through the 30th, and newsletter subscribers will get access to the coupon code on Tuesday!

Not subscribed to the newsletter? It’s a great way to keep up on some of our latest news and updates and shenanigans. Sign up at microcosm.pub/newsletter

More soon!
Abby

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