Posts By: Elly Blue

Microcosm is hiring a Receiver/Shipper in Portland!

piles and piles of boxes in a parking lot

Microcosm is hiring a receiving and fulfillment coordinator in Portland, Oregon

We are seeking a full-time worker to join our growing team at our location in Portland, Oregon. This is primarily a receiving and inventory position, helping make sure our systems are organized and our shelves are well-stocked. Our receiving staff is cross-trained in shipping, helping people get their books and be happy.

Microcosm is an independent book publisher founded in 1996 and based in Portland, Oregon and Cleveland, Ohio. We publish and distribute books, zines, decks and other materials that advance our mission of helping readers change their lives and world. In 2022, Publishers Weekly ranked us the Fastest Growing Publisher, and we also made the list in 2023 at number 3. We are excited to keep growing at a more reasonable pace. Come grow with us! 

Hours: This is a full-time position (40 hours per week) with daytime work hours. Shifts are Monday-Friday, roughly 9-5 (8-4 or 10-6 are also doable).

Location: All shifts take place on-site at our office in the Eliot neighborhood of inner North Portland

Experience: This is an entry-level or early career position. No prior warehouse experience is needed—we are happy to train the right person. This may not be an ideal first job, but it would be a great second or third job. Candidates with previous warehouse or book industry experience, or who are changing careers, will be gladly considered, but the key things we are looking for are ability to do the work plus willingness to work hard, learn, be part of a team, pay attention to details, and think critically about systems.

Job duties

Core duties will include:

  • Checking, accepting, and processing shipments of books and other inventory
  • Receiving new inventory into our database, including ISBNs, quantities, expenses, cover images, and location
  • Calculating expenses and checking for accounting errors
  • Reporting damages to the distributor
  • Shelving items quickly, accurately, and without damaging books
  • Finding items that shippers can’t locate
  • Shelf reading and inventory audits
  • Light production work including making buttons and cutting patches
  • Process incoming mail
  • Pull, pack, and ship books to customers
  • Miscellaneous office duties and cleaning

The ideal candidate will have the ability to:

  • Lift 30-40 pound boxes
  • Spend an 8-hour shift mostly on your feet
  • Climb step ladders
  • Wear a mask when required and observe our health and safety policies
  • Quickly and accurately alphabetize
  • Read small print and identify discrepancies (e.g., two books with the same title)
  • Be motivated by accuracy and efficiency
  • Show up prepared and work hard for your whole shift
  • Work independently once trained
  • Maintain an organized workstation and contribute to keeping shared areas tidy
  • Observe all safety procedures
  • Handle materials on topics that may be sensitive to some, including trauma, abuse, addiction, non-christian religions, various marginalized identities, human anatomy, drugs, sexual instruction, erotica, politics, and dad jokes
  • Work collaboratively to come up with improved systems and workflows 
  • Work within our systems while also speaking up when needed, with an “us against the problem” attitude. Open communication is key!

Pay and benefits:

Starting wage is $17-18.75 per hour, depending on experience. Wage and responsibilities will be re-evaluated after 30, 60, and 90 days. 

Benefits include:

  • All company profits are distributed to staff in the form of profit-sharing
  • Health insurance after trial period
  • Paid time off after trial period
  • Employee ownership program after five years
  • Transparent compensation and clear metrics for advancement
  • Meaningful work at a growing company 

Apply by March 21, 2024 by completing this application. No resume or cover letter is necessary. 

Please do not contact us about your application—we will respond to all applicants by April 8, 2024.

WorkingLit: Publishing Software from Microcosm

WorkingLit is live in beta! Sign up now!

a logo showing an open book

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.

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
  • See our spec sheet for all current and planned features.

Pricing

The first month is free so you can kick the tires. After that, our rates are based on the number of products (with separate ISBNs) that you manage in WorkingLit:

PlanFeaturesPrice per month
Free planUp to 10 productsFREE
Basic Plan11-25 products$25
Basic Plus Plan26-100 products$69
Premium Plan101-500 products$299
Premium Plus Plan501-1000$599
All Access PlanUnlimited 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!

  • Sign up to use WorkingLit
  • 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:

Microcosm is hiring a Marketing and Publicity Coordinator!

a matrix of Microcosm titles on the axes of good/evil and lawful/chaotic

We are looking for someone who is excited about books to join our marketing team, handle some light publicity duties, and potentially shine on our social media accounts. If you are a detail-oriented, organized wordsmith who can write sparkling copy, wrangle a spreadsheet, follow detailed instructions, and look at any book and immediately understand who the ideal reader is and what they’ll love about it, please consider applying. The ideal candidate will be able to balance brief bursts of creative brilliance with long, focused bouts of massaging data. 

Microcosm publishes and distributes reader-oriented, brightly-colored empowering books and zines on a wide range of topics including mental health, punk music, bicycling, gardening, witchcraft, feminism, healthy relationships, travel, cookery, humor, and herbalism. In our marketing department, we combine highly non-traditional methods with publishing industry standards, with successful results—we have grown substantially every year for the past decade. Come grow with us! 

Hours: This is a full-time, 40 hour per week position.

Location: This position can be either fully remote or based fully or partially in our Portland office. At this time, we can only hire new full-time employees who live in Oregon, Ohio, Washington State, and California. If you live elsewhere in the US and are open to full-time contract work please apply anyway and let us know.

Experience: This is a junior- to mid-level position that requires some background (professional or otherwise) in writing marketing copy, selling books, publicity, social media, and/or managing data. Some professional experience is helpful, but we are ready to train someone with equivalent non-traditional experience and an affinity for the work involved.

Core job duties: 

  • Wrangling data—keeping it correct, up-to-date, and discoverable on our website and 3rd party platforms
  • Writing book descriptions
  • Pitching our books and news to trade publications and the media
  • Working closely with the marketing manager on strategies and campaigns

Potential job duties:

  • Conducting more intensive publicity campaigns for our key titles
  • Coaching our authors on how to promote their own books
  • Doing social media outreach, including text, visual, and video posts

Requirements:  

  • Enthusiasm to speak and write compellingly about our books and mission
  • Ability to quickly produce good-quality copy about any book in our catalog
  • A nit-picky eye for details and data
  • Strong writing skills
  • Ability and willingness to work with topics that may be sensitive to some, including trauma, abuse, recovery, religion and spirituality, various marginalized identities, drugs, anatomy, sexual instruction, and erotica
  • Ability to meet or exceed deadlines without operating in a state of last-minute urgency
  • Ability to stay organized, prioritize between multiple projects, and work independently
  • Ability to take feedback and implement it for future projects
  • Strong work ethic and desire to continually learn and improve

Preferences:

  • Bookselling, library, or book publishing industry experience
  • An understanding of how to write for different audiences (e.g., knowing how you would pitch a book to a trade publication vs to the author’s local paper)
  • Strong social media skills, particularly visual and video skills
  • Ability to represent Microcosm at events (involves heavy lifting, a cool head under pressure, and much extroverting)

Pay and benefits

Starting wage for employees is $16.50-$20.75. Starting pay will depend on skillset and level of responsibility in previous work of this type. 

Employee benefits include:

  • All company profits are distributed to staff in the form of profit-sharing
  • Health insurance
  • Paid time off
  • Remote work option
  • Flexible work hours and holidays
  • Employee ownership program after five years
  • Transparent compensation and clear metrics for advancement
  • Meaningful work at a growing company 

To apply: Fill out this application.

Please do not send a cover letter, resume, or other supplemental materials.

Application deadline: December 4, 2023

Microcosm is hiring a book editor! – closed

A tall publishing professional draws with a gigantic pen at a gallery space

We are looking for an early-to-mid-career book editor who is excited to work with Microcosm on all stages of editing. If you love the puzzle-solving of developmental editing, relish the challenge of turning a disorganized manuscript into a book that can make a splash and save lives, and want to learn and grow along with us, please consider applying.

Microcosm is a reader-oriented publisher, primarily working with non-literary, nonfiction manuscripts by first-time authors. Our top priority is never to craft a beautiful turn of phrase or achieve grammatical perfection, but rather to offer readers valuable, practical tools to change their lives and world, while preserving the author’s unique voice and always having the most fun. 

Hours: This is a full-time position (40 hours per week).

Location: This position is fully remote. At this time, we can only hire new full-time staff who live in Oregon, Ohio, Washington State, and California. If you live elsewhere in the US and are open to full-time contract work please apply anyway and let us know. A desk is available in our Portland, Oregon, office if desired.

Experience: This is not an entry-level position. The candidate we hire will have one to four years of experience editing books for traditional publication.

Core job duties: 

  • 35% developmental/global edits
  • 25% line editing
  • 20% copyediting
  • 10% preparing manuscripts for layout
  • 10% proofreading, writing book descriptions, etc.

Requirements:  

  • Experience editing nonfiction books for publication
  • Experience editing for traditional book publishers (rather than self-publishing or indie authors)
  • Strong developmental, line editing, and copyediting skills
  • Comfortable editing directly in Google Docs and Word
  • Ability to communicate tactfully and professionally with a variety of authors
  • Ability and willingness to edit books about topics that may be sensitive to some, including trauma, abuse, and recovery, non-christian religions, various marginalized identities, drugs, sexual instruction, and erotica
  • Experience editing for sensitivity, inclusivity, and conscious language around subjects such as race, gender, sexual orientation, social class, and disability
  • Ability to meet or exceed deadlines without operating in a state of last-minute urgency
  • Ability to prioritize between multiple projects and work independently
  • Ability to take direction and to maintain a flexible editorial approach that accounts for the needs and priorities of the publisher and the target audience for each project
  • Ability to take feedback and implement it for future projects
  • Strong work ethic and desire to continually learn and improve

Preferences:

  • Experience editing in house at a book publisher (as opposed to freelance-only)
  • Experience proofreading traditionally published books
  • Familiarity with The Chicago Manual of Style
  • Experience writing and editing book descriptions or similar marketing copy
  • Experience editing books with a lot of illustrations or interactive components (e.g., workbooks)
  • Experience writing alt text / image descriptions

Pay and benefits:

Starting wage is $18.50-$20.50 per hour, depending on experience and level of responsibility in previous editorial work.

  • All company profits are distributed to staff in the form of profit-sharing
  • Health insurance
  • Paid time off
  • Remote work
  • Flexible work hours and holidays
  • Employee ownership program after five years
  • Transparent compensation and clear metrics for advancement
  • Meaningful work at a growing company 

To apply:

Please do not send a cover letter, resume, or other supplemental materials.

Application deadline: November 26, 2023

The Wild Ride – a Bikes in Space Excerpt

If you love queer, feminist science fiction and fantasy, bicycling, and books about books, The Bicyclist’s Guide to the Galaxy, published by Microcosm in fall, 2023, will check all your boxes. Get a taste of what’s inside with this excerpt is from the story “The Wild Ride” by Shelby Schwietermanand then get a copy of the book!

You can also read an interview with Shelby on our Kickstarter page.


Carly wasn’t upset, and she didn’t care what the other girls thought of her. She simply wanted to read her book more than she wanted to participate in some stupid sleepover, and if that made enemies for her, then so be it. What could a group of sixth grade girls do to her anyway? Gossip about her at school? Ha, like that could harm her. Carly was tough. Carly was a freaking Crystal Warrior, just like Annabeth the Quick, hero of the Shining Realm, protector of the Great Egg of Wisdom.

Carly paused under a street lamp to adjust the straps of her backpack. She had perfected the art of reading while walking back in, like, fourth grade, but doing it at night really upped the difficulty level. Her right hand ached from holding the book open and turning pages with her thumb; her left hand was slippery with sweat where it gripped the cell phone she used as a reading light. She longed for the return of her actual reading light, which had been taken away after she’d been caught too many times reading under her covers while she should have been sleeping. 

The night was hot and humid for this time of year. Crickets chirped happily while toads croaked and sang, trying to outdo the little insects. Carly had been a sixth grader for almost two months now—the very least the weather could do would be to reward her with a cool, breezy night in which to walk home. It was the time of year for ghost stories and black cats and strange whispers on the wind, not for sweating through your pajamas and daydreaming about snow. 

“Ugh,” Carly said to the undesirable weather. She balanced the phone on the book, wiped her sweaty palm, shook out her other hand, and then continued on.

Most people walking home from an abandoned sleepover at sometime after midnight would stick to the sidewalk. Not Carly. The empty street provided a wider, clearer path for her feet to follow while her eyes were busy finishing chapter twelve so she could get to chapter thirteen in which Annabeth breaks the other Crystal Warriors out of the dungeon so they can help her find the Great Egg, which has been stolen by the evil emperor’s dark forces. 

Some people would be worried about being hit by cars, but this scene was one of Carly’s favorites, and she hadn’t seen or heard any cars since she started her walk home ten minutes ago. Some people, in Carly’s opinion, were just too cautious. How could anyone enjoy the book they were reading if they were constantly worrying about what was going on around them while they read?

Except for the occasional runaway or missing person, Carly’s town was quiet and boring. Just like Carly, according to the girls at the sleepover. Carly didn’t take it to heart. Those girls simply could not stand that they were less interesting than a book she had read a dozen times already. Her copy of The Crystal Warriors was beginning to look like it had been through as many battles as the Crystal Warriors themselves. The paperback cover was chipped and bent from being shoved into and ripped out of a backpack, a bookshelf, a desk, and a hiding place behind a different book so her teachers wouldn’t know she was reading it again instead of “expanding her horizons.” The pages were soft and feathery from dirt and oils they’d collected with each turn. Pages thirteen, eighty-six, and one hundred eighty-four were marked with fingerprints of cheese dust from Carly’s careless snacking while reading. An unfortunate blotch of spaghetti sauce graced page ninety-two, not to be confused with the actual bloodstain on page ninety-three, the result of a sudden but minor nosebleed. It was as if she had left almost as much of herself in the book as the book had left in her. Almost.

As Carly’s feet slapped the pavement, she turned the page. Chapter thirteen. Yes! Carly’s pace quickened as she followed Annabeth sneaking into Fort Marion’s hidden underground prison, subduing guards before they even realize they’re not alone. She was called Annabeth the Quick not because of her fast feet, but because of her fast thinking. She could talk her way out of trouble and talk others into trouble with fluid reasoning and endless charm. Of any character in the book, Annabeth had the best insults and the best comebacks. She was about to deliver one of her wittiest to a prison guard when—

The phone light flickered, then died, plunging Carly and her book into the thick dark of the night. Carly wiped sweat off her forehead with the back of her arm. After a few misses, she managed to tuck her phone into a pocket of her backpack. Something about the night felt wrong. Carly turned slowly in the street, searching for whatever felt so off about the darkness. She squinted, but couldn’t see the streetlight she’d passed just moments before. The only light came from the moon and stars above. Definitely too little to read by.

“Ugh,” she said to the darkness. She’d have to walk the rest of the way without reading. Doable, but not preferable. Even the toads and crickets were mad about it. She could tell because they were unusually silent, except for a strange whirring whine from somewhere back the way she came.

As Carly stood there, perplexed, the darkness at the end of the street transitioned to a milky green glow that moved quickly toward her. The long, whining sound grew louder. Sudden wind whipped her hair around her face, obscuring her vision, making her doubt that what she was seeing was real: Within the pale green light were cyclists. Dozens of them, maybe a hundred. They moved as a unit as they sped closer. Heads down, feet pumping, wheels spinning, frames rattling, they headed right for her. Carly couldn’t tell where the riders ended and their bikes began. One figure led the pack, with the rest following in a swarm. She blinked, and they were yards away. She blinked again and they were upon her.

Cyclists zipped past, grazing her elbows and knocking her left and right. She caught a flash of yellow eyes, a glint of white teeth, an otherworldly grin. The din of at least a hundred wheels flying past was accented with manic, frenzied laughter and the smell of hot rubber. 

Carly dropped to the ground in a crouch, her arms curling over her head for protection. She expected to be run over. She was faced with the entirely new reality that she might die at any time. And that time might be after midnight, in the dark, as strange glowing cyclists ran her over in the middle of the road.

This is not, she thought, how a Crystal Warrior would get killed! Her scream vibrated in her throat, more like a growl of frustration than an expression of terror. But before her growl ended, space opened up around her. The sound of bikes whizzed away down the road. She jumped to her feet and watched the herd of cyclists move farther and farther down the street, taking their glowing light with them.

For a moment, Carly was frozen with awe. Just for a moment. Soon, though, she realized something very important was missing. It wasn’t in her hands, and it wasn’t on the ground. Not even a scrap of paper or a chunk of cover remained. She checked her backpack, just to be sure. But no, it was gone.

Carly turned back toward the direction in which the herd had disappeared and shouted, “Give me back my book, you bicycle freaks!”


Want to find out what happens next? Get the book!

A new edition of Bang!: because we need to love ourselves more than ever

As our cultural pendulum swings hard towards “purity” and repressiveness, there’s a real, healing power in unashamed sex positivity. And one of our goals here at Microcosm is to publish books that normalize and celebrate that.

One of our favorite books in this vein is Vic Liu’s 2021 Bang: Masturbation for People of All Genders and Abilities. We love the book’s inclusiveness and its friendly design and tone that allows you to open it anywhere and learn something useful—whether about the history of sex toys, a guide to teaching your kids healthy attitudes and boundaries, or a reminder that you don’t need to feel shame in exploring and enjoying your body.

Even so, we were taken by surprise last fall when it became clear that we were about to sell through the first printing. We put our heads together with Vic and decided to create an expanded new edition instead of simply reprinting the original. Vic lined up some great new content from folks like sensuality teacher Ev’Yan Whitney, Scarleteen founder Heather Corinna, and sex worker and educator Elle Stanger, and the great adrienne maree brown, author of Emergent Strategy and Pleasure Activitism, agreed to write the foreword.

Vic talks about their new edition (with help from Clover)

Please check out our Kickstarter project for the book and back it to pre-order a copy for yourself and one for a friend who needs a liberatory nudge towards self-love. Rewards include discounted copies of a number of our other consent-based sex education books and erotica, and enamel pins designed by Vic to show pride in self-love!

Writing a Queer Community with laura q

This week on the People’s Guide to Publishing podcast, we’re joined by laura q, author of A Tight Squeeze, the newest addition to Microcosm’s Queering Consent erotica series. We talked with laura about the value of community in all things, the many pleasures and purposes of erotica, being bike punks, and more.

P.S. If you’re into exploring the radical possibilities of pleasure, check out the second edition of Vic Liu’s Bang!: Masturbation for People of All Genders and Abilities—now funding on Kickstarter (with some great enamel pin add-ons, too).

Design, emotion, and publishing with the School of Life Design

On this week’s episode of the People’s Guide to Publishing podcast, we welcome special guests Jessica Mullen and Kelly Cree of the School of Life Design and creators of the Monthly Manifestation Manual and Monthly Magickal Record workbooks as well as many more. We talk about a wide range of topics from their process, the difference between running a small press and working with Microcosm, the role of AI in publishing, and their favorite place in Cleveland. Lots of laughter in this one.