This week on the People’s Guide to Publishing podcast, Joe and Elly interpret and analyze the recent news that book distributor and wholesaler Ingram is centralizing its warehousing for its distribution clients. Hang on and enjoy the ride through some serious publishing industry inside baseball!
A feminist history of bicycling for sport and adventure spans a century of women who changed the world from two wheels. This vivacious tale, peppered with fascinating details from primary sources, shows how women were sometimes the stars of bicycle races and exhibitions, and other times had to overcome sexism, exclusion, and economic inequalities in order to ride. From the almost burlesque show races and creative performances of the 19th century to the evolution of cycling as a modern sport and form of transportation, April Streeter brings her exuberant eye for character, fashion, and story to convey the evolving emotional resonance of bicycling for women and their communities. She interweaves pedal-powered history with profiles of bicyclists who made their mark, like Katharine Hepburn, Annie Londonderry, Kittie Knox, Dorothy Lawrence, Louise Armaindo, and more.
On this episode of the People’s Guide to Publishing podcast, Joe and Elly take on a reader question. This reader is planning to publish a tarot deck, and wanted advice about how to map the project out to best actualize their concept. Our advice is geared towards their specific project, an illustrated deck, but holds true for people wanting to publish books, board games, and other creative projects as well.
On a rare current events episode of the People’s Guide to Publishing podcast, Joe and Elly talk about the latest big fish in publishing to be swallowed up by an even bigger fish. We talk about consolidation, specialization, and how sometimes your most successful experiment is the one you don’t want to keep.
Thanks for listening / watching! If you have a publishing question you’d like us to tackle on the pod, send it to podcast at microcosm publishing dot com.
This week on the People’s Guide to Publishing podcast, Joe and Elly try to break down the roles of author and publisher. There’s a lot of variation and a lot of grey area, and this was a fun conversation about what works and what doesn’t.
Relationships are complicated… especially when you’re living in a world with neurotypical expectations and assumptions. This workbook walks you through getting to know your own best qualities and then leveling up your friendships, dating, existing relationships, and sex life. Exercises are appropriate for total beginners as well as folks who want to improve existing relationships.
Dr. Faith’s manual on the connection between mental and physical health is all about thinking with your guts, cooling your inflamed brain, and healing your whole self even when the world is conspiring to stress you out. Learn to sleep, eat, breathe, move, and generally feel better by harnessing the power of your vagus nerve!
It’s time to start planning the tenth volume of the Bikes in Space feminist bicycle science fiction anthology! The theme for this one is books.
Submissions are now open for original short fiction about bicycling and books, from a feminist perspective. These elements need to be intrinsic to the story. Send your most creative tales of bicycle-powered interlibrary loan on the moon, characters who literally leap out of books and go for a ride, a two-wheeled revolution sparked by seditious literature, the competing stories of steampunk velocipedists, a manual for futuristic bike messengers, a Borgesian meta-library, a literal rewriting of gender norms… Have fun with this one!
I especially welcome #ownvoices submissions and work by first-time writers.
Genre: Stories can be in any speculative or fantastical genre—hard science fiction, space opera, epic fantasy, alternative history, paranormal romance, hope punk, modern fairy tales and anything around or in between. No fanfic, poetry, or erotica, please.
Word count: 1,000 – 6,000 words
Format: Google doc, MS word, Pages, text document, or PDF. Comics submissions of up to 6 pages can be submitted in thumbnails.
Payment: A portion of profits after expenses from the Kickstarter project used to fund this book is split between contributors, with a guaranteed minimum of $50 each, plus copies of the book.
Deadline: September 1, 2021
Send your submissions to elly at microcosmpublishing dot com
I respond to all submissions and share my reading notes on request.
Gorgeous photos and simple design resonate strongly in this modern take on the tarot tradition. Each card in Gold Lyre Tarot represents the divine feminine of today’s blended American culture and gender-fluid evolution. The Tarot is a divination tool used as self-reflection. Checking in with where your intentions are placed, amplified, and felt carries into what you are manifesting at any given moment. Every card mirrors your spiritual and dynamic location within this Earthly realm. Real-life images leave you with the symbolism of everyday life rather than being overwhelmed with in-depth hermetic symbolism. With Gold Lyre Tarot, insight will come a little easier to those beginning their tarot journey, and it nicely complements other decks for those who are more intuitively advanced.
Publishing is a business with lots of opportunities to make really expensive, embarrassing, and/or hurtful mistakes! We don’t really have a culture of talking about our failures in this industry, but we think it’s healthy to acknowledge and learn from them.
This week on the People’s Guide to Publishing podcast, Joe and Elly talk about some of the biggest mistakes we’ve made over the years at Microcosm . . . and how we recovered from them. We didn’t have time to get to everything we ever botched, but maybe we’ll make this an annual episode!