Save money, save the planet, and craft a sustainable domestic life without relying on smelly, toxic, expensive consumer products. This handwritten and hand-drawn book of charming tutorials for natural housekeeping and home repair, organic gardening and food preservation, herbal first aid, and mending clothes is both fun and accessible. It’s full of simple skills that anyone can and should learn.
From creating healthy tinctures and salves to preserving excess food to fixing a leaky faucet, this book is great if you’re looking to live more simply, create a comfortable nest, and truly do it yourself. Combining the power of Raleigh Briggs’s bestselling Make Your Place and Make It Last to form a complete guide to everything you need to consume less and live more in line with your values.
It’s another throwback episode! A few years ago, Joe and Elly sat down with sales rep extraordinaire Kurtis to talk about how reps get books into stores. Learn about cover appeal, sales conferences, how store buyers see the books… and that’s just the first five minutes. It’s an oldie, but an eternally useful goodie of an episode!
The DIY information technology helping us build a better world
In an era of book bans, people are still finding ways to read, write, and share freely. One result we’ve noticed: a groundswell of zines. That’s why we’re calling 2025 the Year of Zines.
What’s a zine? It’s a stapled, photocopied love letter to a passionate interest. People write zines about whatever they need to: to tell their story uncensored, to express themselves fearlessly in words and art, to share knowledge or resources, to celebrate something they care about deeply, to connect directly with readers. Zines can take many forms, from a handwritten manifesto distributed out of a fanny pack to a polished product sold in stores.
We have published and sold zines since 1996, and we’ve seen many waves of interest come and go. But we haven’t seen anything like the surge of zine sales that began on November 9, 2024. Sure, there was a two-week run on reproductive rights resources, books like How to Get Your Periodand zines like Reclaiming Our Ancient Wisdom pushing aside all other holiday bestsellers (even Slingshot Planners!) on their way to the top of the charts. But that urgency quickly died down, revealing an even stickier trend on our orders page—people were, and still are, loading up with assorted, seemingly random zines, on every topic, from every era. Zines about bees, government misdeeds, backyardbuildingprojects, mentalhealth, abortion, abortion, abortion. Zines and books about how to make zines.
What’s behind this hunger for zines? To us, it’s not that hard to see. We are all desperate to expand our understanding, to think freely, to feel safe connections with others and with our own thoughts, to learn the skills we need to survive this era. Online media, especially social media, is compromised. Books can be slow to come out, ponderous to read, relentlessly gatekept, banned up the wazoo. Zines are none of these. They’re a fix that satisfies the urgent need for pithy commentary, bigger perspective, getting a look inside someone else’s head without needing to have your own perfectly-formed and fully-informed opinion. They provide a small, safe bubble with no mandate for response. A zine is a safe place to not know, to be wrong, to change your mind, and to entertain other perspectives.
Zines can be banned, but they’re too slippery to be stopped, too slight to be taken seriously, some too underground to even be found. They are decentralized, passed hand-to-hand, and there are no gatekeepers to corrupt or bottlenecks to plug.
And the best thing about zines is that youcan create one! You can publish it yourself, all you need is something to say and access to a printer or copier. You can give copies to your friends, leave them in the public library or at Little Free Libraries, mail them to the creators who made you fall in love with zines in the first place. This is far from the expensive corporate allure of self-publishing a book-shaped object to remain forever hidden in the algorithm. Zines are a form of energy that can’t be contained by anyone, even us, and we wouldn’t want it any other way.
So we’re calling 2025 the Year of Zines, and this is what it means: read zines. Seek them out. We have a ton in our catalog, and we sell them to more and more stores. You can find a plethora of printed zines on Etsy and digital ones on itch.io. More and more cities and towns are hosting their own zine fests. You’ll find them hiding out in craft fair booths, in a bin at the library. Search for zines + your area of passionate interest. Once you start looking, you’ll see them everywhere. (And if you have a store, check out our zine about selling zines!).
And when you aren’t finding the exact zine you want, well, you know what to do. How do you think we got started making them?
If you’d like to submit a zine or an idea for one to Microcosm, you can read a little more about our guidelines and process here.Happy creating!
Herbal remedies and wise perspectives to help make your cycle less of a rollercoaster.
Ever felt like your uterus is out to get you? Or experienced dismay at the politicians out to get your uterus? This book will speak straight to your soul. Get to know your body with this inclusive guide to herbal, holistic self-care for every womb, at every stage of life—from puberty to post-menopause and everything in between.
Herbalist and pregnancy loss doula Angelica Merritt offers a wealth of anatomical science, plant medicine, and nutritional and herbal strategies to support body literacy, a regular menstrual cycle, and your reproductive goals. If you’re dealing with irregular menstruation, PCOS, infertility, pregnancy loss or release, perimenopause, or any other reproductive health issue, look to these pages for remedies that bridge the scientific and the spiritual. Inside you’ll find guidance in holistic modalities such as castor oil packs, breath work, breast and womb massage, baths, and infused oils, along with rituals and journal prompts. You’ll learn about the connections between the womb, the moon cycle, and the archetypes of Maiden, Mother, and Crone. Transform your self-care through the magick of the womb within!
You can join the community of support for this exciting project on Kickstarter.
How does a small press hire a sales rep? Do you even NEED a rep? This week on the pod, Joe and Elly talk about how Microcosm decided to work with reps, and how to find the reps that will work for you.
Chris Vega of Blue Cactus Press is back to talk common publishing misconceptions! Zoning issues, delusions of grandeur, printing—learn what makes us unique (and also just as boring as other publishers).
Healing, growth, and self-acceptance come from seeing our flaws, fears, and mistakes with clarity and compassion. In this 52-card deck, Dr. Faith G. Harper—bestselling author of Unfuck Your Brain and Boundaries Conversation Deck—offers prompts to help you explore the parts of yourself that you usually try not to see. Work through your trauma, improve your relationships, seek true accountability, and embrace your whole authentic self. Use these cards for individual reflection, as a challenging group activity, as part of addiction recovery, or with your therapist to get up close and personal with your hidden side and see what important truths you uncover—and the freedom and joy of truly knowing who you are.
“When you hear your anxiety speaking to you, whose voice is it?”
“What would a healthy relationship with your anxiety look and feel like?”
“Visualize a safe place.”
With these prompts and many others, Dr. Faith G. Harper—bestselling author of Unfuck Your Anxiety and Stress Coping Skills Deck—helps you reflect on your anxiety and learn how to cope with it. Many of us are familiar with the trembling, choking, panicky, or uneasy feelings that characterize anxiety, and they aren’t pleasant. Whether you have a diagnosed anxiety disorder or just want to better handle the anxiety-provoking situations that life throws at you, this 52-card deck will equip you with practical coping strategies and reflection questions to help you understand your anxiety and transform your relationship with it. Use these cards in therapy, in a group, for personal reflection, or whenever you need some help managing your anxious thoughts and feelings.
This week, we pretend we’re one of those “hang out and chat about whatever” podcasts, because it’s time for Dr. Faith’s long-awaited return to the pod! Join Dr. Faith, Joe, and Elly while they answer reader questions, talk about Dr. Faith’s upcoming books, surviving the holidays, and more. There are always shenanigans when Dr. Faith comes around, so we hope you have as much fun as we did.
How do you raise your kids to be functional adults with big hearts? Young people need to learn to stand up against every kind of oppression, respect boundaries and consent, and gain self-compassion while also navigating money, friends, sex, and school. How can you prepare children and teens to find joy and stability as they cope with uncertainty, violence, and disaster, especially when your own coming-of-age lessons weren’t so thoughtfully taught?
Parents and mental-health professionals Dr. Faith G. Harper and Bonnie Scott have written a parenting guide for the 21st century that is a must-read for people with children of any age, from infancy to adulthood. Drawing from the authors’ experiences raising diverse, politically active young people, this book will help you bring up a new generation with tools to change the world for the better—all while maintaining your own separate identity and relationships…and without losing your mind.
