The pandemic was an unexpectedly magical time for the publishing industry. Sales went up when they were expected to go down. Printing slowed to a crawl due to the paper shortage. But four years later, we have some clear, emergent publishers who seemed to have permanently claimed an additional piece of the market share. This week we take a closer look at them!
Get the People’s Guide to Publishinghere, and the workbook here! Want to stay up to date on new podcast episodes and happenings at Microcosm? Subscribe to our newsletter!
Do you want to start a business? Or does your existing business feel stuck? Either way, this no-fluff workbook will walk you through the steps of planning and troubleshooting your enterprise. Publisher Joe Biel and bestselling author Dr. Faith G. Harper, co-authors of Unfuck Your Business, reunite to help you make your business idea viable, find your niche, and evaluate your growth and success. With the help of worksheets and exercises, you’ll make sure the money adds up, plan your strategy for growth, hone your management skills, and work through common pitfalls like imposter syndrome and self-sabotage. Even if you’ve never run a business before and don’t see yourself as a numbers person, you can succeed with the right tools. Work out your dreams on the page and then watch your hard work, critical thinking, and belief in your meaning and purpose make them come true!
How does the entire world get information about what you are publishing? It’s from a feed called ONIX, that propagates every detail about your titles. This week on the pod, we take a deep dive into ONIX and its role for small publishers.
Get the People’s Guide to Publishinghere, and the workbook here! Want to stay up to date on new podcast episodes and happenings at Microcosm? Subscribe to our newsletter!
Frolic in a fungal forest, repose upon a toadstool, honor the amanita, whisper to the chanterelle, power up your foraging game, and bask in buttery morel righteousness. Tease your tastebuds and expand your consciousness as you color these lush landscapes and mindscapes in search of delight, inspiration, and that distinctive red-and-white fly agaric, the Waldo of the mushroom world. Gerta O. Egy’s illustrations are enchantingly detailed, proliferating across pages and pages. Single-sided art means you can color as intensely as you need to, and tear out each page to share or display.
Many publishers find money to be very unpredictable and scary. So this week we take a look at how to create budgets and predict cash flow as well as how to plan a financial future. It’s not as difficult as it seems!
Get the People’s Guide to Publishinghere, and the workbook here! Want to stay up to date on new podcast episodes and happenings at Microcosm? Subscribe to our newsletter!
So much of book publishing is about distributing tasks, so how can publishers take more of these operational aspects in-house? This week on the pod, guest Anthony Goff, President of Blackstone Publishing, walks us through many of their aspects that are vertically integrated, from recording studios to rights sales to printing and distribution—to performing these services for other publishers.
Get the People’s Guide to Publishinghere, and the workbook here! Want to stay up to date on new podcast episodes and happenings at Microcosm? Subscribe to our newsletter!
What happened in 2023? A lot! We were on Publisher’s Weekly’s list of fastest-growing publishers (again), we bought a new warehouse building, improved staff leveling and pay transparency, and a lot of other stuff. In this week’s episode, we look back at 2023.
Get the People’s Guide to Publishinghere, and the workbook here! Want to stay up to date on new podcast episodes and happenings at Microcosm? Subscribe to our newsletter!
Welcome to the next installment of the Bookstore Solidarity Project! Every month, we’ll be highlighting indie bookstore owners and booksellers across the country.
For January, we managed to wrangle Josh Christie of Print: A Bookstore, in Portland, Maine. Fun fact about Print— it’s where Abby the Marketing Manager was first really introduced to Microcosm, thanks to Print’s awesome selection of zines and books!
Your name and pronouns? Josh Christie, he/him
Tell us a little bit about the store and your community! We love being the most progressive, most queer-friendly bookstore in our already lefty little city. We’ve been a store for 7 years in November (!). No store cat, through four of us have dogs and one of us has pet bunnies.
What got you into bookselling? I couldn’t figure out what else to do with a degree in political science. This is my 20th year as a bookseller, so now it’s hard to imagine doing anything else.
What’s something about your store that you think will surprise people? Our store has been many things prior to our tenancy, including a furniture designer’s workshop, hardware store / scuba shop, and girls school. Plus, the store is haunted.
What are some of you favorite ways your community supports your store? The community is super-supportive of all our social media antics, which is loads of fun. They’ve also really latched on to our book clubs – we’ve got four now, and each pulls at least a dozen attendees for every meeting.
Be sure to follow Print: A Bookstore onInstagram, Twitter, and Tiktok (you definitely want to check out their Tiktok). Check out his podcast interview here!
Frankfurt Book Fair is now the world’s largest publishing industry show. It’s open to the public, but it’s primarily for industry veterans to pen big business deals. It’s largely to sell foreign rights translations of your books (or buy the same!). And we did! Check out our report from what happened there in 2023 and how it might be useful for you!
Get the People’s Guide to Publishinghere, and the workbook here! Want to stay up to date on new podcast episodes and happenings at Microcosm? Subscribe to our newsletter!
