Branding tells the consumer who you are, what your vibe is, and (probably most importantly) that you publish books. Past wisdom has focused on authors in the branding and marketing, but the market has since shifted to focus even more on publishers and imprints as the communication point.
This week on the podcast, Joe and Elly offer their thoughts and insights on how to get started with your publisher branding.
If you hang in certain circles, you’ll frequently hear that “Publishers have all the money,” which is funny because bookstores get the largest percentage of each sale. But everyone has to pay their staff and operating expenses, and often it’s bewildering to watch even the revenues from your bestsellers dwindle into nothingness.
So this week on the pod, we look at that illustrious pie chart and talk about how it all disappears so quickly! Please feel free to eat pie during this episode.
Microcosm Publishing founder Joe Biel recently shared a remembrance of his close friend, mentor, respected comic artist and writer, and Cleveland publishing legend Joyce Brabner, who died August 2, 2024 after a long fight with cancer. She was 72 years old.
Though Brabner is perhaps best known through her marriage to comics pioneer and American Splendor creator Harvey Pekar, she was herself an esteemed artist, activist, and writer, publishing numerous books of her own alongside collaborations with other graphic publishing luminaries such as Alan Moore, Denny O’Neil, and Stephen R. Bissette.
The Courage Party was Brabner’s final published work before her death.
Brabner’s final published book was The Courage Party: Helping Our Resilient Children Understand and Survive Sexual Assault, a project of great importance to her which Microcosm published in 2020 at the very beginning of the COVID crisis. This groundbreaking YA comic book tells the story of a child who fights off a sexual attack (she prefers to be called a “crime fighter” over “survivor”) and the support she receives from her community, including an empowering “courage party” thrown for her by older women with their own stories to share. The book contains thorough and age-appropriate insights on how to navigate interactions with police, the legal system, support groups, and how to deal with teasing and inappropriate behavior from peers; it also offers extensive resources both for children and adults.
Detailed obituaries for Brabner have appeared in Cleveland Sceneand Cleveland 13 News. Microcosm mourns the loss of Joyce Brabner as a friend, a Cleveland fixture, a fierce activist, and a publishing visionary.
Microcosm Publishing has purchased the building adjacent to their Cleveland, OH warehouse, where construction is currently underway to connect the two buildings. This major project will double Microcosm’s warehousing capacity, as well as create an additional sales capacity of $5 million per year to serve the needs of Microcosm’s vertically-integrated publishing and distribution operation, which earned their recognition in 2022, 2023, and 2024 as a Publishers Weekly Fastest Growing Publisher.
Microcosm will be the new distributor for publisher Too Much Coffee Man, home of the iconic socially analytical humor comics and character created by Shannon Wheeler. Founded in 1991 and appearing everywhere from The New Yorker to The Daily Texan to MTV, Too Much Coffee Man remains an enduring and influential presence in independent comics.
Too Much Coffee Man by Shannon Wheeler
Microcosm’s collaboration with Too Much Coffee Man will include the forthcoming Too Much Coffee Man: The Original Comic Books #1-9, currently slated for release in March 2025, along with other reissues of prior releases and updated and new material. Stay tuned!
Microcosm Publishing has become the first U.S. independent publisher to sign on with Batch, a business tool owned by the Booksellers Association of the UK and Ireland designed for independent bookstores to electronically store and organize invoices, reduce administrative workloads, and prepare publisher payments.
Microcosm hopes that this exciting and innovative development will strengthen relationships with independent booksellers, streamlining payment processes to create more ease and better communication for everyone. Booksellers and shop owners have already responded enthusiastically to the news from Microcosm’s sales team, such as Kelly Justice of Fountain Bookstore, whose response to the news was, “GOD BLESS YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Sorry for the all-caps, but seriously, thank you.”
Of the Batch partnership, Microcosm founder Joe Biel says, “When Allison Hill told every bookseller at Winter Institute to simplify their workloads by signing up for Batch, my next move was marching over and signing up as a publisher. Our field sales reps have always cited that the greatest impediment for opening new accounts to Microcosm is convincing stores to take on the payables workload of a self-distributed publisher. I know how much work goes into managing payments on our 242 accounts and how consolidating that workload will enable booksellers to add more cool, independent publishers. But it was shocking to learn that we were the first independent publisher in the U.S. to sign up!”
Batch is free for booksellers to join; stores interested in Batch services may sign up here. For bookstores interested in setting up accounts with Microcosm Publishing (which can be serviced by Batch’s invoicing system), please feel free to contact us here.
Microcosm Publishing is founding a new imprint, Yard Dragon Books, focused on titles about plants and herbalism. Acquisitions for the imprint will be led by editor, herbalist, and artist Alexis Orgera.
Orgera (she/they) is the author of the lyric memoir Head Case: My Father, Alzheimer’s & Other Brainstorms (Kore Press, 2021), as well as poetry books How Like Foreign Objects and Dust Jacket, and Agatha (forthcoming) from Jackleg Press. She holds degrees in British & American literature from New College of Florida (before New College was taken over by DeSantis and his goons) and poetry from Emerson College. Orgera is an editor, has taught college writing, co-founded and edited Penny Candy Books, and is was recently executive director of Greensboro Bound literary festival. A student and practitioner of herbal medicine and permaculture in North Carolina’s piedmont, Orgera is currently apprentice to the land on a quarter-acre plot in an urban flood zone and uses ecology, permaculture design principles, regenerative practices, eco-philosophy, ethnobotany, the history of medicine and healing, and herbal studies in both her writing and gardening life.
Alexis Orgera
Of the new imprint, Orgera writes, “I’m a better person because of plants. Herbalism and permaculture have taught me how better to listen to the world around me and to deeply respect balance—in myself, in nature, and in the relationship between people and our landscape. To be able to share the green life with readers, combining my passion for plants with my vocation of book-making and editing, is really a dream come true, and doing so with Microcosm—a publisher that really cares about its readers—is even better.”
More information on submitting work to the imprint can be found here.
Microcosm Publishing is thrilled to announce that we will serve as the first-ever distributor for Chickasaw Press, the only publishing house in the U.S. owned by an Indigenous Nation. Based in Ada, Oklahoma, Chickasaw Press’s goal is to preserve, perpetuate, and provide an awareness of Chickasaw history and culture. The press offers a literary, scholarly, and accessible outlet for the work of Chickasaw authors, academics, and culture bearers, exercising intellectual sovereignty through ethical and culturally appropriate research and publication practices.
The agreement with Microcosm encompasses the Chickasaw Nation’s three publishing imprints: Chickasaw Press, focused on nonfiction titles about tribal history, culture, self-governance, and sovereignty; White Dog Press, a fiction imprint devoted to sharing Chickasaw culture, experiences, and history through creative works; and Leaning Pole Press, a scholarly outlet for Chickasaw writers and academics to explore subjects beyond the Chickasaw historical and cultural experience.
Picture book Mission to Space by Chickasaw astronaut John HerringtonNovel Little Bird by Chickasaw author Mary Ruth Barnes
Microcosm founder Joe Biel writes, “The broad array of rad books that Chickasaw creates along with their incredible mission fits like a puzzle piece into ours, where we can help them reach more readers with their history, culture, nation, and culinary delights. When they approached us, I was humbled and honored, and the more I learn about their press, the more those sentiments deepen.”
Chickasaw Press titles will be available to order via Microcosm in November 2024.
Microcosm has created its own custom shipping boxes, featuring a spoof of a certain Seattle-based company’s logo and images of several employees’ cats, produced by International Paper based in Memphis, Tennessee. Microcosm regularly receives feedback from its bookstore customers praising its warehouse shippers’ packing skills, so it only seemed right to get boxes to match their acumen—and to express Microcosm’s cheeky and fiercely independent ethos anywhere its books are sent.
Cleveland warehouse manager Drew shares the new boxesMicrocosm boxes and Dr. Faith titles seen at Fabulosa Books on CBS News.
Maybe you even glimpsed our new boxes (and a few of our titles!) in the recent CBS Weekend News piece on fighting book bans, featuring the amazing Fabulosa Books.
Says Microcosm founder Joe Biel, “We created custom boxes, and the paper plant we’d been working with in Oregon refused to print our anti-Amazon artwork. Our number one customer complaint was our use of boxes from ULINE—a company that doesn’t align with our values anyway—so we switched to custom boxes that are of a superior quality in celebration of how many booksellers praise our warehouse employees’ box-packing superpowers.”
Biel and Microcosm vice president Elly Blue discuss the decision making, design, and Oregon vs. Ohio politics behind the new boxes in this recent episode of Microcosm’s People’s Guide to Publishing podcast.
The publishing industry invests heavily in the logic that a new book hits hard out of the gate, has a third of its total sales before it’s published, a third of its sales in the following year, and the final third gradually across the lifetime of the book, until it gradually saturates and dead stalls. So this week on the pod, we look at how to make books sell forever.
