Our 100th podcast episode!: Favorite Microcosm Memories

March 19, 2021 — by Elly Blue

Apparently we’ve been doing this podcast for a while, because it’s our 100th episode! We’re not even close to running out of publishing topics to talk about, but we took a break to share some of our favorite memories from the past 25 years. From charming encounters with readers and authors to those book tour moments where we were (literally) on fire, here are some of Joe and Elly’s very best memories.

We hope you enjoy watching or listening to this episode as much as we enjoyed recording it!

How Will COVID Forever Change Publishing?

March 11, 2021 — by Elly Blue

On today’s episode of the People’s Guide to Publishing podcast, Joestradamus makes some predictions about the lasting changes that we’ll see in the publishing industry as a result of the global pandemic of 2020.

Watch or listen to this and 98 other episodes about the art, science, and business of publishing books!

Coming up next week: our 100th episode!

What is a fair book royalty?

March 04, 2021 — by Elly Blue

This week on the People’s Guide to Publishing podcast, Joe and Elly answer a listener question: What is a fair royalty for a publisher to offer to authors for the rights to publish their books? There are a lot of different royalty agreements out there, each one more confusing than the last. Should you pay based on a percent of the cover price? Based on gross sales (ie, the amount the publisher actually gets paid per book sold)? Based on net sales after printing costs? Profit sharing?

Find out how these various options work, the costs and benefits of each, and how certain so-called indie publishing platforms use large numbers to trick you into agreeing to unfair royalty agreements. Listen or watch! And don’t forget to subscribe to hear our newest episode every Thursday.

on the podcast: Dr. Faith’s Unfuck Your Intimacy

July 22, 2019 — by Joe Biel

Back in February, Portland’s had big snow scare…the same night as Dr. Faith Harper’s event at Powell’s Books for Unfuck Your Intimacy + Coping Skills. She answered TONS of audience questions.

How to Design a Book Cover (A People’s Guide to Publishing)

July 05, 2019 — by Joe Biel

Joe Biel and Elly Blue draw upon 24 years of publishing and selling millions of books in order to explain what goes into designing a successful book cover.

A People’s Guide to Publishing: Submission Guidelines

June 28, 2019 — by Joe Biel

This week on the vlogcast, we discuss submission guidelines, what ours look like, how most of the industry operates, and what best practices are both as a publisher and for submitting to publishers.

A People’s Guide to Publishing: How U.S. Tariffs Affect Books

June 23, 2019 — by Joe BIel

Our protagonists, Joe Biel and Elly Blue, swashbuckle their way through how recent threat of additional tariffs will affect the publishing industry

People’s Guide to Publishing: Organization and Workflows

June 17, 2019 — by Joe Biel and Elly Blue

In the latest in our vlogcast series, publishers Elly Blue and Joe Biel discuss challenges that they’ve overcome with doing their jobs, being organized, and how workflows interconnect

People’s Guide to Publishing: How Amazon Has Changed Publishing

June 10, 2019 — by Joe Biel

For many years, new publishers and authors have posed questions to us about distribution. They want to know why distribution is so expensive and exclusive. It’s a much more complicated answer than they were expecting so we’re going to break that out in a weekly video series over the next few months.

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What It Means that We’re Leaving Amazon

July 12, 2018 — by Elly Blue

This week, when we made the announcement that we will part ways with our trade distributor at the end of 2018, we also announced that we won’t be seeking a new distribution relationship directly with Amazon. We’ve gotten a lot of virtual high fives for this, and there’s also been some misunderstanding about what exactly this means.

“I feel terrible because I still sell / buy on Amazon,” is one reaction we get. “But won’t your company / authors suffer if your books aren’t available on Amazon?” is the other. The answer is simple, but the background is complex, and this post is meant to help clarify the relationship Amazon has with publishers, authors, and consumers, and will hopefully give you some guidance in making more informed choices. (more…)