Drawing on 30 years of experience operating an independent publishing company, Microcosm founder and CEO Joe Biel has written the most accessible and comprehensive guide to running a successful publishing business. You’ll learn all the skills of the trade, including how to:
Develop your individual books to connect with readers on a practical and emotional level
Choose between offset printed, digitally printed, and ebook formats and work effectively with printers
Build an authentic niche so you can reach your audience and sell books directly
Understand if and when you’re ready to work with a distributor or large online retailer
Create a budget and predict the cost and income of each book so your company stays in the black
Decide what work you need to do yourself and what can be done by others
Plan for sustainable growth
Featuring interviews with other upstart independent publishers and funny anecdotes from publishing’s long history as well as detailed charts and visuals, this book is intended both for beginners looking for a realistic overview of the publishing or self-publishing process and for experienced publishers seeking a deeper understanding of accounting principles, ways to bring their books to new audiences, and how to advance their mission in a changing industry. All readers will come away with the confidence to move forward wisely and a strong sense of why publishing matters today more than ever.
Keep going to read an excerpt of Joe Biel’s A People’s Guide to Publishing! Available now through our site, or via your favorite independent Microcosm peddler 🙂
Whether you are overwhelmed by the bounty of your home garden or you want to get smarter about using what’s in your fridge, this friendly and informative guide will walk you through the steps to preserving and storing your own (delicious!) food. In her trademark welcoming style with charming illustrations, Raleigh Briggs offers up her knowledge on canning, brining, fermentation, drying, and storing everything from fresh vegetables to fish. With step by step instructions, recipes, and helpful tips, this guide will allow you to embrace a more sustainable, low-waste, and cost-saving relationship to food while empowering you with new skills. Eat healthy and cheap all year round!
Keep going to read an excerpt of Raleigh Briggs’s Save Your Food! Printing came through early, so it’s available NOW through our site, well in advance of the technical October 2026 pub date!
Want a simple and effective way to improve your health? Hoping to survive the next wildfire smoke event without going through ten inhalers? Breathe easier with the practical support of this air care handbook, where you’ll find expert guidance on air quality and effective steps that you, a non-scientist, can take to preserve—and enhance—your own air health.
Sustainability consultant, engineer, and healthy building design expert Melissa Wrolstad handily distills the technical aspects of healthy air best practices, including strategies that people on any budget can implement with no need for fancy tools or training, and guides you through air exercises you can do in buildings you frequent. You’ll be equipped with the principles of indoor and outdoor air quality, understand common pollutants such as dust, smog, and radon, and learn strategies for how to protect yourself, your pets, and your loved ones from their effects. Written with passion and tons of research, The Air Self-Care Handbook offers insight and expertise at a time when reliable, non-governmental resources are more crucial than ever.
Get acquainted with the little creepy crawlies who make our world go ’round in this enthusiastic and informative love letter to the beauty of bugs by Karyn Light-Gibson, the author of Bug Life. This time around, Light-Gibson introduces us to under-appreciated insects like fleas, lice, silverfish, and earwigs. And then she opens up the wide world of non-insect invertebrates, taking us on a rollercoaster ride through the world of scorpions, spiders, ticks, millipedes, and even crayfish and snails.
She offers fascinating, fun, and sometimes gross facts about how each of these bugs has shaped our world, from ancient times to today. She debunks common myths (no, you probably do not actually eat eight spiders per year). And she gives guidance on how humans can co-exist more peaceably with these creatures we often fear or see as pests—but who we also rely on for a viable ecosystem.
Read for the trivia night facts, to help cure your arachnophobia, or if you just want to gain a new appreciation for more of the tiny creatures that we share the planet with but rarely stop to get to know.
Keep going to read an exclusive excerpt of Rad Bugs, available everywhere 3/10/26, shipping now from our site!
Is the daily grind getting you down? You’re not alone! More than half of working adults in the U.S. say they’re experiencing at least some degree of that dreaded late-stage-capitalism affliction: burnout. But workplace well-being needn’t remain out of reach. With a focus on actionable alternatives, Self Care Won’t Save Us examines the mash-up of money and morality that got us into this mess alongside practical ways we can get ourselves out of it.
Author Caroline Moore digs into hustle culture’s takeover of the way we do business, how its rise has allowed work to creep into every aspect of our daily lives, and how we can re-envision what work is and what it should mean to us. Exploring possibilities like co-op models, shorter working weeks, policy changes in the workplace, and other simple adaptations to help you to thrive, this book offers real tools to battle burnout, rather than burning you out with more burnout facts. Whether you’re a business owner, a union steward, a new employee, or a freelancer, this is the working person’s guide to making positive change for ourselves and each other.
Read an exclusive excerpt of Self-Care Won’t Save Us, shipping now from our site or from a shop near you!:
Make your next event even more special—and accessible
The ultimate guide to creating welcoming, safe, and accessible gatherings for everyone. With detailed strategies and illustrative examples, How to Organize Inclusive Events and Conferences uses principles of design justice to share how to put on truly inclusive occasions built for the needs and abilities of all. If you’ve ever attended or hosted conferences, organize events for fun or for a living, or if you have ever thought, “I guess these spaces just aren’t made for me and I wish I could change that,” this book is written for you!
Expert events organizer Alex D. Ketchum provides the ethical framework of what true inclusion in action means, considering a broad variety of identities and experiences such as economic hardship, childcare needs, racial and ethnic identities, disabilities, neurodivergence, and more. Whether you’re hosting an academic symposium, an activist meeting, a feminist zinefest, or a comics con, Ketchum offers a step-by-step guide through the planning and execution process, with useful tips, timelines, and templates along the way. This book is an indispensable companion to building events and conferences from an ethic of care, allowing us to cultivate authentic community and to create the better world we desire—together.
Have you ever wanted to organize a public event? Do you dream of hosting a battle of the bands, film screenings, concerts, poetry readings, art shows, teach-ins, lectures, seed exchanges, zine workshops, and panels? What about a conference? Maybe you already have experience doing this work but you have noticed that inequities from the society-at-large are replicated at your events, despite best intentions.
The goal of this book is to provide event and conference organizers of all levels with the tools to make their events accessible, sustainable, and rooted in social justice principles. Whether you are new to organizing or highly experienced, this book will provide frameworks and practical tips to create inclusive events. No matter the kind of event or conference you are interested in organizing, whether large or small, online, in-person, hybrid, synchronous, or asynchronous, this book includes what you need to know. From the smallest details (such as what to have in your bag on the day of the gathering) to large topics (such as choosing a location, selecting presenters, funding, designing publicity materials, working with community partners, etc.)
This book draws on my experience organizing hundreds of public events, including:
100+ events for Disrupting Disruptions: The Feminist and Accessible Publishing, Communications, and Tech Hybrid Speaker and Workshop Series
Several conferences, including:
Queer Food Conference (Boston and Montréal)
Food, Feminism, and Fermentation Conference
Circuits de consommation, a food, feminism, and technology conference
Multiple Feminist Research Colloquiums
I have also organized concerts, book launches, pumpkin festivals, sports tournaments, dances, parties, potlucks, podcasting workshops, film screenings, rallies, marches, and parades. As both an organizer and attendee, I have paid attention to what worked, what did not work, and what could be improved. I will also share insights from other event organizers, disability justice activists, feminist educators, and queer designers.
How we do the work is the work. In this book, I hope to help you organize events and conferences that reflect the ethos that inspired your event in the first place. We will explore how decisions over signage, outreach, website design, food, pricing, venue, technology, and so much more can foreground queer, feminist, accessible, socially just, and inclusive principles. This book will help you host an event or conference in which everyone who takes part feels included, supported, and valued!
This book begins in Part 1 by exploring the foundations of inclusive event and conference organizing. Part 2 focuses on event organizing. Much of the content in Part 2 informs Part 3, which focuses specifically on conference planning. Part 4 focuses on your needs as an organizer.
One other note: Part 2, the section on events, can inform your conference organizing decisions . . . because conferences are, in essence, a series of smaller events, grouped together.
While each section of the book builds on the next, I encourage you to flip to different sections as they are most useful for you. Templates for your event and conference organizing are distributed throughout the book. If your phone has word detection capabilities, you can turn your camera app on and select the text so you can use the templates more readily. Adjust them to your needs.
Finally, although I may mention certain applications and software, technology is ever-evolving. I encourage you to focus more on the technological capabilities of any tool (whether paper, email, computer software, or a phone app) and how they can serve the values of your conference rather than the exact software I discuss.
This book contains information that will help guide your decisions to ensure that your event is inclusive and reflects your goals and values.
Breaking it off? Got dumped? Parting ways with a pal? Ouch, that hurts. Even beyond the heartache, embarrassment, and logistical strain of the moment, breakups can summon up all our old baggage to play havoc with our lives and heads.
Dr. Faith G. Harper, bestselling author of books like Unfuck Your Brain and Unfuck Your Intimacy, brings you a kind, relatable, and plain-language guide to all things break-up: deciding to do it (or not), doing the thing, and picking up the pieces afterward to build a life that suits you better than ever. Whether or not the breakup was your idea, or if the partnership was romantic, sexual, or platonic, no matter the seriousness of the bond or the shared responsibilities and finances involved, parting ways can be a canon life event with powerful transformational potential as you rise from the wreckage. And it’s never too late to come back to your best self.
Keep reading for an excerpt of Dr. Faith G. Harper’s Unfuck Your Breakup,shipping now from our site and available through your favorite purveyors of indie books!
Connect to nature and live to tell the tale with this camping guide packed with practical knowledge from a time before ultralight backpacking gadgets, synthetic rainwear, and cell phones. The emphasis is on preparation and survival, starting with how to plan your trip, pick your companions, how to get to your campsite, and what gear, food, and clothes to bring along. You’ll learn to choose a good campsite and set up your tarp or build a lean-to, and navigate on your backcountry trek. There’s an extensive section on wilderness first aid, plus guides to backwoods housekeeping and cooking, blazing a trail, starting a fire without a match, sending smoke signals, and choosing the best axe.
In the words of the author, “Camping calls for old clothes, lack of luxuries and conveniences, primitive life, and unfailing good temper and cheerfulness under all conditions, as well as plenty of hard work and a willingness to do one’s share of anything and everything without being asked.” If roughing it is more your style than glamping, this guide will spark your imagination and help you plan your next trip.
Keep reading for an excerpt of Elly Blue’s foreword to How to Survive in the Woods, our new edition of A. Hyatt Verrill’sBook of Camping, first published in 1917. Shipping direct from the Microcosm site starting December 8th, or available from your favorite local Microcosm purveyor in April 2026!
Our culture treats the artist toiling in solitude like a romantic idea, but that’s rarely how it happens in the real world. Writing doesn’t have to be isolating—art flourishes in community. If you know where to look, there’s a whole world of writers out there, waiting to connect.
Jessie Kwak, author of From Chaos to Creativity, returns with a guide on networking and building your community, with clear and easy to follow advice. Learn how to form your own “writing constellation,” how to create an elevator pitch, tips on reaching out (without being a creep), and how to navigate things like events, classes, workshops, and more. A great read for writers new and old to shift their mindset away from the solo grind to enthusiastic collaboration and building an open, welcoming support network.
Even when you’re broke, you can live a full, fun, compassionate life.
Are you plant-based, penniless, and keen on making things yourself? This cookbook and DIY compendium of vegan living starts with a focus on spring and summer, offering hot-weather tips and treats like recipes for popsicles, sorbet, and tofu burgers; budget vegan travel tips; craft ideas; yard sale delights; and guidance on environmentally friendly housecleaning.
The second half of the book is focused on harvest and holiday, offering cozy activities and recipes for cool-weather treats like pumpkin bread, cookies, hot cocoa, and more. You’ll find egg alternatives for baking, vegan survival tips for family occasions like Christmas, and Valentine’s Day gift ideas and guidance for doing it yourself and avoiding commercial holidays altogether. Save cash and learn new skills while staying socially and environmentally conscious all year round.
