Publishing is a business with lots of opportunities to make really expensive, embarrassing, and/or hurtful mistakes! We don’t really have a culture of talking about our failures in this industry, but we think it’s healthy to acknowledge and learn from them.

This week on the People’s Guide to Publishing podcast, Joe and Elly talk about some of the biggest mistakes we’ve made over the years at Microcosm . . . and how we recovered from them. We didn’t have time to get to everything we ever botched, but maybe we’ll make this an annual episode!

This week on the People’s Guide to Publishing podcast, Joe and Elly answer a reader question from someone who wants to start a regional publishing company but isn’t sure how to figure out what format and market niche to pursue.

This week on the People’s Guide to Publishing podcast, Joe and Elly answer a listener question! A relatively new publisher has been turned down by distributors, but a larger publisher made a proposal to license her books. What do these things mean and what is in her best interest?

This week on the People’s Guide to Publishing podcast, Joe and Elly continue to talk about how to find distribution for your book publishing company.

Last week, we talked about how to get a trade distributor interested in working with you. This week we turn the tables to discuss the equally important question of how to choose distributors that you want to work with, particularly ones who have expertise in selling the types of books you publish.

On today’s People’s Guide to Publishing podcast, Joe and Elly tackle a question we are asked all the time: how can a new or small publisher attract a trade distributor who can sell their books to bookstores, among other places?

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!

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.