Tagged year of independence

An Interview with Karen Finlay, owner of Alibi Bookshop in Vallejo, California

February 09, 2024 — by Abby Rice

Welcome to the next installment of the Bookstore Solidarity Project! Every month, we’ll be highlighting indie bookstore owners and booksellers across the country. This month, we’re featuring Alibi Bookshop in Vallejo, California, owned by Karen Finlay.

Your name and pronouns?
Karen Finlay, she/her

Tell us a little bit about the store and your community!
We moved to Vallejo from Oakland in 2017, and there was a tiny used bookstore with a small selection; I was disappointed that we didn’t have something *more.* Some people can’t live away from water, and I can’t live far away from a bookstore. One day I said, “I wish I could open a bookstore in Vallejo!” Well, be careful what you wish for — we wound up buying the store and opened in 2019. Not the greatest timing because a pandemic was looming, but our community has kept us here and we are so, so grateful.

Vallejo, the most diverse city in the US, is an interesting and historical town with its share of issues, but the best community anywhere. It was a navy town , but the navy left in the late ’90s and the city declared bankruptcy in 2008, and our downtown still reflects that. But we are working hard to bring back some vitality, and it’s been fantastic! The pandemic derailed our initial efforts, but we’ve been ramping up again. We’ve had sold out events at the local movie theater, two active book clubs, author events, a writing group, partnerships with local businesses… And anchoring downtown to bring in more businesses. We love it here so much. We try very hard to explain that shopping locally is one of the best things you can do for your city, and the message is starting to take hold. We have a ways to go, but the baby steps are getting bigger.

We don’t have a shop cat — we have two enormous “kittens” who are useless at shelving, so they have to stay home.

What got you into bookselling?
In high school I got a job at Upstart Crow, was an English/Creative Writing major in college and grad school, worked in publishing for nearly 20 years (a year of that with THE GREAT ANNA-LISA), and voila, now I own a bookstore!

What’s something about your store that you think will surprise people?
There are continual surprises and delights in this store — sometimes I think it MUST be haunted. For years this space was a legendary cigar shop, but it was also a jeweler, an egg store in the 1930s, the Democratic Headquarters for Vallejo for Robert Kennedy’s campaign so Teddy Kennedy was here, but my favorite incarnation was that it was “Foxy Lady Boutique” that specialized in hot pants. And I just discovered that the movie star Raymond Burr lived in this building as a child!

I think the thing people are surprised about that there’s a bookstore here at all! People think that bookstores are a thing of the past, and we gladly prove them wrong. Just now a woman was in here — she drove here from a different town because she had heard about us and wanted to see what the “fuss was about,” and said that I proved them all right! Take THAT, Amazon.

What are some of you favorite ways your community supports your store?
Vallejo SHOWS UP for us. We have a dedicated core group of customers, and they try to support by buying books/gifts, sharing on social media, spreading the word or even bringing us strawberries or flowers from the farmer’s market, and today a lady brought me a donut because she was thinking of me. But my favorite are the people who stop by to make sure I’ve gotten something to eat! I love our community so, so much.

What are two books you can’t wait for people to read, or your current favorite handsells?
My favorite handsells are “Tell the Wolves I’m Home” and right now, “The Great Believers” and “Just Kids.”

How can customers who aren’t local shop your shelves?
On our Bookshop.org page!

Be sure to follow Alibi on Facebook and Instagram, and check here for Karen’s podcast episode!

You can read our other Bookstore Solidarity Project posts here!
And click here to get a copy of How to Protect Bookstores and Why.

An Interview with Josh Christie, co-owner of Print: A Bookstore in Portland, Maine.

January 09, 2024

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.

What are two books you can’t wait for people to read, or your current favorite handsells?
How to Be Multiple: The Philosophy of Twins by Helena de Bres and Black Punk Now, edited by Chris L. Terry and James Spooner

How can customers who aren’t local shop your shelves?
Our website! Printbookstore.com.

@printbookstore
Print has a full house 🥰#booktok #indiebookstore #fullhouse
♬ Full House – The Hollywood Prime Time Orchestra

Be sure to follow Print: A Bookstore on Instagram, Twitter, and Tiktok (you definitely want to check out their Tiktok). Check out his podcast interview here!

You can read our other Bookstore Solidarity Project posts here!
And click here to get a copy of How to Protect Bookstores and Why.

An Interview with Rick Griffith, owner of The Shop at MATTER in Denver, Colorado.

December 11, 2023

Welcome to the next installment of the Bookstore Solidarity Project! Every month, we’ll be highlighting indie bookstore owners and booksellers across the country.

This month, we’re featuring The Shop at MATTER in Denver! It’s a Black- and woman-owned store that also triples as a design consultancy and letterpress workshop.

Your name and pronouns?
Rick Griffith (He/Him/Them)

Tell us a little bit about the store and your community!
Since 2014 our bookstore has been the only Black- and woman-owned independent, full service (internet and brick) cultural justice bookstore in the United States Mountain Time Zone. We are a haven for fem, queer, non-binary, trans, LatinX, Indigenous, AAPI, and Black persons. We have always respected and invested in the intellectual and creative products of the people who represent our community. We have a print shop with five letterpress printing presses and thousands of pieces of wood type that we employ to print community projects that are pro-democracy, pro-liberation, and pro-freedom. We are political—and we are activists. A bookstore to integrate Art, Design and Cultural Justice for all generations.

What got you into bookselling?
The desire to positively affect the lives of the people we know and love with books and products that acknowledge those of us in the margins.

What’s something about your store that you think will surprise people?
We are working on a lending library for our community so everyone can have access. We have five 19th and early 20th century printing presses. We letterpress print for our community and ask people to pay what they can afford for most of our prints.

What are some of you favorite ways your community supports your store?
Besides buying books, buying our prints and posters. Ordering for personal and business book clubs. Having us bring our pop-up to conferences and large gatherings. Getting the word out. Shopping in pairs.

What are two books you can’t wait for people to read, or your current favorite handsells?
Can’t Pay Won’t Pay and There are Places in the World Where Rules are Less Important than Kindness

How can customers who aren’t local shop your shelves?
on the internet: shopatmatter.com

Anything else you would like us to know?
We are love, revolution, and abolition.

Be sure to follow The Shop at MATTER on Instagram and Facebook, and check out their interview on our podcast here!

Check out our other Bookstore Solidarity Project posts here!
And click here to check out How to Protect Bookstores and Why.

An Interview with Gretchen Treu, owner of A Room of One’s Own Bookstore in Madison, WI.

November 06, 2023

Welcome to the next installment of the Bookstore Solidarity Project! Every month, we’ll be highlighting indie bookstore owners and booksellers across the country.

This month, we got to chat with Gretchen Treu, owner and manager of A Room of One’s Own Bookstore in Madison. Named after the iconic Virginia Woolf essay, Room is a feminist, queer- and trans-friendly little store. (Room was also featured in Danny Caine’s How to Protect Bookstores and Why!)

Your name and pronouns?
Gretchen Treu (they/them)

Tell us a little bit about the store and your community!
Room was founded in 1975 as a scrappy little feminist bookstore, and has grown over the years into Madison’s biggest independent bookstore. We are an all-around indie with a strong focus on LGBTQIA, anti-racism, abolitionist, feminist, progressive voices in all genres. We’re a dog-friendly shop (and sometimes shop dogs Clio and Janeway come to work with us!). We are known for our community work and activism (we initiated Bookstores Against Borders in 2019, raising over $100K with the help of other indie bookstores and readers to benefit RAICES, an immigrant rights org that does important work particularly in Texas). We have a quirky and no-holds-barred social media brand and are particularly known for our book flowcharts and other queer social media vibes. Wes Lukes and I bought the store in 2018 from longtime owners/founder Sandi Torkildson and Nancy Geary, and reinvigorated its radical commitments just before the onset of the pandemic. We have a beautiful new space (we were displaced from downtown Madison due to a gentrifying high-rise that demolished our former block). We’re in the beautiful, low-key Atwood neighborhood on Madison’s East side, in an old barrel-roofed building, surrounded by tons of families and progressive community members and dozens of likeminded local small businesses, which is a perfect location for us.

What got you into bookselling?
I loved books from a young age and just never let go.

What’s something about your store that you think will surprise people?
Our store’s floors have a very slight slope, because over a hundred years ago when it was built, the building was home to a car repair place, (there’s a pulley from the Model-T Ford system that’s hanging above the original entryway near our checkout counter). The floors sloped so that oil and water and whatever other fluids would flow out the building into the street to be washed into the sewer. When we moved here and the builders retrofitted our old bookshelves into the space there was much gnashing of teeth and some very creative solutionmaking to accommodate this reality.

What are some of you favorite ways your community supports your store?
I love when customers get into a particular staff person’s recommendations, or tell us about how a book we sold them was the perfect choice for what they were looking for. I think of books as an elaborate and uniquely human way to communicate expressively and asynchronously, we’re all just yelling into the void. You know. More or less quietly. It’s magical to feel an off-the-beaten-path real connection with a community member. I also just love hearing people come into the store and exclaim over the huge breadth of queer books and sidelines we have. Being a destination for queer people, especially trans and non-binary people who don’t always feel directly welcomed in queer spaces (particularly legacy feminist/lesbian ones like Room historically was) is what we’re here for. Those community-building connections are huge.

What are two books you can’t wait for people to read, or your current favorite handsells?
I can’t wait to sell The Woods All Black by Lee Mandelo–it’s the historical fiction T4T monsterfucking horror novella of my dreams. I’m also very excited about Mercury Stardust’s Safe and Sound book of home repair for renters–I think it’s such a kind and helpful book that serves a niche nobody else is paying attention to.

How can customers who aren’t local shop your shelves?
They can order on our website at roomofonesown.com, or email us for recommendations at room.bookstore@gmail.com

Be sure to follow room on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram (where you might recognize some of their very clever book recommendation graphics).

Check out our other Bookstore Solidarity Project posts here!

An Interview with Meg Wasmer, co-owner of Copper Dog Books in Beverly, Massachusetts.

October 03, 2023

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 October, we got to chat with Meg Wasmer, one of the co-owners of Copper Dog Books in Beverly, Massachusetts. It’s a great little store, with a strong focus on genre fiction. Horror and sci-fi fans would love their selection! (Plus, they have a slew of MIcrocosm titles.)

Your Name and Pronouns
Meg Wasmer, she/they

Tell us a little bit about the store and your community!
Beverly is the best. It’s right by Salem, but doesn’t suffer under the crush of spooky tourism in October. Our customers let me hurl tons of SFF and horror and witchy books at them but also, there are three colleges within five miles of us, so also lots of neat nonfiction.

What got you into bookselling?
The video store I worked at was closing and Borders was hiring and I knew I was good at alphabetically shelving rectangular entertainment media

What’s something about your store that you think will surprise people?
There is both a secret plushie collection and a very nice whiskey selection in the back office.

What are some of you favorite ways your community supports your store?
My favorite way that our customers support us is when they bring their friends who are visiting from out of town to see the store like they’re showing off the Crown Jewels.

What’s your current favorite book to sell customers?
The Navigating Fox by Christopher Rowe is stupidly good!

How can customers who aren’t local shop your shelves?
At Copperdogbooks.com!

Be sure to follow Copper Dog Books on Instagram and Facebook! (And check out their Bonfire store for sweet merch, including this shirt with the “best” review they got last year)

Check out Meg’s podcast interview with Joe and Elly here!

An Interview with Danny Caine, of The Raven Book Store in Lawrence, Kansas

September 08, 2023 — by Abby Rice

Welcome to the next installment of the Bookstore Solidarity Project! Every month, we’ll be highlighting indie bookstore owners and booksellers across the country.

This month we’re pleased to continue chatting with Danny Caine, who you may know as the author of such awesome books and zines as How to Protect Bookstores and Why, and How to Resist Amazon and Why. We also recently had Danny as a guest on the podcast, which you can check out here.

Your Name and Pronouns:
Danny Caine, he/him

Your title at the store:
Part Owner / Buyer

Tell us a little bit about the store and your community:
The Raven Book Store has been serving Lawrence, Kansas since 1987. It opened as an all-mystery store but has since expanded into a general interest indie with a strong focus on local books to serve the needs of this midwestern college town. We have one store cat, Dashiell, whose personality is as big as his belly. We love being in Lawrence, a community that knows the value of independently-owned small businesses.

What got you into bookselling?

I got a part-time job as a Raven bookseller when I was at the University of Kansas working on my MFA. I fell in love with bookselling and the rest was history!

What’s something about your store that you think will surprise people?
20-30% of our sales are online, and much of that support comes from people who aren’t in Kansas. We’re honored and grateful to have found so many supporters across the country and around the world.

What are some of you favorite ways your community supports your store?

There’s the usual and essential stuff like attending events, preordering books, posting pictures of the store online, and stopping into the store. But we love just as much the surprises, like people bringing us newspaper clippings or customers telling us jokes.

What are some books you can’t wait for people to read?
There are too many to count! Our monthly staff picks are on our website, and they’re a great way to take the temperature of what the staff is reading.

How can customers who aren’t local shop your shelves?
We’re open 24/7 at ravenbookstore.com!

Be sure to follow The Raven Book Store online on Instagram and Twitter @ravenbookstore.

Danny also has a slew of events coming up to promote How to Protect Bookstores and Why, so be sure to take a look at our events page to see if he’s coming to your town!

Check back next month for our next feature store.

Blogifesto: August is #MarginsBookselling Month! (An Interview with The Word)

August 15, 2023 — by Abby Rice

We got to chat with Aida Lilly, the Program Coordinator of The Word, a Storytelling Sanctuary, which organizes the annual Margins Bookselling Month.

What is The Word, a Storytelling Sanctuary?

We are a literary arts non-profit whose mission is storytelling for collective abundance. We believe in the power of storytelling, representation, and expanding models in the literary and publishing communities. Our mission is to promote voices from underserved communities and diverse backgrounds, to honor the stories of those who have faced adversity and injustice, and to provide a sanctuary space where these groups can see themselves in literature.

We host community programming and generally try to demystify the ins and outs of publishing, which is overall an opaque industry that tends towards insularity. Our major programs include: the Editor-Writer Mentorship, [margins.] Literary Conference + Book Festival, #MarginsBookselling (of course), and a host of publishing workshops and community events.

Overall, we love books and reading and the folks who dedicate their lives to the written word, and we believe that access to books and knowledge about careers in publishing (and publishing as a whole) are important.

What is #MarginsBookselling Month?

#MarginsBookselling Month is a celebration of bookstores owned and managed by and for BIPOC, LGBTQIAP2S+, disabled, and neurodiverse communities and of booksellers who identify from these communities as well. This is a community collaboration coordinated by The Word. Booksellers are on the frontline of the industry, and we want to celebrate and uplift them!

It’s a month of spreading joy and awareness of these wonderful stores and booksellers and a way of thanking them for doing the important work they do. There’s more to being a community bookstore than just selling books, and these stores exemplify the extraordinary efforts of bookstores and booksellers actively trying to improve the lives of those in their communities.

You can check out all the bookstores in The Word’s #MarginsBookselling network by checking out the interactive map here.

What inspired it?

Inequity is clearly visible in our industry, from the books being published to the demographics of employees in publishing itself. We recognize that books and bookstores are more than just sales and retail, and we see the power of indie bookstores. Diversely-owned bookstores are especially important to marginalized communities, and also to publishing at large. They can provide a third space and safe space to hold and share stories from BIPOC, LGBTQIA2S+, disabled and neurodiverse communities. Bookstores that center marginalized communities provide both shelter and education.

Likewise booksellers are part of the foundation of this industry. They know what books their community members need and are looking for. Indie bookstore sales matter to their community, and to publishing as a whole. It is booksellers who know what recommendations are relevant to their area and specific customers, and those recommendations can have massive impact, especially for authors that aren’t established, “big” names. Passionate booksellers and bookstores change lives for their customers and for the authors that fill their shelves.

There are not enough spaces where we celebrate this work and take time to learn from it. #MarginsBookselling Month is a chance to shine that spotlight and to give our cohort of bookstores and booksellers a chance to do what each does best, while also getting to know each other in community.

What’s so great about indie bookstores? Why focus on them?

We love bookstore stops on every road trip we take! We cherish open mic nights at our local stores. We can’t resist stopping in for a coffee even if our TBR piles are never-ending and we swore we wouldn’t buy another book today.

Reading is its own sort of magic. Books can be gates, windows, mirrors, doors, escape, comfort. Indie bookstores and booksellers can have a few minutes of conversation with someone and help them find entire new worlds to learn about, to love, or to live in.

Real people will always understand us better than algorithms. And indie bookstores are plugged into the communities they serve in ways that are unmatched by other industry retailers.

What has surprised you the most in the last few years of #MarginsBookselling Month?

It is beautiful to see the members of this community lift each other up and create an atmosphere of abundance where there is room for everyone. In many spaces, retail especially, there is often an enmity toward anything perceived as “competition” –and that has not been present at all in this environment. Everyone is always excited to celebrate each other! It’s definitely become a team of its own, and we love all the love!

How can people get involved and support The Word and #MarginsBookselling Month?

There are numerous ways to be involved:

Support #MarginsBookselling bookstores every month. Learn who they are. Spend some time with them, and see how happy they’ll be to fill your shelves with books you’d never find on your own, and are support systems that can help you find connection and community.

If you don’t have a #MarginsBookselling store near you that you can visit in-person, check out the interactive #MarginsBookselling Map, and support these stores by shopping online, either through their own website or on Bookshop.org. If you’re an audiobook listener, you can support your local or favorite #MarginsBookselling store by choosing them as your supported store on Libro.fm.

Additionally, here are a few great ways to get involved with The Word’s #MarginsBookselling Month:

Make a one time or recurring donation to The Word help support programming like #MarginsBookselling Month
Donate to the Duende-Word BIPOC Bookseller Award
Purchase a copy of the beautiful #MarginsBookstores Month journal on Bookshop
Buy this amazing T-shirt with a special quote from Pulitzer and National Book Award Finalist and The Word’s Writers’ Circle Member, Ingrid Rojas Contreras
Amplify The Word’s programs and events on your social media channels, and feel free to tag us!
Reach out to us at info@thewordfordiversity.com to learn more about all the sponsorship and partnership opportunities that are available!

What are two books you think everyone should read right now?

We love Mariame Kaba–everyone should check out her titles! And, of course, National Book Award and Pulitzer Finalist The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Rojas Contreras. Ingrid is a wonderful human who we were thrilled to collaborate with last year’s #MarginsBookselling Month, celebration and said:

“The Word is doing the labor that matters most — uplifting BIPOC booksellers and giving the floor to authors and writers who are writing from the margins. What happens when the margin takes centerstage? I feel a new literature and culture emerges, one that can define and tell of what has gone ignored or untold before. I am so thrilled to be joining The Word’s Writers’ Circle and look forward to supporting their mission.”

We’re grateful to Aida to take the time to answer our questions! If you want to learn more about The Word, their social media handles are:

Facebook @wordfordiversity
Twitter @wordisdiversity
Instagram @wordisdiversity
Youtube: @wordisdiversity

This is the first installment of the year-long Bookstore Solidarity Project, where we’re featuring indie bookstores and the people that love them. Want to learn more about supporting bookstores in your community? Check out How to Protect Bookstores and Why by Danny Caine!

We’re expanding our trade representation!

November 22, 2022 — by Elly Blue

Last week we sent out a press release that began: “Microcosm Publishing is making some changes in our US trade representation, effective Jan 1, 2023.”

For the uninitiated in the publishing industry, this means that we will be working with a broader array of outside salespeople to get our books into bookstores (aka “the [book] trade”). Most publishers of our size (probably best described at this time as on the smaller end of “medium-sized”) work with a large trade distributor to get their books into bookstores. Microcosm has worked with several distributors on and off in the last 28 years, until the beginning of 2019 when we announced our return to independent distribution (which also ended our relationship with a certain giant online retailer). Since then, we’ve been working with three different independent groups of trade sales reps who really get our books, have relationships with bookstores across the US, and have done a stellar job connecting our books with those stores and their buyers.

As we grow and learn what works best, we’re making a few changes in this trade representation:

Abraham Associates will now represent Microcosm’s titles in the midwest US, including Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.

Bob Barnett (PW’s Rep of the Year for 2020) at Third Act Sales will represent Microcosm in Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana.

Imprint Group (which is merging with our existing rep group, the former Book Travelers West—the head of which, Kurtis Lowe, was PW’s 2022 rep of the year) will continue to represent Microcosm in the western US.

Como Sales Co. (group head Maureen Karb was nominated for PW Rep of the Year in 2020) will continue to represent Microcosm’s books in the eastern and southeast US.

Microcosm has been an independent publisher since 1996, and was named the fastest growing publisher of 2022 by Publisher’s Weekly. Microcosm’s year-to-date sales are up 37%.

Microcosm CEO Joe Biel commented, “We are thrilled to continue to expand our reach with these new sales reps, in order to create a world we want to live in and for everyone pushed to the margins to help themselves feel recognized.”

Abraham Associates Principal John Mesjak said, “Everyone in our group is excited to get started working with Microcosm, talking up their books in our territory. We’re always looking for publishers who bring interesting, passionate voices to the world; present a worldview that aligns with our own; and have a crew of smart publishing folks that we can work with. We love that all three of those boxes are ticked in Microcosm, and we can’t wait to get started!”

Microcosm is the distributor for Birdcage Bottom Books, Don Giovanni Records, and GOBLINKO, whose books will also be sold to stores by these groups.

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…)

We are Breaking Up with The Big Boys

July 11, 2018 — by Joe Biel

We’ve been holding on to a bit of news lately, and we’re excited to finally share it with you all! Here’s founder Joe Biel with the details…

Joe & Ruby deliver books by bicycle.

Starting January 1, 2019, we will be managing our own distribution just like we did for over ten years. Not only will we no longer need to move thousands of books back and forth between warehouses, creators get paid more for each book sold. And we won’t be selling to Amazon. Why. you ask? Well, my grandparents were German immigrants who came here in the 1800s for labor unions and worked to achieve the 40-hour work week…which was then abolished in our lifetime. When Microcosm was just getting off the ground in 1997, I interviewed Ian Mackaye of Dischord Records. He explained that a publisher is only as independent as their distribution is. He was seemingly taking a jab at “independent” labels who handle all of their manufacturing and distribution through a major but his point sticks.

Microcosm has always tried to work with independent companies, because they feel most comfortably aligned with our mission, values, and goals…but we’ve watched over the past dozen years as each independent distributor gets gobbled up and responds to the demands of the increasingly demanding monopolies.

We’ve watched as our peer publishers either throw in the towel or sell to one of the monopolies, neither of which we are willing to do. We feel that independents need to be independent and the best way to do that is to build an outpost of our own, a shining star where we can continue to thrive instead of relying upon the whims of any global corporation.

So we are returning to our roots to create the world that we want to see within our weirdo clubhouse.

We will be parting ways with Legato/PGW/Perseus/Ingram in January and have already built new warehouses and software to make this possible. Few events in the history of Microcosm have improved our morale and brought our staff together like this has. As always, our intent is to expand our distribution at the same time. Our new sales people (now a team of four) excitedly understand our books and have more time and focus to dedicate to them. For the first time ever, our back catalog will receive as much attention as our new releases. Within a few years, we intend to begin offering these services to other publishers.

This isn’t as staggering a change as it sounds. Reviewing the numbers, we have come to realize that we know better how to distribute our books than anyone else that we’ve tried to partner with. We’ve handled roughly 75% of our distribution even across these past seven years. The simple fact is that the underground is much bigger than the mainstream.

To ensure that we are still actually serving all of the stores and readers that are interested in our books, we’re bringing on Book Traveler’s West (West Coast), Como (East Coast), and Fujii (Midwest) to actively visit and solicit our books to stores. We will continue to be distributed by Turnaround in Europe and will be working with the same distributors in Australia, Canada, and the rest of the world as well. Readers and stores can still buy books directly from our website, microcosmpublishing.com.

We are redoubling our efforts to sell direct and to independents instead of helping monopolies like Amazon continue to grow at the expense of others. Perhaps more importantly, we will not be accepting their terms that increasingly just serve to crush everything in their path. If you want to help support the indies during this crucial time, go to your local shops and buy books, and encourage your friends to do the same. They will remember moments like this forever.

We hear from people almost every week that our books are saving their lives, and we feel that we have an obligation to extend that as far and wide as possible. There’s an unspoken rule in the underground that what we do is secret but when these rules don’t serve the goals, we have no choice but to break them.

Joe’s next book, A People’s Guide to Publishing, can help anyone inspired by our journey learn the lessons and wisdom that got us here today.
Check out the kickstarter project here!

Read the more industry-jargony version of this news with more details on Shelf Awareness.

Or, if you want to know more about what this’ll mean, check out Elly’s breakdown.

If you ever need help with ordering, please contact Sidnee Grubb | Customer Service (1-503-799-2698).
For press questions, interview or sample requests, contact Cyn Marts, publicity director, cyn@microcosmpublishing.com.