{"id":6389,"date":"2025-06-30T21:23:14","date_gmt":"2025-06-30T21:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/microcosmpublishing.com\/blog\/?p=6389"},"modified":"2025-07-03T02:30:47","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T02:30:47","slug":"publishing-n-prepping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microcosmpublishing.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/publishing-n-prepping\/","title":{"rendered":"What publishers can learn from preppers (from someone who\u2019s survived climate disaster and lived to read about it)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This post is part of a series by the team at WorkingLit. WorkingLit<\/strong> is cloud-based software developed by Microcosm Publishing that gives independent publishers tools to thrive and grow at their own pace. Our industry is run by billionaires and conglomerates, and we want to give our fellow publishers the freedom to market and sell your books, understand your business, and painlessly pay royalties. Learn more at WorkingLit.com<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Excerpted from Microcosm zine <\/em>Books and Math: A Manifesto On Publishing Tools<\/a> by Elly Blue, Joe Biel, and Sara Balabanlilar. Take a look at the whole zine and purchase a copy on our website<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the unprepared, every small shift in the publishing industry can feel like a disaster on the horizon. But it doesn\u2019t have to be this way if you have your tools at the ready. Even before the current unprecedented times (\u2122), there was an influx of seasonal disaster fearmongering from all areas: the whole west coast looks forward to The Big One and wildfires that grow year after year; the northern Midwest has to batten down the hatches for yearly snowstorms that shut down business for days. I grew up on the Gulf Coast, where weather predictions regularly forecast a potential Cat 5 hurricane that might decimate coastal cities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m deeply uninterested in fearmongering, and if I were, I wouldn\u2019t be on the administrative side of the independent book world ;). The thing is, the disaster is already here, I\u2019ve seen it (many of us have), and getting anxious about a future era of climate dystopia is kinda useless. Y\u2019all saw, or lived, last year\u2019s horrific hurricane that swept away entire areas of southern Appalachia and the East Coast, or the terrible fires that reached Los Angeles and burned down entire neighborhoods. The Gulf lives in the shadow of Katrina and a number<\/em> of other hurricanes that did irreparable damage to the landscape and population. Heck, my home city has fatal flash-floods multiple times a year that come and go without much comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Something I\u2019ve learned (and this is where the prepper stuff comes in) is: the time to prepare is now. Don\u2019t get scared, get ready! That might sound a little desperate or fatalist but I don\u2019t necessarily mean it like that. Yes, I have met the rural Texans with a large store of firearms, but there are also my beloved queer anarchist friends who preserve food every winter, raise their own animals in the middle of their southern cities, know how to fix their own houses when high winds blow the roof off, and build decentralized, anti-surveillance communication networks. What I mean is, think about what you would potentially lose in the face of a crisis and figure out a sustainable practice to keep what you need. Learn to grow, find, and can your food. As these pals have shown me, teach yourself survival skills outside of the system and see if, instead of feeling paranoid, you just feel like your life has become less fretful and more expansive.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway. Now transmute that ethos into other realms. How do you build a life practice that supports you no matter the eventuality? After all, I\u2019m trying to get at a holistic view of existing in the world that invests in climate safety practices alongside all other kinds of safety and nourishment. So of course, coming as I am from a WorkingLit point of view, I\u2019m starting with books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, let\u2019s agree that there\u2019s no one impending disaster in the book\/publishing industry. Disaster, industry-shifting changes, and outside forces have come and gone in multiple forms, each shift shaping the industry and unfortunately ridding the world of some amazing publishers as it goes. Whether industry-specific, like the rise of eBooks and Print on Demand (see the prescient and thoughtful A People\u2019s Guide to Publishing podcast episode) or U.S. economy-specific, like tariffs (see\u2026another prescient and thoughtful A People\u2019s Guide to Publishing podcast episode, lol) and Amazon\u2019s relentless pursuit of money at the expense of publishers and bookstores, shifts are wide-ranging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same outlets that forecast the disappearance of New Orleans due to rising waters are also persistently forecasting the disappearance of print books, or bookstores. But come on, y\u2019all, the binary deserves to be complicated, there\u2019s no Black and White, we already know this. There is no \u201cexistence\u201d vs. \u201ccomplete disappearance.\u201d We can forecast that, reasonably, such shifts will continue to occur, just as I can unfortunately assume that another hurricane is going to hit my home city and, in advance, make sure my family has flood insurance, a stock of potable water, and a generator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I guess from what I can see, preparing for disaster breaks down to a few major things:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. Know what you’ve got on hand.<\/strong> Keep track of your stock. Life is a mystery, your assets don\u2019t have to be. Publishers: Make your systems as infallible as possible. If you\u2019re hand-counting stock in a garage to keep track of your catalog, please please stop. If you\u2019ve not taken inventory in a while, please build it into your schedule at least twice a year. Track your product movement so you\u2019re not scrambling to reprint or find space for bestsellers.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Recognize your network.<\/strong> If you\u2019re just<\/em> the \u201cfirearms\u201d type of prepper, this is your nuclear family, I guess; if you\u2019re the \u201cqueer anarchist\u201d type of prepper, this is your family too, but maybe not so much in the bound-by-blood type of way. And if you\u2019re a publisher, this is not just your audience of readers but your community of peers. You need them and they need you! Keep track of the actual stats year over year, don\u2019t just make assumptions based on your loudest customers. You\u2019ll find out a lot more about your highest-selling accounts, the wild online-only stores that try to return 60% of their orders from you, and the small but determined gift accounts that love what you do.
    If you\u2019re sure of what you have, you\u2019re sure of where it\u2019s going, and you\u2019re sure of who\u2019s doing it with you, then you can\u2026<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Prepare for the future and any eventuality.<\/strong> Remember when I said \u201cgetting anxious is kinda useless\u201d? Ok, we\u2019re back to that again. Knowing where your weak\/strong spots are means that, as time passes and the world changes, you know where your business could use growth and will need support. At all costs, stay the flexible, creative, generative person I know<\/em> you are if you\u2019re reading this. With the stable support of data behind you, you can focus your brain on that critical thinking and spend less time wondering when you accumulated 1000 extra copies of an underseller\u2026
    Pile these three together and they lead to the hopefully inevitable outcome that you can:<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. Feel like you’ve got the control to do what you WANT.<\/strong> One of my friends referenced disaster preparedness including a \u201cgo-bag\u201d and knowledge of evacuation routes. I\u2019m from the south, baby! We don\u2019t have evacuation routes, we hunker down and keep our \u201cbunkers\u201d above ground-level. But you do you. You know your apocalypse best; preparedness is not a one-size-fits-all process. In the publishing world\u2026 I\u2019m sure you can see where I\u2019m going with this. If you\u2019ve followed steps 1-3 above, you know your context, your catalog, your pals, and your requirements to move forward. You can pivot depending on each year\u2019s needs. In Microcosm\u2019s case, this means owning the software to track sales proactively, thereby weathering recessions with relative ease and sticking around for decades to sell more great books.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  5. Lift up yourself and your community.<\/strong> In the Gulf Coast case: make sure you know the person on your block with a boat (it might be you).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n
    \n
    \"\"\/<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

    As a book industry worker outside<\/em> the coastal hubs, I spend a lot of time, mostly digitally, with fellow book people talking about our geographic challenges. There\u2019s something incredibly loving and thoughtful about what I have seen: a growing group of book people who can share their gripes about working in South Carolina, Idaho, Tennessee, Texas, New Mexico, Missouri, etc., but also share support systems and brainstorm solutions together. Non-New York presses were some of the first to pivot when Covid started in 2020, and I think it\u2019s because we\u2019re so used to existing outside the spotlight, and (already limited) funding, of the literary world. Decentralization is not a gimmick, it\u2019s vital that we retain independence and also support our fellow indies. Rising tide and all that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    May we all survive and live to tweet (or whatever the next inevitable post-apocalyptic social media is, as the samsara of app churn continues) another day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Sara Balabanlilar has spent almost ten years working in the book world, including bookselling, event organizing, design, marketing, sales, and indie publishing. She is currently the Marketing Manager at WorkingLit<\/a> and a Senior Sales Specialist at Microcosm Publishing.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    This post is part of a series by the team at WorkingLit. WorkingLit is cloud-based software developed by Microcosm Publishing that gives independent publishers tools to thrive and grow at their own pace. Our industry is run by billionaires and conglomerates, and we want to give our fellow publishers the freedom to market and sell… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[12,248,315,301,60],"class_list":["post-6389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogifesto","tag-business-of-publishing","tag-excerpt","tag-workinglit","tag-year-of-zines","tag-zines"],"my_excerpt":"\n

    This post is part of a series by the team at WorkingLit. WorkingLit<\/strong> is cloud-based software developed by Microcosm Publishing that gives independent publishers tools to thrive and grow at their own pace. Our industry is run by billionaires and conglomerates, and we want to give our fellow publishers the freedom to market and sell your books, understand your business, and painlessly pay royalties. Learn more at WorkingLit.com<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    <\/div>\n\n\n\n
    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
    <\/div>\n\n\n\n

    Excerpted from Microcosm zine <\/em>Books and Math: A Manifesto On Publishing Tools<\/a> by Elly Blue, Joe Biel, and Sara Balabanlilar. Take a look at the whole zine and purchase a copy on our website<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    For the unprepared, every small shift in the publishing industry can feel like a disaster on the horizon. But it doesn\u2019t have to be this way if you have your tools at the ready. Even before the current unprecedented times (\u2122), there was an influx of seasonal disaster fearmongering from all areas: the whole west coast looks forward to The Big One and wildfires that grow year after year; the northern Midwest has to batten down the hatches for yearly snowstorms that shut down business for days. I grew up on the Gulf Coast, where weather predictions regularly forecast a potential Cat 5 hurricane that might decimate coastal cities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I\u2019m deeply uninterested in fearmongering, and if I were, I wouldn\u2019t be on the administrative side of the independent book world ;). The thing is, the disaster is already here, I\u2019ve seen it (many of us have), and getting anxious about a future era of climate dystopia is kinda useless. Y\u2019all saw, or lived, last year\u2019s horrific hurricane that swept away entire areas of southern Appalachia and the East Coast, or the terrible fires that reached Los Angeles and burned down entire neighborhoods. The Gulf lives in the shadow of Katrina and a number<\/em> of other hurricanes that did irreparable damage to the landscape and population. Heck, my home city has fatal flash-floods multiple times a year that come and go without much comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Something I\u2019ve learned (and this is where the prepper stuff comes in) is: the time to prepare is now. Don\u2019t get scared, get ready! That might sound a little desperate or fatalist but I don\u2019t necessarily mean it like that. Yes, I have met the rural Texans with a large store of firearms, but there are also my beloved queer anarchist friends who preserve food every winter, raise their own animals in the middle of their southern cities, know how to fix their own houses when high winds blow the roof off, and build decentralized, anti-surveillance communication networks. What I mean is, think about what you would potentially lose in the face of a crisis and figure out a sustainable practice to keep what you need. Learn to grow, find, and can your food. As these pals have shown me, teach yourself survival skills outside of the system and see if, instead of feeling paranoid, you just feel like your life has become less fretful and more expansive.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Anyway. Now transmute that ethos into other realms. How do you build a life practice that supports you no matter the eventuality? After all, I\u2019m trying to get at a holistic view of existing in the world that invests in climate safety practices alongside all other kinds of safety and nourishment. So of course, coming as I am from a WorkingLit point of view, I\u2019m starting with books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    First, let\u2019s agree that there\u2019s no one impending disaster in the book\/publishing industry. Disaster, industry-shifting changes, and outside forces have come and gone in multiple forms, each shift shaping the industry and unfortunately ridding the world of some amazing publishers as it goes. Whether industry-specific, like the rise of eBooks and Print on Demand (see the prescient and thoughtful A People\u2019s Guide to Publishing podcast episode) or U.S. economy-specific, like tariffs (see\u2026another prescient and thoughtful A People\u2019s Guide to Publishing podcast episode, lol) and Amazon\u2019s relentless pursuit of money at the expense of publishers and bookstores, shifts are wide-ranging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The same outlets that forecast the disappearance of New Orleans due to rising waters are also persistently forecasting the disappearance of print books, or bookstores. But come on, y\u2019all, the binary deserves to be complicated, there\u2019s no Black and White, we already know this. There is no \u201cexistence\u201d vs. \u201ccomplete disappearance.\u201d We can forecast that, reasonably, such shifts will continue to occur, just as I can unfortunately assume that another hurricane is going to hit my home city and, in advance, make sure my family has flood insurance, a stock of potable water, and a generator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I guess from what I can see, preparing for disaster breaks down to a few major things:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \n
    1. Know what you've got on hand.<\/strong> Keep track of your stock. Life is a mystery, your assets don\u2019t have to be. Publishers: Make your systems as infallible as possible. If you\u2019re hand-counting stock in a garage to keep track of your catalog, please please stop. If you\u2019ve not taken inventory in a while, please build it into your schedule at least twice a year. Track your product movement so you\u2019re not scrambling to reprint or find space for bestsellers.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    2. Recognize your network.<\/strong> If you\u2019re just<\/em> the \u201cfirearms\u201d type of prepper, this is your nuclear family, I guess; if you\u2019re the \u201cqueer anarchist\u201d type of prepper, this is your family too, but maybe not so much in the bound-by-blood type of way. And if you\u2019re a publisher, this is not just your audience of readers but your community of peers. You need them and they need you! Keep track of the actual stats year over year, don\u2019t just make assumptions based on your loudest customers. You\u2019ll find out a lot more about your highest-selling accounts, the wild online-only stores that try to return 60% of their orders from you, and the small but determined gift accounts that love what you do.
      If you\u2019re sure of what you have, you\u2019re sure of where it\u2019s going, and you\u2019re sure of who\u2019s doing it with you, then you can\u2026<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    3. Prepare for the future and any eventuality.<\/strong> Remember when I said \u201cgetting anxious is kinda useless\u201d? Ok, we\u2019re back to that again. Knowing where your weak\/strong spots are means that, as time passes and the world changes, you know where your business could use growth and will need support. At all costs, stay the flexible, creative, generative person I know<\/em> you are if you\u2019re reading this. With the stable support of data behind you, you can focus your brain on that critical thinking and spend less time wondering when you accumulated 1000 extra copies of an underseller\u2026
      Pile these three together and they lead to the hopefully inevitable outcome that you can:<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    4. Feel like you've got the control to do what you WANT.<\/strong> One of my friends referenced disaster preparedness including a \u201cgo-bag\u201d and knowledge of evacuation routes. I\u2019m from the south, baby! We don\u2019t have evacuation routes, we hunker down and keep our \u201cbunkers\u201d above ground-level. But you do you. You know your apocalypse best; preparedness is not a one-size-fits-all process. In the publishing world\u2026 I\u2019m sure you can see where I\u2019m going with this. If you\u2019ve followed steps 1-3 above, you know your context, your catalog, your pals, and your requirements to move forward. You can pivot depending on each year\u2019s needs. In Microcosm\u2019s case, this means owning the software to track sales proactively, thereby weathering recessions with relative ease and sticking around for decades to sell more great books.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    5. Lift up yourself and your community.<\/strong> In the Gulf Coast case: make sure you know the person on your block with a boat (it might be you).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n
      \"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

      As a book industry worker outside<\/em> the coastal hubs, I spend a lot of time, mostly digitally, with fellow book people talking about our geographic challenges. There\u2019s something incredibly loving and thoughtful about what I have seen: a growing group of book people who can share their gripes about working in South Carolina, Idaho, Tennessee, Texas, New Mexico, Missouri, etc., but also share support systems and brainstorm solutions together. Non-New York presses were some of the first to pivot when Covid started in 2020, and I think it\u2019s because we\u2019re so used to existing outside the spotlight, and (already limited) funding, of the literary world. Decentralization is not a gimmick, it\u2019s vital that we retain independence and also support our fellow indies. Rising tide and all that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      May we all survive and live to tweet (or whatever the next inevitable post-apocalyptic social media is, as the samsara of app churn continues) another day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Sara Balabanlilar has spent almost ten years working in the book world, including bookselling, event organizing, design, marketing, sales, and indie publishing. She is currently the Marketing Manager at WorkingLit<\/a> and a Senior Sales Specialist at Microcosm Publishing.<\/em><\/p>\n","my_excerpt_rendered":"\n

      This post is part of a series by the team at WorkingLit. WorkingLit<\/strong> is cloud-based software developed by Microcosm Publishing that gives independent publishers tools to thrive and grow at their own pace. Our industry is run by billionaires and conglomerates, and we want to give our fellow publishers the freedom to market and sell your books, understand your business, and painlessly pay royalties. Learn more at WorkingLit.com<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      <\/div>\n\n\n
      \n
      \"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n
      <\/div>\n\n\n\n

      Excerpted from Microcosm zine <\/em>Books and Math: A Manifesto On Publishing Tools<\/a> by Elly Blue, Joe Biel, and Sara Balabanlilar. Take a look at the whole zine and purchase a copy on our website<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

      For the unprepared, every small shift in the publishing industry can feel like a disaster on the horizon. But it doesn\u2019t have to be this way if you have your tools at the ready. Even before the current unprecedented times (\u2122), there was an influx of seasonal disaster fearmongering from all areas: the whole west coast looks forward to The Big One and wildfires that grow year after year; the northern Midwest has to batten down the hatches for yearly snowstorms that shut down business for days. I grew up on the Gulf Coast, where weather predictions regularly forecast a potential Cat 5 hurricane that might decimate coastal cities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      I\u2019m deeply uninterested in fearmongering, and if I were, I wouldn\u2019t be on the administrative side of the independent book world ;). The thing is, the disaster is already here, I\u2019ve seen it (many of us have), and getting anxious about a future era of climate dystopia is kinda useless. Y\u2019all saw, or lived, last year\u2019s horrific hurricane that swept away entire areas of southern Appalachia and the East Coast, or the terrible fires that reached Los Angeles and burned down entire neighborhoods. The Gulf lives in the shadow of Katrina and a number<\/em> of other hurricanes that did irreparable damage to the landscape and population. Heck, my home city has fatal flash-floods multiple times a year that come and go without much comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Something I\u2019ve learned (and this is where the prepper stuff comes in) is: the time to prepare is now. Don\u2019t get scared, get ready! That might sound a little desperate or fatalist but I don\u2019t necessarily mean it like that. Yes, I have met the rural Texans with a large store of firearms, but there are also my beloved queer anarchist friends who preserve food every winter, raise their own animals in the middle of their southern cities, know how to fix their own houses when high winds blow the roof off, and build decentralized, anti-surveillance communication networks. What I mean is, think about what you would potentially lose in the face of a crisis and figure out a sustainable practice to keep what you need. Learn to grow, find, and can your food. As these pals have shown me, teach yourself survival skills outside of the system and see if, instead of feeling paranoid, you just feel like your life has become less fretful and more expansive.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Anyway. Now transmute that ethos into other realms. How do you build a life practice that supports you no matter the eventuality? After all, I\u2019m trying to get at a holistic view of existing in the world that invests in climate safety practices alongside all other kinds of safety and nourishment. So of course, coming as I am from a WorkingLit point of view, I\u2019m starting with books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      First, let\u2019s agree that there\u2019s no one impending disaster in the book\/publishing industry. Disaster, industry-shifting changes, and outside forces have come and gone in multiple forms, each shift shaping the industry and unfortunately ridding the world of some amazing publishers as it goes. Whether industry-specific, like the rise of eBooks and Print on Demand (see the prescient and thoughtful A People\u2019s Guide to Publishing podcast episode) or U.S. economy-specific, like tariffs (see\u2026another prescient and thoughtful A People\u2019s Guide to Publishing podcast episode, lol) and Amazon\u2019s relentless pursuit of money at the expense of publishers and bookstores, shifts are wide-ranging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      The same outlets that forecast the disappearance of New Orleans due to rising waters are also persistently forecasting the disappearance of print books, or bookstores. But come on, y\u2019all, the binary deserves to be complicated, there\u2019s no Black and White, we already know this. There is no \u201cexistence\u201d vs. \u201ccomplete disappearance.\u201d We can forecast that, reasonably, such shifts will continue to occur, just as I can unfortunately assume that another hurricane is going to hit my home city and, in advance, make sure my family has flood insurance, a stock of potable water, and a generator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      I guess from what I can see, preparing for disaster breaks down to a few major things:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        \n
      1. Know what you’ve got on hand.<\/strong> Keep track of your stock. Life is a mystery, your assets don\u2019t have to be. Publishers: Make your systems as infallible as possible. If you\u2019re hand-counting stock in a garage to keep track of your catalog, please please stop. If you\u2019ve not taken inventory in a while, please build it into your schedule at least twice a year. Track your product movement so you\u2019re not scrambling to reprint or find space for bestsellers.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      2. Recognize your network.<\/strong> If you\u2019re just<\/em> the \u201cfirearms\u201d type of prepper, this is your nuclear family, I guess; if you\u2019re the \u201cqueer anarchist\u201d type of prepper, this is your family too, but maybe not so much in the bound-by-blood type of way. And if you\u2019re a publisher, this is not just your audience of readers but your community of peers. You need them and they need you! Keep track of the actual stats year over year, don\u2019t just make assumptions based on your loudest customers. You\u2019ll find out a lot more about your highest-selling accounts, the wild online-only stores that try to return 60% of their orders from you, and the small but determined gift accounts that love what you do.
        If you\u2019re sure of what you have, you\u2019re sure of where it\u2019s going, and you\u2019re sure of who\u2019s doing it with you, then you can\u2026<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      3. Prepare for the future and any eventuality.<\/strong> Remember when I said \u201cgetting anxious is kinda useless\u201d? Ok, we\u2019re back to that again. Knowing where your weak\/strong spots are means that, as time passes and the world changes, you know where your business could use growth and will need support. At all costs, stay the flexible, creative, generative person I know<\/em> you are if you\u2019re reading this. With the stable support of data behind you, you can focus your brain on that critical thinking and spend less time wondering when you accumulated 1000 extra copies of an underseller\u2026
        Pile these three together and they lead to the hopefully inevitable outcome that you can:<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      4. Feel like you’ve got the control to do what you WANT.<\/strong> One of my friends referenced disaster preparedness including a \u201cgo-bag\u201d and knowledge of evacuation routes. I\u2019m from the south, baby! We don\u2019t have evacuation routes, we hunker down and keep our \u201cbunkers\u201d above ground-level. But you do you. You know your apocalypse best; preparedness is not a one-size-fits-all process. In the publishing world\u2026 I\u2019m sure you can see where I\u2019m going with this. If you\u2019ve followed steps 1-3 above, you know your context, your catalog, your pals, and your requirements to move forward. You can pivot depending on each year\u2019s needs. In Microcosm\u2019s case, this means owning the software to track sales proactively, thereby weathering recessions with relative ease and sticking around for decades to sell more great books.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      5. Lift up yourself and your community.<\/strong> In the Gulf Coast case: make sure you know the person on your block with a boat (it might be you).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n
        \n
        \"\"\/<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

        As a book industry worker outside<\/em> the coastal hubs, I spend a lot of time, mostly digitally, with fellow book people talking about our geographic challenges. There\u2019s something incredibly loving and thoughtful about what I have seen: a growing group of book people who can share their gripes about working in South Carolina, Idaho, Tennessee, Texas, New Mexico, Missouri, etc., but also share support systems and brainstorm solutions together. Non-New York presses were some of the first to pivot when Covid started in 2020, and I think it\u2019s because we\u2019re so used to existing outside the spotlight, and (already limited) funding, of the literary world. Decentralization is not a gimmick, it\u2019s vital that we retain independence and also support our fellow indies. Rising tide and all that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        May we all survive and live to tweet (or whatever the next inevitable post-apocalyptic social media is, as the samsara of app churn continues) another day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        Sara Balabanlilar has spent almost ten years working in the book world, including bookselling, event organizing, design, marketing, sales, and indie publishing. She is currently the Marketing Manager at WorkingLit<\/a> and a Senior Sales Specialist at Microcosm Publishing.<\/em><\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microcosmpublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microcosmpublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microcosmpublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microcosmpublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microcosmpublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6389"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/microcosmpublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6389\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6401,"href":"https:\/\/microcosmpublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6389\/revisions\/6401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microcosmpublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microcosmpublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microcosmpublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}