People's Guide to Publishing: Building a Successful, Sustainable, Meaningful Book Business From the Ground Up

So, you want to publish books....

Drawing on 24 years of experience operating an independent publishing company, 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 for both 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.

Designed + Produced in Portland, Oregon
* Woman Owned Business

Portland's most colorful, authentic, and empowering publishing house and distributor, Microcosm Publishing equips readers to make positive changes in their lives and in the world around them. Microcosm emphasizes skill-building, showing hidden histories, and fostering creativity through challenging conventional publishing wisdom with books and zines about DIY skills, food, bicycling, gender, self-care, and social justice.Microcosm has lived in milk crates, in closets, in a mud room, in a windowless basement, in a church, and under a desk at a major credit card company. We've brought our brightly colored books to infoshops, zine fests, media summits, bicycle conferences, parks, street corners, house shows, dirty bars, all­night coffeeshops, art museums, and every corner of the mainstream where we can clear away a little space to set up shop. We set out to save ourselves from not caring, but out there in the margins we've found communities worth always doing it better for. Now we have contracts instead of handshakes, a warehouse instead of a fanny pack full of zines. We have a staff, we have relationships in the industry that send our books to places we wouldn't have dreamed we could walk into ourselves. We're not as drunk or dirty as we used to be. But still, at heart, we've got this milk crate strapped to the back of a bike and we're riding wildly across town to hand you the book that might just be the one that saves your life!