Microcosm Publishing

Indigenous Punk: A Definitive Guide to the Native, Aboriginal, and Pacific Islander Metal and Rock 'n' Roll Musicians Who Changed Music

Native artists have always been central to hard, heavy music: surf rock, hard rock, heavy funk, straight edge, thrash, rap metal, grunge, grind core, and especially black metal. Natives have made their own uniquely Indigenous hard music forms, prehispanic metal in Latin America, Navajo rez metal, and experimental ambient metal in the far north.

Beginning with Link Wray's trailblazing guitar sound that gave birth to punk and metal as we know them today and culminating in contemporary acts like the all-female, Māori doom metal and punk band Death and Hatred to Mankind, this eye-opening, encyclopedic history of Native bands and musicians spans the last 60 years. Historian and professor Al Carroll teaches us to listen critically to spot imposters and bigotry, while celebrating the explosion of Indigenous bands during the rise of thrash and later nu-metal, how Native artists in the so-called U.S. gained popularity and radio play overseas while their releases were censored in the States, and the "harder than you" grit of bands originating on Pacific islands. 

There's something in this book for every hard music fan. Pick it up if you're looking for a new way to see the music and culture around you or inspiration to create something of meaning to your own community and roots. Get ready to learn about your new favorite band, deepen your understanding of the music you love, and think critically about the dominant culture.

$6 Deal of the Week- How to Read Tea Leaves: A Card Deck and Guidebook for Divination

This week's deal is the "How to Read Tea Leaves!"

The tea-making pros at Harney & Sons have pulled together a 66-card deck and guide to help you learn how to divine your future through reading tea leaves.

Usually $30, this week only, snag this deck and guidebook for just $6!

Want to know what the Deals are all about? Check out our FAQ, and then sign up to be notified when new deals go live each day! zine "History of May Day."

Women Reading with Cats Coloring & Activity Book: A Pawsitively Purr-fect Pastime for Feline Cozy

The purrfect excuse to stay home with your fluffy friend

Snuggle up with this cute and comfy coloring book all about the special bond between a woman, her book, and her fuzziest bestie.

This relaxing coloring book includes more than thirty hand-drawn illustrations depicting comforting, cozy scenes of women chilling out with their cats and a good read, along with activity pages and funny quotes celebrating the pleasures of ignoring the rest of the world. Whimsical activities help you match literary cats to their original texts and provide a low-stakes mental break from the challenges of the day. The perfect gift for a cat-loving friend who's going through a rough patch, or for yourself. 

Your Dick Made Me Believe in Magic: Hot T4T Stories Wherein Gay Trans Witches Destroy Transphobia (Queering Consent)

Drink deeply from this steamy cauldron of spellbinding t4t scenes featuring transmasculine hotties practicing erotic witchcraft. 

Sigils in an eco-friendly nightclub lead to unexpected encounters; a horned god delivers more than just spiritual blessings to his devotees of self-made men; a video-game playing demon and his roommate coax a ghost through his unfinished business; a budding practitioner's querent pulls oracle cards for "erotic bliss" and "uninhibited release"; and a green witch's attempt to identify an unusual psychotropic plant takes a tendril-filled turn.

Each story is linked to a cast of bewitching boys with different body types, boundaries, and backgrounds, all engaging each other in consensual and super sexy rendezvous—each one magically hotter than the next. Ground yourself for some wild magic! 

The Perimenopause Journey: Finding Our True Selves Amidst Hormonal Chaos, Depression, and Rage

Rediscover the person you were supposed to be.

Perimenopause is a time when our souls long for change.

The mood swings and physical discomfort as our reproductive system winds down can make it feel like our bodies and brains are betraying and victimizing us. Our Sacred Cycle author Mary McDonald, a therapist who works with people with PMS, PMDD, trauma, and other reproductive health issues, reframes that betrayal as an intervention and opportunity. With inclusive language and compassionate, practical understanding, she brings affirmation, insight, and science to help us navigate our out-of-control emotions, let go of what no longer serves us, and step fully into our power and wisdom.

McDonald invites us to examine what the huge moods of midlife are really telling us. She offers an explanation of what is actually going on with our hormones, offering the facts behind our feelings from the internalized patriarchal messages that lead us to mistrust and mistreat our bodies and minds. The map she draws for our journey is one of shadow work and soul retrieval, a hero's journey in which we stop trying to "fix" ourselves and rediscover the person we were supposed to be. The greatest prize is to finally get to meet the wise, experienced, and unapologetically authentic soul we were always meant to become.

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

So, you want to publish books. 

Drawing on 30 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 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.

How to Defend Books and Why: Book Bans and How We Fight Them

You're invited to the book revolution!

Fight back against censorship and empower your community with this close look at the book banning movement. 

In a moving, compulsively readable call to arms for readers everywhere, Danny Caine, bestselling author of How to Resist Amazon and Why and How to Protect Bookstores and Why, offers an expertly-crafted confrontation of far-right, Christian nationalist attempts to reshape American culture through ban campaigns targeting schools, libraries, bookstores, and prisons, with the aim to silence marginalized identities in life and in literature. 

From the first-ever banned books display at San Francisco's City Lights in the 1950s to the rapid rise of so-called Moms For Liberty during the COVID-19 pandemic to attempts to silence Palestinian authors, Caine charts the course of repressive censorship campaigns, along with the creative and sometimes unlikely activists who've stood up against them. Each chapter is based on a particular book banning episode, bolstered by research and legal precedent, and concludes with helpful takeaways for further reading or resistance. Throughout, Caine approaches these heated issues with gentle openness harkening back to his work as a public school teacher and a bookseller. He emphasizes our collective responsibility towards art, free speech, and each other. 

The Air Self-Care Handbook: Breathe Easier and Protect Yourself from Pollution

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.

Rad Bugs: Brain Worms, Ticks that Cure Cancer, and Other Tiny Marvels

Fun bug information to delight and inspire 

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.

Unfuck Your Nonprofit: Change the World Without Losing Your Mind or Values

Idealists, gather round! How do you pursue your passionate cause to the fullest while still meeting your own needs? How do you solve the world's problems without perpetuating problematic dynamics in your organization? How do you put your energy into fighting for liberation instead of fighting with your board? Therapist Dr. Faith G. Harper and business leader Joe Biel, co-authors of Unfuck Your Business, bring their decades of experience in nonprofits to lend perspective and practical approaches to your thorniest issues with serving the public good. In these pages, you'll learn to work more effectively with your team, resolve interpersonal conflicts, deal with severe dysfunction, and unpack your own baggage. If you're struggling as a volunteer, worker, or board member, or starting a new not-for-profit or charity and want to create an organization that's aligned with your values, there's key wisdom here for you.

Sober Travel Handbook: Navigating the World Alcohol-Free

See the world through the clear eyes of sobriety with the support of this handy guide to alcohol-free globetrotting. From bachelorette parties to funerals to professional networking events, you’ll be equipped with strategies to gracefully navigate boozy scenarios in your travels, allowing you to soak up all the adventures you desire with none of the substances you don’t.

Drawing on extensive personal experience, as well as interviews with a variety of nondrinking travelers and addiction experts, travel writer Teresa Bergen shares helpful insights and social tools for staying sober anywhere the road takes you. With the help of her alter ego, Sober Cat, who tells the story in pictures, Bergen guides you through prepping for your trip, dodging drinks, and getting the most out of your travel experience—no matter your reason for abstaining.

Order for your store!

Got a store, distro, subscription box, or table at the zine fest and want to sell our wares? Find out all about wholesale ordering from us, or order via Faire and take advantage of special offers.

Microcosm's AI Policy (tl;dr: "No, thank you")

We were recently asked by a sales rep to make a stronger statement about AI. People don't usually have to ask us to be bolder, and we were very happy to comply.

Below is where we find ourselves as of April, 2026. Going forward, we'll be keeping our policy document up to date in a more boring format.

Why Do Creatives Use AI?

When we asked if there is a correlation between AI use and addiction, Dr. Faith Harper pointed out something that we hadn’t considered about why people use AI: 

“The discomfort of an imperfect process is what people are trying to avoid. But the discomfort is the most important part of our growth as creatives. We’re not only not thinking, we’re not maturing as people.” 

She pointed us to an interview with David Bowie, where he explains:

“Always remember that the reason you started working was that there was something inside of yourself that you felt that if you could manifest it in some way, you would understand more about yourself and how you coexist with the rest of society... If you feel safe in the area that you are working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you are capable of being in . . . when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.”

We think this gets to the heart of why society has been so quick to believe in AI’s promises. New tech is often transformative, but not always in a positive way, and there are many unexplored questions in this particular technology. 

We saw these same human behaviors for decades before AI. Our advice to all creative folks: Lean into the discomfort of imperfection. If there’s something about your work that you think is too rough or isn’t coming out the way you hoped, make a note of it to bring up with your editor. Discomfort is a sign that there’s probably gold to be found there, but AI will just bury it further instead of bringing it to the front. 

Why We Don’t Publish Work that Uses AI

Because of our values and humanity, we do our best not to publish any content produced or edited using generative AI. This includes our published works, marketing materials, company documents, social media posts, emails… everything we produce and communicate.

The reason is multifold:

1. Our mission and reputation depend on publishing work that speaks compellingly to readers and provides practical, life-saving tools. Generative AI has a distinct voice that is, frankly, insufferable. AI is very bad at producing the kind of text that AI says is credible. AI looks for sources that are specific, contextual, clear, consistent, and well-cited from experts and reputable sources. Yet AI writes in generalities, platitudes, and misinformation. AI focuses on probabilisitic plausibility over veracity. It’s as confident as it is incorrect. If you wrote that way yourself, we would need the same significant edits to make it publishable.
2. Copyright. The ownership of AI-generated or even AI-assisted work is a deep legal grey area. 
3. Efficiency. When you use AI, it may seem like a great time-saver, but it creates more work downstream, according to this Harvard study and makes you worse at critical thinking, according to this MIT study. Our team is downstream on this—AI may feel more efficient for an author, but untangling its results is a massive time suck for us.
4. Environment. It’s hard to both know the devastating environmental impact of this tech and still want to use it. Due to increasing costs for local communities, 26 data center projects have been defeated by local activists to date. 
5. Future planning. Economists are estimating that AI companies will need to grow by 1000% per year in order to sustain costs of production. This means they will need to dramatically increase their costs and reduce the quality of service. Even if we could make this technology work for us, it doesn’t seem like a safe bet to rely on it in the future.

Our policies and thinking are evolving along with our understanding of AI as well as available technology, common usages, emerging news, and issues. We’re all learning together here.

Marketing

We don’t use AI-generated anything in any of our marketing. Authors and publishers can talk more compellingly about their books than robots, so we let the humans shine. 

What’s more, there is no productivity or efficiency benefit to using AI. AI companies want to create the illusion that everyone is using AI for everything, and also want to create the illusion that it actually works. Neither is true. We aren’t using it, and in its current state it doesn’t make sense to do so!

Our marketing team works alongside our sales and editorial departments to develop all of Microcosm’s titles as individual projects, as products within a particular season, and as components of our larger list and mission. Our marketing initiatives are informed by our experience both inside and outside the book industry, as well as our highly detailed data from the proprietary software that links every part of Microcosm’s organization. A bot created in Silicon Valley by people whose focus is getting rich simply does not have the expertise and nuance that our human workers do.

You may have picked up on this from our site or other communications with us, but here’s the thing: Microcosm is a unique publisher because we specialize in timely, niche, weird, and otherwise hard-to-find, passion-driven materials. Because we’re creating tools to save lives and change worlds, we are the anti-vanity press. We select the things we want to publish because there’s nothing else like them. That means that technology built on what’s already out there cannot adequately support the work we publish. Likewise, we’ve built our organization to be flexible so we can make choices according to what we see in our data, what we learn from our customers, and what people really need in this crazy, ever-changing world we’re living through together. That means that technology offering you solutions for publishing in general is not designed to support publishing with Microcosm.

Can I use AI to fill out my author intake form?

Your author intake form is very important for our marketing people—please do not use AI to fill it out. It works best when your totally unique perspective, background, inspirations, goals, and taste inform your answers. This document helps us with every step of the publication process after you turn it in! That includes your jacket copy, book title, cover design, marketing plan, publicity outreach, and beyond. We want this process to be a special potion that can only be made by you and us combining our particular skills and perspectives. We can’t do that if this essential ingredient is artificial! If you have questions or if you get stuck, please ask us instead, and we can sort it out together.

Editorial FAQ

How does Microcosm vet manuscripts for AI?

We vet all text and art submitted using at least one AI-detection app. Our best practice screening tools are currently Pangram for text and SightEngine for art. Our editors are trained on recognizing common signs of AI (and boring manuscripts) and scrutinize every work for these regardless of app results.

We cannot publish any work that can be determined by our editors, a casual reader, and/or a software screening program to contain AI-generated text. 

We ask our authors to disclose any AI use that could impact their work. This includes the use of generative LLMs such as Chat GPT, Claude, Gemini, and others at any part of the process, as well as use of tools such as Grammarly, Perplexity, Google’s suggested text features, or other products that make use of AI in order to alter human-generated text.

In the event that a manuscript fails repeated AI checks, we maintain the publishing rights but do not publish the book because the “author” didn’t write it.

What AI uses are ok and not ok? 

This is an area where we are still learning. We have some very clear ideas about what is and isn’t acceptable in work we publish.

Not acceptable:

• It is not ok to enter prompts into an AI app and ask it to generate text. It is still not ok if you trained your AI agent on your own writing. And it is still not ok even if you edited the results significantly after the AI generated it.
• It is not ok to put text you originally wrote through an AI app and ask it to make edits. Not even spelling and grammar edits. Not reading level. Not continuity, and not fact checking. Not adding citations. These apps will do far more than you ask them to. 
• It is not ok to consult AI for advice on the phrasing, style, structure, or tone of your piece—anything that might influence your voice and creative choices. 
• It is not ok to use AI for anything involving images.

Possibly acceptable but we still need to know:

• It might be ok to use AI for formatting tables, citations, or other messy, non-prose data. We honestly don’t know how many liberties your app of choice will take; we strongly encourage you not to use AI, but if you do use it, save a pre-AI version, carefully check the results, and tell us what you did so we can compare. Then we’ll update this policy based on what we find!
• It might be ok to use AI to convert handwriting or PDFs (for instance, hundreds of pages of your old cut-and-paste zines with a ton of different fonts and angles) to text. Again, check the results with great care and please disclose to us that you did this and give us both versions to compare.
• It might be ok to ask an AI agent to look at your work and give you a checklist of issues to work through yourself. For instance, an author might ask an AI agent to produce a list of problems with continuity of character nicknames or to flag overused words or phrases. But if the AI agent has specific advice about wording or structure, we recommend against taking it, as its voice can influence yours without you realizing it. Again, if you use AI for this, please disclose it and submit both drafts.

I only used AI to clean up / smooth things over / catch typos. Why is that a problem?

1. AI takes liberties. You might have only asked it to do a quick proofread, but it often goes beyond what you asked it to do and will change words, phrasing, or in some cases add entire sections of text or even new chapters.
2. Editing is your editor’s job. We are good at it. Let us do it. Before AI, people sometimes would get caught up in perfectionism and hire an outside editor to polish their rough draft before submitting it; now people use AI sometimes for a similar reason. It also just takes longer for us to edit text that’s overly polished because our brains tell us that it’s “done”—but it’s not interesting to read. 
3. Copy editing too soon in the editorial process is pointless, since our developmental editors will be asking for substantial revisions. 
4. Readers are concerned about AI, and any remaining imperfections in the final text help assure them that they are reading the work of a human.

I have a disability that requires me to use AI

Please speak with your editor about how we can support your needs while also producing work that we are able to publish.

You found AI in my work but I disagree

Sometimes when we notice signs of AI’s voice in an author’s work, when we let them know they say they have not used it. Some common responses:

Your app sucks / It must be a false positive

We use Pangram to check text - it’s currently the best in class software for this purpose. False positives in Pangram are extremely low - less than one half of 1% for the type of work we publish. You can read their evaluation of false positives and negatives here. 

That said, we never simply take Pangram’s word for it. We are mostly focused on voice and quality. We use Pangram as an initial screening tool and then put our human brains to the task of trying to determine what’s actually going on. If something appears to be entirely generated from prompts, we’ll send you back to the drawing board; otherwise we’ll give you specific editorial feedback about what we are looking for. 

If we can’t figure out why Pangram is flagging something, we trust our editors’ human brains beyond the app. After all, the goal isn’t to eradicate all robots, it’s to publish amazing work that meets our style guides and will help readers.

I didn’t use an LLM, but I think another app I used may have sneakily incorporated AI into my work

Yes, this absolutely happens and this absolutely sucks. Almost all enterprise apps, including MS Word, Google suite, and Grammarly, among many others that you might regularly use for writing and communication, are starting to incorporate features that prompt you to replace your work with their AI-suggested work. This may be unintentional on your part, but it is still resulting in output that is not your own. 

Our best advice is to go into the settings of any app you regularly use and turn off any AI features; if that’s not possible, it may be time to find a new app.

I didn’t use an LLM, the problem is that my work was used to train LLMs so they are writing in my voice.

If you have books in print or have writing on the internet, your work probably was stolen to train LLMs. But then the LLMs are post-trained to have a very narrow range of specific voices of their own, and those specific robot voices are the ones we are not interested in publishing—and that detection apps are designed to look for.

It’s just because I use em-dashes / I use specific words that AI also likes to use

Send us a version of your manuscript without these elements and we can take another look.

That is my unique voice

Friend, we know you can do better. 

For perspective: Only a very small percentage of the creative work that comes across our desks tests positive for AI, though the workload that has resulted for us from it has been massive. We've been on a journey this year, spending many more hours than we want to learning about AI, how people use it, and how people think and talk about it. We like to learn, but good grief, y'all. There are some giant companies pouring HUGE amounts of money into trying to convince us that AI is the new normal. It's not and we don't believe it will be. We appreciate you reading something that empowers you to think critically against that narrative.

Announcing: The Microcosm Deal of the Day!

We know these things to be true:

• Reading is good
• Everything costs a million dollars these days
• There are so many books
• We all want to spend less time online

And hi, we have a solution!: Microcosm’s brand-new, unbeatable, unstoppable Deal of the Day!  

How it works: 

• Every working day, we will offer a different book, super cheap, until it’s sold out. 
• Most deals will be in the ballpark of either $5 or 75% off the cover price.
• And we’ll keep doing this every working day until we run out of books or you stop wanting them.

Sign up here to get an email every morning that gives you the first shot at the day’s deal. 

Or just go to our Deal of the Day page, which will always be updated with the day’s deal. 

Okay, but what are the books? 

We’ve spent 30 years developing a vast catalog and several warehouses full of books and zines to help you rise to any occasion. Recession? Disaster? Grief? Boredom? Rage? Broke-assedness? Hunger? An inarticulate yearning for profound change? We’ve got something to meet every need. If today’s book isn’t your preferred flavor, wait for tomorrow!

How can we afford to offer these deals?

These books have so many origin stories. Some of them we found a great deal on and overbought during the heady pandemic book boom-times. Others got a little scuffed along their journey. Yet others are cool books we misjudged the interest in. Some of these stores don’t want to touch. Others just slipped through the cracks. Our deal price is pretty close to our cost, so we’re essentially passing these along to a good home with you. 

Can I buy other things along with the deal book?

Absolutely! You can add anything else that’s in stock on our website to your cart along with the deal. May we recommend taking a gander at our newest zines, our stickers, or our last-chance titles with only one copy left?

I went to the deal page and it’s out of stock, what gives?

Sorry, friend, that means we sold out of this one before the day was through. You can search the title in our catalog to see if a full-price (or sometimes lesser-sale-price) copy is available. If you want to be among the first to be notified, sign up for our daily Deal of the Day newsletter.

Can I put a deal in my cart and buy it later? 

Yes, but… if you buy it on a different working day, you won’t get the book you expected, as it will be a different book on that new day, assuming we even still have copies when you check out. 

Can I buy deal of the day books for my store?

You sure can, so long as you add it to your cart on our website and check out same day with a $100 minimum order! There’s no additional discount and please be mindful of condition, but if you think your customers would dig a deal, go ahead and grab a few. 

Wishing you a very analog 2026,

Everyone at Microcosm

Events! Microcosm In Your Town

Want to meet us in person, check out our books, or see an author speak? We've got author events and convention events coming up!

Upcoming Author Events

• Saturday, May 16 | Politics & Prose Connecticut Ave—Washington, D.C. | More info
  J. Hunter Bennett presents MORE PUNK THAN THE PUBLIC LIBRARY with the legendary Kim Coletta.

• Monday, May 18 | Prologue Bookshop—Columbus, OH | More info
  Let the book revolution begin! Danny Caine launches his new book, How to Defend Books and Why, with fellow anti-ban pioneer Ashley Hope Pérez in this reading, conversation, and celebration.

Generous Press's Tati Richardson is taking Struck Speechless on the road! See where you can catch an event for this latest release in her Boss Chicks Village Series:

• Thursday, April 30 | Gwinnett Co Public Library—Snellville, GA | More info
  Book sales provided by Read It Again Bookstore.
  
• Saturday, May 9 | Barnes & Noble Perimeter—Atlanta, GA | More Info
  
• Tuesday, May 12 | Beguiled Books—Seatta, WA | More info
  
• Thursday, May 14 | Grand Gesture Books—Portland, OR | More info
  
• Saturday, May 23 | A Small Place Bookstore—Avondale Estates, GA | More info
  
• Friday, May 29–Sunday, May 31 | Black Romance Book Fest—Atlanta, GA | More info
  Book sales provided by WanderLust Reads.
  
• Friday, June 5 | Kindred Stories—Houston, TX | More info
  
• Saturday, June 13 | Mis Amores Bookshop—Knoxville, TN | More info

...And if you can't catch any of these events in person, signed copies are available for sale from Atlanta's All the Tropes!

Generous Press's Ayla Vejdani has events lined up to celebrate the release of sapphic story collection You x Me! Check out the schedule and see if your town is her next stop:

• Tuesday, May 26 | Signing at L'Euguelionne—Montréal, QC | More info
  
• Saturday, May 30 | Signing at Royal Ginette—Montréal, QC | More info
  
• Tuesday, June 16 | Hopeless Romantic—Toronto, ON | More info
  
• Saturday, June 20 | Evermore Books—Ottawa, ON | More info
  
• Saturday, June 20 | Signing at Perfect Books—Ottawa, ON | More info

...Stay tuned for more events with Another Story and Type Books in June—details to come!

---

Upcoming Tabling Events

None listed. Want us to table at your event? Reach out to daley (at) microcosmpublishing.com!

Upcoming Trade Shows and Industry Events

Usually not open to the public, these industry events are a chance for store buyers to peruse our books, write orders, and chat about terms. We plan to either attend or exhibit at the following events. If you'll be there too, drop us a line—we'd love to meet you.

Interested in having an author at your store or event? Reach out!!

Planning an event and want us to be part of it (speaking, author readings, movie screenings, setting up a book and zine pop-up shop, etc.)? Let us know!!

In the Portland area? We can set up a book fair at your workplace like the ones your school used to have.

---

Microcosm Teams Up with We Are Stronger Than Censorship Campaign

Portland, OR— Microcosm Publishing has entered a worldwide publishing agreement for the We Are Stronger Than Censorship campaign’s merchandise. 

Founded in 2024 by the nonprofit Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) and EveryLibrary Institute, We Are Stronger Than Censorship works to share inclusive books with readers in communities across the U.S., especially those impacted by efforts to restrict titles featuring Black, Queer, and other under-represented characters and themes. Microcosm will serve as distributor for the organization’s new sideline collection of stickers.

“This is a big deal, and one we’re proud to be part of,” says Microcosm founder and CEO, Joe Biel. “We Are Stronger Than Censorship won an award for innovation because they fundraised to put censored books into the hands of readers. They are ablaze with buzz and we expect stores will be excited to get behind their efforts, too.”

With each individual book “challenge”—i.e. with each ban attempt—We Are Stronger Than Censorship buys and donates two books to offset it. The campaign will purchase and donate two books to communities in need for every sixteen stickers sold through Microcosm.

Lee Wind, co-creator of We Are Stronger Than Censorship and Chief Content Officer of IBPA, explains, “The idea is to make the numbers work against the folks who are so eager to limit others’ freedom to read. Some people are challenging over 400 books at a time! If they knew that meant this program would buy and distribute over 800 books, maybe they would slow their roll. For us, this campaign is like pulling an emergency brake on a runaway censorship train.”

Since its founding, We Are Stronger Than Censorship has gained more than 75 institutional partners, including Microcosm, allowing the campaign to purchase and donate 2,800 books to offset 1,400 book challenges.

Microcosm’s sales director, Leslie Davisson, notes “This campaign pairs especially well with our upcoming re-release of Know Your Rights: Protect Yourself and Your Community from Police, ICE, the FBI, and the Justice System. We want to equip our customers and their communities with resources they need to make positive change, big and small.” 

Wind adds, “I'm thrilled about our stickers being available through Microcosm. This is how we're going to scale this thing: selling a lot of stickers, spreading the word, and coming together as a community that believes in the freedom to read.”

We Are Stronger Than Censorship items are now available for retailers and direct customers to order through Microcosm’s site and Edelweiss.

Contact: Daley Farr, [email protected]

Elly was interviewed by The Creative Independent!

Elly had a chance to sit down with one of our friends at Kickstarter, Oriana, and be interviewed for their blog, The Creative Independent.

They talked about Microcosm's background as a publisher, how we got into using Kickstarter, balancing work and life, and more.

Here's an excerpt. You can read the full interview at this link!

Between Microcosm, Working Lit, the podcast, your own writing and editing, and presumably a smidge of life outside of publishing, you do so much. Can we start by talking about how you make time for it all?

A few years ago I went down this rabbit hole of reading interviews with women about how they make time for it all. And all these highly successful women (with the exception of Marie Kondo, who refuses to be rushed)—all of them were just frantic. One of them literally said she would microwave everything for 2 minutes and 22 seconds, or 3 minutes and 33 seconds, so she could save time by not having to press multiple buttons. So anyway, I’ve dedicated myself to never living that way.

My strategy used to be what many busy people do: they just pile on more things until you have no flexibility, so your time winds up managing itself. That was me for a while: I was just saying yes to everything. And I did get a lot done! But then I would just crash and burn. I refuse to live that way any longer. My philosophy now is about focusing on priorities rather than deadlines. If something does have a hard deadline, I will try to make that, but I’m never going to be doing it, I hope, the night before in a panic. There’s no worse feeling to me than that kind of pressure. Instead I’m like, What are the most important things that I need to do? I’m going to do those first, deadlines be darned.

Do you include self-care, or some time for protecting your creative heart in there, or not so much?

I do try to do that. I succeed sometimes. I mean, I do protect my time off work very fiercely. I prioritize that over everything else because I’ve burnt out so many times. But as far as my own creative work, that can very easily fall to the bottom of the pile if I’m not careful.

It seems like everything about your life, your creative practice, and your career have been geared toward leading a nontraditional life. How did you figure out how to create those paths outside of established systems?

I’m not sure that’s something I’ve ever done intentionally. Those established systems just never seemed available to me. I was a weird kid. I dropped out of high school, and I’ve kind of continued to say no thank you to systems that don’t seem like they have a purpose or have my best interests or goals at heart. Me and my partner Joe Biel, who founded Microcosm—we’re both business and life partners—we’re on the same page about this. We look at things that we see most people doing and we’re like, Would that work for us? Sometimes really traditional things do work for us—owning a house seems kind of magical to be able to do. But other things, like getting married or having kids or owning a car… for us, what’s the point? Other people might find great joy in all these things, but we don’t.

Check out the full profile here.
And you can find our current Kickstarter project, The Underground is Bigger than the Mainstream, here!

Our Portland Warehouse is Open by Appointment for In-Person Shopping!

Yep, that's right, if you're in Portland, you can come shop in person at our Portland bookstore (located at our warehouse), by appointment! Our staffed hours are 11am-3pm Mon-Saturday.

Here are the details:

If you're shopping for items for yourself

• To help with juggling our workers' busy schedules, we're asking shoppers to purchase a digital gift card for $50 or more in order to make a shopping appointment. The gift card will be applied to your in-store purchase. Leave an order note that says "I want to make an appointment to browse at the store," when you check out. (If you forget to leave a note after purchase, email [email protected] with your order ID and someone will be in touch!)

If you're shopping for items to resell in your own store

• Email our sales department at [email protected] or call us at 360-291-7226 and we'll figure out a time for you to come by.

Face masks are required for everyone entering our building!

If you have any questions, please email [email protected], and someone from our customer service team will help!

See you soon!
<3 Microcosm

We're in this together.

Hi friends. We’re not big on making statements—we hope our work speaks for us most of the time—but these are extra-troubling times and we were inspired by Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, NC to share what we’re doing to meet this moment.

There’s this idea of “locus of control” that we think about a lot at times like this when the static is overwhelming and it’s easy to feel helpless. It’s a great way of cutting through the overwhelming static so you can focus on what you actually can do. 

Maybe your locus of control is very small and encompasses only the freedom of your thoughts. Maybe you can set priorities for your personal spending or a project you manage, maybe you have an online platform, or maybe you have an artistic outlet or are good at writing letters or making a compelling argument. There are always going to be more things outside your locus, like you can’t control what others think or do (and honestly that’s probably a good thing). But we bet most of you have a lot more influence than you think.  

One of the most important factors that increases the impact of acting from your locus of control is Martin Seligman’s “Learned Optimism,” the idea that you can change your situation through concerted effort, focus, and perspective. You can find this idea in a few of Dr. Faith’s books, and she and Joe wrote about it extensively in How to Be Accountable. 

What's in our locus of control as a company? How do we stay optimistic? That’s a moving target, but here’s what we’ve got so far:

• Sharing our existing resources. In other words: getting you the books you need more than ever. Since the beginning, we’ve created work by and for those of us living closer to the margins than the center. We’re prepared with resources for survival, action, and care in a national crisis because crisis isn’t new to us. 
• Adding new resources. We are actively adding new titles to our catalog that provide support to those most harmed. Books and decks take a couple years or longer but we’ve been putting out a flurry of zines since November and acquiring more all the time. Let us know if you have requests. Or submit your own idea and we’ll see if it’s a fit.
• Shoring up our policies and procedures. We’ve recently improved a bunch of existing policy and procedures around privacy and security, and refreshed our team on it.
  • To protect our team: We already had a policy that was basically “don’t call the cops or let them into the building unless extreme violence is occuring.” We added more specifics about what to do if, say, ICE knocks on the door (don’t let them in or talk to them) and made sure our workers know what to do. 
  • To protect our customers and community: We won’t share your private data with anyone, ever. We’ve added some more layers of security, and we added a bit about online safety to our FAQ in response to reader questions. We are continually improving our data security practices. 

• Offering sliding scale prices on our published books.We’ve done this for a long time and everyone wins—if you can afford less, you can pay less, if you can afford more, you can pay more. 
• Sending books to people in prison. We have a mutual aid program to send books to imprisoned readers whenever they ask, which is nearly every day. The community chips in to help with the cost of the books so the authors can still get royalties. Based on the mail we get, this is changing lives.  
• Donating books to causes we care about. Requests for donated books have skyrocketed this year. Instead of pulping our overstock, we donate as much of it as we can. If your organization can use books as leverage for doing better work, hit us up on our contact page.
• Being in community. It’s sometimes harder to figure out how to do this as a business. We’re not tiny, but we’re not big enough to make a huge splash. We do some “I’m a local business owner and I care about this issue” advocacy stuff, which doesn’t usually feel very impactful. Our Portland office is at a bus stop, and one of our team members has stepped up to pick up trash every day and maintain the trash can there. We host a Futel public phone and just added a free bookshelf.
• Not being butts. We recognize that everyone’s feeling jagged and having a tough time. Us too! This is one of the harder ones, but we are trying extra to be kind and patient even in the most frustrating interactions or when we have to say no to something someone really wants. Is “trying not to ruin anyone’s day” a worthy entry into our locus of control list? We think so. 
• Always getting better at what we do. This is a choice we make every day. Being able to do the things on this list is what gets us up every morning. Publishing and distributing more books and zines that people want, selling more of them, reducing our costs, improving our systems and efficiency, improving morale, increasing our wages… being better at the business part isn’t the goal in itself, but it’s a force multiplier for the good we’re trying to do.  

A lot of the items on this list are things we’ve been doing for years. That’s not a brag: it comes out of necessity. Many of our readers and team members are certainly in more danger than before from recent and upcoming executive actions, but, unfortunately, none of these threats are entirely new.  

As our friends at Chickasaw Press said of our common ground when we started working together, “We are the voices that are being muffled.” But that is also our greatest strength, because when times get tough, we’re prepared. For better or worse, the margins are our comfort zone.

So we’re sorry to say that we’re as ready as we can be. None of us can stop the tide alone, but we can stand together against it.

Want to boost these actions? You probably have a long to-do list of your own, but if you’re struggling to find a path forward, here are a few ways to get started:

• Buy books! Read zines! If you’re getting ones by us, the best ways to support us are to get them either directly from us, from your local independent bookstore, at Bookshop.org, or check them out from the library. 
• Want to help distribute our poster catalogs to your local coffeeshops and other community flyer spots? Drop us a line.
• Send a care package to a friend who’s having a hard time.
• If you know someone who’s really struggling, talk to them about it! Talking about what’s wrong saves lives. Here’s a handy resource shared by our author Sascha Altman DuBrul.
• Pitch in to help send our books to people in prison.
• Make a list of actions in your own locus of control. Feel free to share with us if you’d like, we love to see this stuff!

Thanks for being in this with us. 

Microcosm now on PubStock

Direct ordering for bookstores just got even easier

Hey, this is a fun little piece of news, but it's going to be most useful and interesting to our industry pals and bookselling buddies, so feel free to keep scrolling if that doesn't feel like it applies to you! The good news for everyone, though, is that this should make it even easier to find Microcosm titles on your local bookstore's shelves—and easier to order them if you don't see what you're looking for. Thanks to everyone on both sides of the bookstore counter keeping this radical publisher afloat in wild times!

In our continuing mission to shore up the independent book world ecosystem, Microcosm Publishing's in-house and distributed titles are now available on PubStock! PubStock is a Bookmanager tool that allows U.S. bookstores to get a live look at our available inventory—bookstores that use Bookmanager for their website/inventory/point of sale can now browse and purchase Microcosm titles with even greater ease, without having to look through our site and without running into availability issues. Our stock counts are updated daily, so our indie bookselling friends get a clearer picture than ever of what titles we have available, and how many.

Even better for the folks linked up with Batch, since we're there, too! Ordering, receiving, and record-keeping just got way easier, building Microcosm's inventory into the tools booksellers have at hand.

Love you, indie bookstores. Thanks for keeping it real! And as always, we'd love to hear from you about what we can do better to keep us all working, organizing, and thriving together.

Microcosm Declares 2025 the Year of Zines

The DIY information technology helping us build a better world

In an era of book bans, people are still finding ways to read, write, and share freely. One result we’ve noticed: a groundswell of zines. That’s why we’re calling 2025 the Year of Zines.

What’s a zine? It’s a stapled, photocopied love letter to a passionate interest. People write zines about whatever they need to: to tell their story uncensored, to express themselves fearlessly in words and art, to share knowledge or resources, to celebrate something they care about deeply, to connect directly with readers. Zines can take many forms, from a handwritten manifesto distributed out of a fanny pack to a polished product sold in stores. 

We have published and sold zines since 1996, and we’ve seen many waves of interest come and go. But we haven’t seen anything like the surge of zine sales that began on November 9, 2024. Sure, there was a two-week run on reproductive rights resources, books like How to Get Your Period and zines like Reclaiming Our Ancient Wisdom pushing aside all other holiday bestsellers (even Slingshot Planners!) on their way to the top of the charts. But that urgency quickly died down, revealing an even stickier trend on our orders page—people were, and still are, loading up with assorted, seemingly random zines, on every topic, from every era. Zines about bees, government misdeeds, backyard building projects, mental health, abortion, abortion, abortion. Zines and books about how to make zines.

What’s behind this hunger for zines? To us, it’s not that hard to see. We are all desperate to expand our understanding, to think freely, to feel safe connections with others and with our own thoughts, to learn the skills we need to survive this era. Online media, especially social media, is compromised. Books can be slow to come out, ponderous to read, relentlessly gatekept, banned up the wazoo. Zines are none of these. They’re a fix that satisfies the urgent need for pithy commentary, bigger perspective, getting a look inside someone else’s head without needing to have your own perfectly-formed and fully-informed opinion. They provide a small, safe bubble with no mandate for response. A zine is a safe place to not know, to be wrong, to change your mind, and to entertain other perspectives.

Zines can be banned, but they’re too slippery to be stopped, too slight to be taken seriously, some too underground to even be found. They are decentralized, passed hand-to-hand, and there are no gatekeepers to corrupt or bottlenecks to plug. 

And the best thing about zines is that you can create one! You can publish it yourself, all you need is something to say and access to a printer or copier. You can give copies to your friends, leave them in the public library or at Little Free Libraries, mail them to the creators who made you fall in love with zines in the first place. This is far from the expensive corporate allure of self-publishing a book-shaped object to remain forever hidden in the algorithm. Zines are a form of energy that can’t be contained by anyone, even us, and we wouldn’t want it any other way.

So we’re calling 2025 the Year of Zines, and this is what it means: read zines. Seek them out. We have a ton in our catalog, and we sell them to more and more stores. You can find a plethora of printed zines on Etsy and digital ones on itch.io. More and more cities and towns are hosting their own zine fests. You’ll find them hiding out in craft fair booths, in a bin at the library. Search for zines + your area of passionate interest. Once you start looking, you’ll see them everywhere. (And if you have a store, check out our zine about selling zines!). 

And when you aren’t finding the exact zine you want, well, you know what to do. How do you think we got started making them? 

If you'd like to submit a zine or an idea for one to Microcosm, you can read a little more about our guidelines and process here. Happy creating!

Call for Submissions for Neurodiversity zine series

Farewell to Joyce Brabner: Microcosm remembers a beloved author and mentor

Microcosm Publishing founder Joe Biel recently shared a remembrance of close friend, mentor, respected comic artist and writer, and Cleveland publishing legend Joyce Brabner, who died August 2, 2024 after a long fight with cancer. She was 72 years old. 

Though Brabner is perhaps best known through her marriage to comics pioneer and American Splendor creator Harvey Pekar, she was herself an esteemed artist, activist, and writer, publishing numerous books of her own alongside collaborations with other graphic publishing luminaries such as Alan Moore, Denny O’Neil, and Stephen R. Bissette.

Brabner’s final published book was The Courage Party: Helping Our Resilient Children Understand and Survive Sexual Assault, a project of great importance to her which Microcosm published in 2020 at the very beginning of the COVID crisis. This groundbreaking YA comic book tells the story of a child who fights off a sexual attack (she prefers to be called a “crime fighter” over “survivor”) and the support she receives from her community, including an empowering “courage party” thrown for her by older women with their own stories to share. The book contains thorough and age-appropriate insights on how to navigate interactions with police, the legal system, support groups, and how to deal with teasing and inappropriate behavior from peers; it also offers extensive resources both for children and adults.

Detailed obituaries for Brabner have appeared in Cleveland Scene and Cleveland 13 News. Microcosm mourns the loss of Joyce Brabner as a friend, a Cleveland fixture, a fierce activist, and a publishing visionary.

Microcosm expands Cleveland warehousing operation

Microcosm Publishing has purchased the building adjacent to their Cleveland, OH warehouse, where construction is currently underway to connect the two buildings. This major project will double Microcosm’s warehousing capacity, as well as create an additional sales capacity of $5 million per year to serve the needs of Microcosm’s vertically-integrated publishing and distribution operation, which earned their recognition in 2022, 2023, and 2024 as a Publishers Weekly Fastest Growing Publisher.