Microcosm Publishing

$5 Deal of the Day: BEFRIEND YOUR BRAIN!

It's the Microcosm Deal of the Day! Giant savings on life-changing books!

Today's sale is… Befriend Your Brain!

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.

Bug Life Coloring Book: How Bees, Butterflies, and Other Insects and Bugs Rule the World

Marvel, squirm, color, and learn cool bug facts

Ants on plants, bands of beetles, butterfly transformations... Bugs abound! Wherever you go in the world, you'll find insects and other crawly bugs, and this is a good thing—we couldn't survive without them. As scientifically accurate as they are artistic, these colorable illustrations invite you to commune with nature from a safe distance while learning cool facts about the most populous species on Earth. Biologist and artist Karyn Light Gibson shares her enthusiasm for bugs of all kinds, from scorpions to earthworms. Great for bug-loving adults and kids alike. On single-sided, perforated pages that you can easily color and display.

How to Survive in the Woods: Camping, Fires, Trailing, Tramping, Getting Lost, and Finding Your Way Home

Connect to nature and live to tell the tale with this camping guide packed with practical knowledge from a time before ultralight backpacking gadgets, synthetic rainwear, and cell phones. The emphasis is on preparation and survival, starting with how to plan your trip, pick your companions, how to get to your campsite, and what gear, food, and clothes to bring along. You'll learn to choose a good campsite and set up your tarp or build a lean-to, and navigate on your backcountry trek. There's an extensive section on wilderness first aid, plus guides to backwoods housekeeping and cooking, blazing a trail, starting a fire without a match, sending smoke signals, and choosing the best axe.

In the words of the author, "Camping calls for old clothes, lack of luxuries and conveniences, primitive life, and unfailing good temper and cheerfulness under all conditions, as well as plenty of hard work and a willingness to do one's share of anything and everything without being asked." If roughing it is more your style than glamping, this guide will spark your imagination and help you plan your next trip.

Unfuck Your Breakup: Using Science to Heal and Thrive after the End of a Relationship or Friendship

Breaking it off? Got dumped? Parting ways with a pal? Ouch, that hurts. Even beyond the heartache, embarrassment, and logistical strain of the moment, breakups can summon up all our old baggage to play havoc with our lives and heads. Dr. Faith G. Harper, bestselling author of books like Unfuck Your Brain and Unfuck Your Intimacy, brings you a kind, relatable, and plain-language guide to all things break-up: deciding to do it (or not), doing the thing, and picking up the pieces afterward to build a life that suits you better than ever. Whether or not the breakup was your idea, or if the partnership was romantic, sexual, or platonic, no matter the seriousness of the bond or the shared responsibilities and finances involved, parting ways can be a canon life event with powerful transformational potential as you rise from the wreckage. And it's never too late to come back to your best self.

Unfuck Your Brain Activity & Coloring Book

Got baggage? Illustrate it!

Find a quiet corner and a box of colored pencils and unlock the hows and whys behind your feelings. Bestselling Unfuck Your Brain author Dr. Faith G. Harper returns to help you explore your emotions through brain science-backed art therapy, using exercises to draw out your inner creativity and enhance your mental wellbeing.

Color in hearts and assess what works and doesn’t for your attachment style. Reflect on how you want to be remembered and if you’re in alignment with your goals by decorating your tombstone. Workshop your next difficult conversation. No special supplies or artistic talent required—all you need to get started is a pen or pencil, and your own innately creative self.

Self Care Won't Save Us: How to Fight Burnout with Solidarity and Social Change

Is the daily grind getting you down? You’re not alone! More than half of working adults in the U.S. say they’re experiencing at least some degree of that dreaded late-stage-capitalism affliction: burnout. But workplace well-being needn’t remain out of reach. With a focus on actionable alternatives, Self Care Won’t Save Us examines the mash-up of money and morality that got us into this mess alongside practical ways we can get ourselves out of it.

Author Caroline Moore digs into hustle culture’s takeover of the way we do business, how its rise has allowed work to creep into every aspect of our daily lives, and how we can re-envision what work is and what it should mean to us. Exploring possibilities like co-op models, shorter working weeks, policy changes in the workplace, and other simple adaptations to help you to thrive, this book offers real tools to battle burnout, rather than burning you out with more burnout facts. Whether you’re a business owner, a union steward, a new employee, or a freelancer, this is the working person’s guide to making positive change for ourselves and each other.

The Frugal Vegan's Happy Home: Crafts, Rituals, and Recipes for Every Season

Even when you're broke, you can live a full, fun, compassionate life.

Are you plant-based, penniless, and keen on making things yourself? This cookbook and DIY compendium of vegan living starts with a focus on spring and summer, offering hot-weather tips and treats like recipes for popsicles, sorbet, and tofu burgers; budget vegan travel tips; craft ideas; yard sale delights; and guidance on environmentally friendly housecleaning. The second half of the book is focused on harvest and holiday, offering cozy activities and recipes for cool-weather treats like pumpkin bread, cookies, hot cocoa, and more. You'll find egg alternatives for baking, vegan survival tips for family occasions like Christmas, and Valentine's Day gift ideas and guidance for doing it yourself and avoiding commercial holidays altogether. Save cash and learn new skills while staying socially and environmentally conscious all year round.

Cook Your Own Fucking Life: Vegan Comfort Food Recipes to Feed Yourself and Build Community

For scrappy, can-do vegans on a budget, this essential cookbook eschews fancy ingredients and gets back to basics. It's packed with attitude and recipes anyone can cook and eat, including comfort food, healthy smoothies, holiday staples to feed your family, and dirty rice to feed the touring band sleeping on your floor.

More than just a collection of recipes, this is a DIY cultural icon. The book makes author Ashley Rowe Palafox’s long-out-of-print Barefoot and in the Kitchen zine accessible again, with spirited annotations and updated resources, so you can find plant-based, cruelty-free inspiration you need without needing to hunt through your co-op's crusty cookbook collection. Because plant-based broke folks deserve good eats, too!

Is There a Cult for That?: Facts and Activities for Fanatical Fun

As this ride called life starts to feel more like a perilously rickety rollercoaster, people are seeking any kind of stability they can grab onto, and—whoops!—suddenly they're in a cult. In this tongue-in-cheek yet refreshingly generous dive into the contemporary cult craze, Mary Beth Chapman explores what defines a cult and why Americans (and the media) are so fascinated with them. Rather than focus on the foolishness of cult members, Chapman explores the contributing factors like capitalism, isolation, and overwhelm that lead people to seek firmer spiritual footing in the first place. Served up with humor, self-awareness, and fun charts, the book also includes tips for starting your own cult, including how to choose your idol and how to hire the just the right charismatic cult leader, plus activities like word salad mad libs, red flag bingo, and your very own cult leader paper dolls. Perfect for cult questioners, kool-aid critics, and zealots for fun facts, the quest for the one true path just got a fresh dose of snarky good times.

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

• J. Hunter Bennett will be promoting MORE PUNK THAN THE PUBLIC LIBRARY with Kim Coletta at Politics & Prose at the Connecticut Ave location, on Saturday, May 16th, at 5 PM. For more information, check out Politcs & Prose's website!

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!

Thornapple Press to be distributed by Microcosm Publishing

Meet our latest distributed publisher

Starting April 1, 2025, Microcosm Publishing will become the new worldwide distributor (excluding Canada) for Thornapple Press, a Canadian publisher specializing in thoughtful titles about love, sexuality, and relational ethics with integrity. Publisher Eve Rickert founded Thornapple as the successor to Thorntree Press, publisher of popular and award-winning polyamory- and relationship-based books such as Polysecure, More Than Two, and Love’s Not Color Blind.

Microcosm founder and CEO, Joe Biel, says of the new agreement, "I've found Thornapple to have an excellent point of view, good publication packaging and design, and thoughtful ideas throughout their existence, so when they approached us to become their distributor, the answer was obvious. Independent presses are stronger together and it's clear that this tide lifts all boats." 

Rickert adds, "The new arrangement offers a lot of benefits for Thornapple, our books and our authors. Microcosm has a large sales staff throughout the USA, with excellent reach into specialty shops, such as sex shops, that are well-suited for our books. Microcosm is also closely aligned with Thornapple in terms of both brand identity and company culture."

Microcosm will distribute Thornapple’s full backlist as well as all forthcoming titles, such as Transforming the Shame Triangle: From Shame to Love Using Parts Work by bestselling authors Jessica Fern and David Cooley, scheduled for release in 2025. While Microcosm has always sold Thornapple Press’s catalog, Thornapple titles will be exclusive through Microcosm starting in April 2025.

Excited? Us too! Exclusive distro rights begin in the new year, but you can still browse the Thornapple titles currently available on our site, with more to come!

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.