Microcosm has such loyal customers, he said, the publisher even offers a “BFF Line” (Best Friends Forever), a subscription service for $10–$30 a month in which Microcosm sends the subscriber “whatever we publish that month.” And integral to Microcosm’s success has been its Web site (), which offers both retail and wholesale online purchasing. Most of Microcosm’s books are not sold through traditional bookstores, Biel said. For distributed works that Microcosm doesn’t publish, Biel said, Microcosm pays 50% of retail within 30 days. Microcosm has published about 150 titles (about 12 books a year) including about six–10 titles a year from Cantankerous Titles, an imprint directed by Biel that offers graphic novels, books, and videos on topics “for understanding the world.”īiel said Microcosm distributes a combination of titles (books and zines) and other merchandise (T-shirts, videos, buttons, and patches) from as many as 2,000 publishers/suppliers to a “ram-shackle”network of bike shops, records stores, “off-kilter” clothing shops, and festivals of all kinds.
The publisher avoids overly topical political titles, but political activism is definitely on its list. Titles focus on “self-empowerment,” and their catalogue lists works on everything from feminism, punk lifestyle, and comics to race, veganism, radical parenting, activism, and zombies. A typical Microcosm title, Biel said, often starts out as a “zine we like,” and then gets expanded. Authors can purchase their books at cost, he said, “as long as they don’t try to compete with us in our sales territory.”īiel’s early student infatuation with zine culture has grown into the basis for Microcosm’s publishing program.
Microcosm authors get “a small advance” (if the author makes all deadlines) on book-length works and a 15% royalty. Make Your Place: Affordable, Sustainable Nesting Skills ($7) by Raleigh Briggs has sold “70,000 to 80,000 copies,” and the Zinester’s Guide to Portland ($5.95) by Nate Beaty and Shawn Granton has sold 40,000 copies since it first came out and is going back to press for another 10,000 copies. Among its bestselling titles are Henry & Glenn Forever ($6, from Biel’s Cantankerous line) by Tom Neely, Scot Nobles, and Igloo Tornado, a hilarious 2010 comic book sendup of notorious muscle-bound rockers Henry Rollins and Glenn Danzig as a gay couple it’s sold 50,000 copies. In a phone interview from Portland, Biel joked that, for his books, “the underground appears bigger than the mainstream.”įounded as a publisher of zines and self-published short works on a wide range of topics, especially underground culture, comics, music, and politics, Microcosm sells what some might call eccentric books for very economical prices. Originally a distributor of zines and records, Microcosm has grown into a company with a knack for selling alternative culture books.īiel recently signed with IPG to distribute Microcosm titles to mainstream book retailers, but Microcosm will continue to distribute its titles to its own network of unconventional accounts. Founded in Cleveland 16 years ago in Joe Biel’s bedroom, Microcosm Publishing is a “self-empowerment” and alternative culture publisher and distributor in Portland, Ore., and Lansing, Kansas.
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