Microcosm Publishing
Portland, ORBrand · Paper goods
Let's change our lives, then the world! Fiercely independent, authentic, and colorful, Microcosm Publishing & Distribution offers readers tools for self-empowerment. The books, zines, decks, and more in our publishing, distribution, and wholesale programs emphasize skill-building, critical thinking, community, and creativity.
Since 1996, when Joe Biel founded Microcosm as a distro and record label run out of a closet in Cleveland, we have strived to always learn, grow, do better, and have the most fun. We use time-tested, traditional models for getting life-saving books into readers' hands while challenging conventional industry wisdom every step of the way. We do our own fulfillment, with our workers in Cleveland, Ohio and Portland, Oregon packing each order with love and care. We put all our profits back into our publishing program and worker pay, and are proud of our worker-ownership program.
We are known for bestsellers like Dr. Faith Harper's Unf*ck Your Brain (with millions sold and dozens of translations and editions), the scrappy Making Stuff & Doing Things, Danny Caine's How to Resist Amazon and Why, Raleigh Briggs's charming, handwritten Make Your Place, our founder Joe Biel's iconic Make a Zine and A People's Guide to Publishing, the Lammy Award winner A Tight Squeeze, and Friday Gladheart's annual Practical Witch's Almanac. Between 2022-2024 we were named a Publishers Weekly's Fastest Growing Publisher. All of our published books and zines are printed in the United States.
We publish books for people who don't read and sell to stores that don't sell books. Curation is our superpower, and we find the common threads between topics like mental health, bicycling, sex, punk music and culture, witchcraft, gender, self-care, anarchism, and DIY projects and skills. We aim to relate the experience of being a marginalized person, remove barriers to success, and foster underground movements.
