Notes from the press.
Podcast episodes, product notes, and thinking out loud about modern publishing.
A working publisher's companion · Made proudly in Portland, OR
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What Publishers Can Learn From Preppers
Excerpted from Microcosm zine Books and Math: A Manifesto On Publishing Tools by Elly Blue, Joe Biel, and Sara Balabanlilar. Take a look at the whole zine and purchase a copy on our website.
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A People’s Guide to Publishing Podcast: How Do Tariffs Affect Canadian Publishers? w/ Kim Werker
In the great Tariff Measuring Contest where size is, apparently, everything, what are publishers to do? Especially in Canada, where both publishers and booksellers rely on being part of the North American supply chain? Kim Werker of Nine Ten Publications sits down with Joe and El…
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A People’s Guide to Publishing Podcast: How Can Publishers Lower Information Barriers? w/ Jelani Memory
This week’s reader question is: “How do I lower information barriers?” So many barriers in publishing have to do with people’s stories.
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A People’s Guide to Publishing: How Should Authors Market Their Books? w/ Jane Friedman
Does author marketing make a difference, or is publisher marketing the only way to shift the public and draw hype to your book? Is it cheating if you ask your friends to buy your book? Jane Friedman of The Hot Sheet is back to clear up the huge variety of misconceptions around bo…
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Revenues and Royalties, P&Ls and Proceeds: A glossary of publishing terms on WL
Orders and Customers Customer Classes These are different types of accounts with whom your publisher has a sales relationship. They give you money, you give them books.
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A People’s Guide to Publishing: Marketing Your Book
How do you “make your books get found” (as Joe puts it)? This week it’s a throwback to Joe and Elly chatting about marketing your book, search engine optimization, good description writing, and more. Or, also as Joe puts it: Google. Google.
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New Feature: Calculate Royalties by Region Automatically
New feature alert! Do you have creators with different royalty terms depending on the region of the sale? In this video, Ben takes us through WorkingLit’s new regional sale royalty calculations. As always, this feature is available to all accounts regardless of size.
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A People’s Guide to Publishing Podcast: Ben Snakepit Returns to the Snake Pit in 2025
Every day for 25 years, Ben Snakepit has drawn a simple, 3 panel comic about his day. There’s no overarching plot or theme, just Ben answering the question “what did you do today?” But answering that question daily for half his life (and collecting them in volumes) has led to ins…
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A People’s Guide to Publishing Podcast: How Should A Publisher Pitch A Book to an Author?
How do you bring your incredible, original idea to an author you want to work with? Should you? Is it worth worrying about the legal ramifications? And lastly, how do you get the darn thing written after you make an agreement? This week on the pod, Joe and Elly share a bit of the…
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Using Math instead of AI
by Joe Biel, co-founder of WorkingLit A version of this post, “Why we use Math instead of AI,” is included in WorkingLit’s zine, Books and Math: A Manifesto on Publishing Tools, which is available on Microcosm’s website.
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A People’s Guide to Publishing Podcast: How Do I Publish Thematically? w/ Jelani Memory
Readers love knowing what to expect from a publisher. Having consistent theming in your titles can help with discovery, trust, and bringing readers back for more.
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A People’s Guide to Publishing Podcast: How do you market a book publisher? w/ Jane Friedman
How do you market your press? It’s not just social media and newsletters. Everything from your cover design, format choices, to who is on your marketing team tells the story of your publisher.
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WorkingLit User Spotlight: Blue Cactus Press!
At WorkingLit, we’re invested in mutually supporting independent presses so we can all succeed. One of our dear publisher accounts, Blue Cactus Press, has been on board as WorkingLit has grown.
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Low funds, high creativity: three ways we dug into the numbers, saved money, and stayed scrappy
Publishers, look into your brain and your search history. I’m sure you see any number of the following: -How to save money while still making great books-How to publish without a small loan of a million dollars-Best publisher budget ever-Books + __ = profit??? Publishing books is…
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A People’s Guide to Publishing Podcast: Book Bans Vlogcast
Book bans have seen an astronomical increase in the last few years. How are they impacting the book industry, booksellers, and publishers? We had the opportunity to chat with book professionals at a recent conference about what alarms them about book bans, their experiences, what…
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Revolutionize Your Title Management: WorkingLit Talks with IBPA
Our dear friends at the Independent Book Publishers Association hosted us for an extremely fun, informative webinar recently.
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A People’s Guide to Publishing Podcast: How Should Publishers Manage Overstock? W/ Jelani Memory
Running out of books is a good thing, actually! Jelani Memory of A Kid’s Co is back with Joe and Elly to talk about what to do with excess inventory, donating overstock vs pulping, and how “you can’t sell what you don’t have” usually doesn’t apply to books.
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A People’s Guide to Publishing Podcast: Is Print-On-Demand A Class Issue? w/ Jane Friedman
There’s been a lot of hubbub these last few months about Print On Demand! Can you tell the difference? Yeah, maybe. But is it the “Fast Fashion” of books? We’re not so sure.
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How Do I Pay My People with WorkingLit?
We know, royalties can be a pain. But we refuse to let publishers keep sorting through PDFs (or even worse, filing cabinets) in search of contract details. At WorkingLit, we want to provide easy access to your creators’ contract terms and royalty payment history.
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A People’s Guide to Publishing Podcast: Why Are Bugs So Cool? w/ Karyn Light-Gibson
Bug Life author Karyn Light-Gibson joins Joe and Elly this week to talk about entomology, the importance of maintaining bug populations, how the book could have been much, MUCH longer, and fun insect facts.
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A People’s Guide to Publishing Podcast: How Can You Teach Experts to Write a Book in a Day? w/Jelani Memory
Jelani Memory (of DK Publishing and A Kid’s Co) is back to talk about The Workshop Method, how Kid’s Co is able to get subject matter experts to write quality kidlit, often in under a day.
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A People’s Guide to Publishing Podcast: How Do Tariffs Affect Books?
Will Trump’s tariffs affect books? Broadly—not really, especially if you’re doing a lot in house (or in the United States in general). And, as Joe and Elly remind us, there are a ton of options for hosting every step of your publishing business within US borders.
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Reporting Comes to the WorkingLit App
I love numbers and watching data. Nothing beats a good set of stats. And for any business owner, there’s nothing better than a good set of data about your business to help you make decisions.
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A People’s Guide to Publishing Podcast: How Should You Handle Criticism? w/ Jane Friedman
What do you do when someone starts talking about your book on Twitter or Goodreads? How do you handle engaging with good faith vs. bad faith criticism, private or public? Jane Friedman of The Hot Sheet to chat with Joe and Elly about the pros and cons of critical feedback.
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What the Heck Are Compound Royalties?
Help us by filling out the survey at the end of this post. We’ll nerd out about it and love you forever. One of the main reasons why we built WorkingLit is to make royalty time suck less.
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A People’s Guide to Publishing Podcast: How Do I Identify the Plants in My Path? w/ Maggie Herskovits
Strengthen your sense of place, get to know your local landscape, and up your foraging game with Maggie Herskovits, whose book An Urban Field Guide to the Plants, Trees, and Herbs in Your Path was recently published.
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Meet Sara, WorkingLit’s New Marketing Manager
Publishers can contact Sara about marketing and sales, alongside any app support needed, from help onboarding to day-to-day tech support.
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A People’s Guide to Publishing Podcast: Unf*ck Your Parenting w/ Bonnie Scott and Dr. Faith G. Harper
How do you raise your kids to be functional adults with big hearts, especially in the current timeline? This week on the podcast, Bonnie Scott and Dr.
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A People’s Guide to Publishing Podcast: How Does a Press Become an Imprint? w/ Jelani Memory
This week on the pod, Elly, Joe, and Bernie are joined by Jelani Memory of A Kids Co! They talk about taking making your press an imprint of a larger publisher instead of just having it distributed, sticking to your mission during the process, and making your business like a cock…
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A People’s Guide to Publishing Podcast: What Shifts Are Afoot in Publishing? w/Jane Friedman
Publishing changes all the time. Reader tastes shift, markets move, sometimes the memoir you’re reading was actually about Jesus all along.
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A People’s Guide to Publishing Podcast: What Tarot Spreads Will Get You Through the Year? w/ Karen Krebser
Joe, Elly, and Bernie sit down with Karen Krebser, author of Tarot Through the Witch’s Year, to chat about tarot in dark times, how to reconcile your practice with your privilege, tarot spreads for diving the future of publishing, and a bit of the history of tarot.
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A People’s Guide to Publishing Podcast: How Do Books Get into Bookstores? w/ Kurtis Lowe
It’s another throwback episode! A few years ago, Joe and Elly sat down with sales rep extraordinaire Kurtis to talk about how reps get books into stores. Learn about cover appeal, sales conferences, how store buyers see the books… and that’s just the first five minutes.
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A People’s Guide to Publishing Podcast: How Do I Hire Sales Reps?
How does a small press hire a sales rep? Do you even NEED a rep? This week on the pod, Joe and Elly talk about how Microcosm decided to work with reps, and how to find the reps that will work for you. Stay tuned for more episodes of the “A People’s Guide to Publishing” …
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A People’s Guide to Publishing Podcast: What are the 3 Biggest Misconceptions in Publishing? w/Chris Vega
Chris Vega of Blue Cactus Press came to hang out with Joe and Elly and talk about common misconceptions in publishing. We’re pretty unique, but also we can be just as boring with other publishers, having to deal with zoning issues, delusions of grandeur, print runs, and more.
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A WorkingLit Origin Story
Hi everyone, this is Elly. Ten years ago, on December 20, 2014, I sent an email to Microcosm Publishing‘s longtime programmer Nate Beaty with the subject line “Hello! And some SEO stuff.” This was my first week at Microcosm, with the newly minted title of marketing director.
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A People’s Guide to Publishing Podcast: What did Taylor Swift reveal about book publishing?
On Black Friday of 2024, Taylor Swift released “The Eras Tour Book” exclusively through Target. Does it count as a book, though? And what does it mean for the publishing industry as a whole? Jane Friedman of “The Hot Sheet” is back with Joe and Elly to give her thoughts on book-s…
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Welcome to WorkingLit
We’re glad you’re here. We are building this software to raise the tide for the publishing industry. Publishing is dominated by the Big Five major houses, but they only control half the market.
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