A People's Guide To Publishing

Description

Comprehensive and easy-to-follow guide to book publishing written by a successful book publisher. So, you want to publish books. Publishing is an incredibly rewarding yet endlessly complicated profession. This readable, comprehensive, and empowering book serves as a resource and reality check for anyone considering launching a press or publishing a single book. Author Joe Biel draws on 23 years of experience in all parts of operating a small publishing company to teach you the skills of the trade, from distribution, operations, inventory, scheduling, and accounting to development, sales, publicity, and marketing. Readers will come away with the confidence to succeed and a big picture overview of why publishing matters and how to plan and run their business fairly and sustainably. This book is equally useful to publishing beginners looking for a realistic overview of the process and for already practicing 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.

Joe Biel is a self-made #ActuallyAutistic publisher and filmmaker who draws origins, inspiration, and methods from punk rock. He is the founder/manager of Microcosm Publishing and co-founder of the Portland Zine Symposium. He tours with his films on the Dinner and Bikes program and has been featured in Time Magazine, Publisher's Weekly, Utne Reader, Portland Mercury, Oregonian, Broken Pencil, Readymade, Punk Planet, Profane Existence, Spectator (Japan), G33K (Korea), and Maximum Rocknroll. He is the author of A People's Guide to Publishing: Building a Successful, Sustainable, Meaningful Book Business, Good Trouble: Building a Successful Life & Business on the Spectrum, Manspressions: Decoding Men's Behavior, Make a Zine, The CIA Makes Science Fiction Unexciting, Beyond the Music, Bamboozled, Bipedal, By Pedal, and more. He is the director of the documentaries Aftermass: Bicycling in a Post-Critical Mass Portland, If It Ain't Cheap, It Ain't Punk, Of Dice & Men, $100 & A T-Shirt, and the Groundswell film series. The Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy described Biel as "not trained in pedagogy." His work can be found at joebiel.net

[Review Quote] ""When a young intern at Microcosm Publishing--an indie house in Portland, Ore., focused on books that empower marginalized communities--asked founder Joe Biel what she should read to complete her publishing education, Biel was stumped. "I didn't know what to tell her," he said. With that intern in mind, Biel wrote A People's Guide to Publishing: Build a Successful, Sustainable, Meaningful, Book Business from the Ground Up, a comprehensive guide to launching a book publishing venture..."" - Calvin Reid, Publisher's Weekly [Review Quote] ""...an inspirational and practical guidebook for anyone interested in starting and sustaining a publishing company.... Beneath all the details about business plans, marketing, paper choices, printing styles, distributors, and contracts, A People's Guide to Publishing has a radical, DIY, punk-rock philosophy that echoes that of Microcosm Publishing itself. Publishing is a way to get books out there that need to be read, and Biel offers spirited advice about how to get that done."" - Vivian Wagner, NewPages [Review Quote] ""...goes into the nitty gritty of what it takes to build a publishing company. And we're talking EVERYTHING. That might sound daunting, but he's got some pretty fun stories from his own and other publishers' experience to keep us hyped."" - Emily Einolander, Hybrid Pub Scout