A People’s Guide to Publishing: Building a Successful, Sustainable, Meaningful Book Business from the Ground Up

Joe Biel is a self-made autistic publisher and filmmaker who draws origins, inspiration, and methods from punk rock to sell millions of books. Biel is the founder and CEO of Microcosm Publishing, Publishers Weekly’s #1 fastest-growing publisher of 2022 and #3 in 2023/2024, and WorkingLit, the software responsible for Microcosm’s aforementioned success--now available for other publishers. Biel has been featured in Time, Esquire, Art of Autism, Reading Glasses, Bulletproof Radio, Spectator (Japan), G33K (Korea), and Maximum Rocknroll, as well as NPR and PBS. Biel is the author of A People’s Guide to Publishing, Autism Relationships Handbook, Unfuck Your Business, Enduring Legacy of Portland’s Black Panthers, and dozens more. Biel is the director of five feature films and hundreds of short films, including Aftermass: Bicycling in a Post-Critical Mass Portland, ＄100 & a T-Shirt, and the Groundswell series. Biel lives in Portland, OR.