My big news for 2015: Joining forces with Microcosm

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Update: You’re invited to our Merger Celebration!
Tuesday, January 27, 6-8pm (followed by live music)
The Waypost, 3120 N Williams, Portland, Oregon

Happy new year, everyone!

I am buried in a mountain of paperwork, spreadsheets, and to-do lists, but wanted to surface for a moment to give you, the readers and visitors to this blog, a heads up about what is up here at Taking the Lane.

In short, I’m merging my publishing company, Elly Blue Publishing (aka Taking the Lane Media) with Microcosm Publishing.

Other than this website, not much will visibly change. I’ll still continue to publish empowering and feminist books about bicycling under the EBP brand, managing them from start to finish (yes, including Kickstarter projects!). Instead of being distributed from my living room with the help of generous friends and college interns, they’ll go out into the world with a stronger push thanks to the the support of Microcosm’s rad staff and business relationships.

I’ll also be joining the team as Microcosm’s new marketing director, ushering all the company’s 250+ in print titles along to their best homes like a herd of prodigal anarchist ducklings. This includes everything from writing the sort of marketing copy that convinces booksellers that On Subbing should be read by every person ever to reminding our distributors that a bunch of our books are really helpful for understanding current events and trends, to blogging about the company’s finances and philosophy to throwing parties, managing our schedule of events and book fairs, and supporting authors.

Microcosm is based in Portland, has a staff of eleven (including me!), and has been putting out radical, empowering books about all sorts of topics (including bikes!) for 19 years. That includes the two books that I’ve written: Everyday Bicycling and Bikenomics. It was founded and is owned (now co-owned) and managed by Joe Biel, with whom I’ve been stoked to share the business of living and eating and sleeping and traveling and scheming up ideas for each others’ companies for the past six years. We know each others’ businesses inside and out and this merger is natural, mutually empowering, and in retrospect perhaps a bit overdue. But now that we’re going for it, nobody will need to be deeply confused about which of us put out what book ever again.

Like I said, I’ll still be publishing all the same books, just doing it better and not selling them at this exact website anymore. I’ll post here shortly about what this means for in-process titles like the Journal of Bicycle Feminism, Our Bodies, Our Bikes, Bikes in Space 3, and the Velocipede Races (short answer: they’ll come out later this year!).

We’re consolidating, so starting today, the product pages here on the EBP/Taking the Lane site will start redirecting you to the equivalent page on Microcosm, where you may find yourself wandering through a varied forest of books on many topics. Here’s the page where most of the stuff I publish and distribute has landed.

If you have trouble finding something, or have questions, or have ideas about ways to collaborate, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

The exact future of the Taking the Lane website is a bit up in the air. Who knows, I might start blogging about other stuff again here. We shall see.

Thank you all for being awesomely inspiring to work with and be around. I can’t wait for what comes next.