Tag Archives: DIY

The Business of Publishing: Title Develo...

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This is the fifth post in a series of articles for aspiring publishers. The series is written by Joe Biel, the founder and owner of Microcosm Publishing and author of A People’s Guide to Publishing. Title development is what determines a book’s packaging. It’s the magic combination of title and subtitle, the design and content […]

The Business of Publishing: Formatting f...

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This is the fourth post in a series of articles for aspiring publishers. The series is written by Joe Biel, the founder and owner of Microcosm Publishing and author of A People’s Guide to Publishing. Formatting for Print So you’ve got a book. Or at least, you have a lot of content and want to […]

anna kelli culinary cyclist book

Happy Bookiversary! Our first two books ...

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Anna and Kelli at their release party (Photo by Luc Revel) Yesterday, Anna Brones posted on her blog about the 1-year anniversary of her book, The Culinary Cyclist (to celebrate, she includes the recipe for the book’s delicious peanut butter cookies, in case you needed a reason to click over there). I was taken aback. […]

The Vulva Bike: A true tale of shock, gl...

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When I first saw the ShockTwat on its inaugural journey, I marveled at it for two minutes straight and then snapped a photo with my phone at the last moment before it rolled away. When the time came to launch the Kickstarter campaign for Our Bodies, Our Bikes, I looked through my photos for a […]

Giant Robots on Bikes (with illustration...

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I got home from tour to find a big box of the new promotional postcard for Elly Blue Publishing (joining its popular colleague the Bike Tour Packing List postcard): The mama robot cargo bike image was drawn by Ellie Poley. She sent it in response to my call for “sloppy drawings of robots on bicycles.” […]

Kickstarter and the Praxis of Everyday L...

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Back in 2010, I published my very first zine, which was funded with my very first Kickstarter project, and coincided with the process of booking my very first tour. I couldn’t have done any of these things without a lot of help from a lot of people. One of these people, pictured here, is Sarah […]

The Business of Publishing: The economic...

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This post was written by Joe Biel, founder and owner of Portland-based independent press Microcosm Publishing (and not incidentally, the publisher of my books Bikenomics and Everyday Bicycling). A couple of years ago, I posted a short guide to how I fund and sell zines; quite a few people since have said that they used […]

Bragging rights: What have you carried b...

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I find very few things in life more satisfying than finding new ways to carry stuff by bike. Especially the kind of things that you really *shouldn’t* be able to bike with. The one thing that is possibly more satisfying? Getting to talk about it later. Fortunately, I’m not alone in enjoying these indulgences. Every […]

On Seattle's Neighborhood Greenways, cut...

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Future Greenway of Seattle? What brings more smiles than little kids on bicycles? How about a well-connected network of safe, quiet streets so they can ride those bikes freely in their neighborhoods, to parks, and to schools? Seattle’s Neighborhood Greenways initiative aims to provide just that – a network of residential streets, with sane, safe […]

Call for submissions: Bikes and childhoo...

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Update: This zine is currently being funded on Kickstarter now available! It’s official: Taking the Lane #7: BikeSexuality exists, and nearly every order has been mailed. If you haven’t gotten yours yet, drop me an email and I’ll check it out. If you also ordered Pedal, Stretch, Breathe, I may be waiting to mail them […]

Everyday Bicycling

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Update: Everyday Bicycling is out now! You can read more about it here and buy it here. For years I’ve been looking for a basic guide book to bicycle transportation that I can wholeheartedly recommend to people who want to start riding, but whose lives are more complicated than simply commuting to and from work. […]

Stuck on bikes!

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Some new stickers just arrived at Taking the Lane Omnimedia world headquarters. I want to share them here partly to say “look, stickers!” but mostly to tell you about the artists who drew them. Update: You can now get your Proud BikeSexual stickers right here. One day a year or so ago I mentioned to […]

Lines Beneath the Map prints are here!

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About a million years ago (alright, three months ago), when Katelyn Hale and I were putting together the last issue of Taking the Lane, we decided that a supplemental work of art would be a great boost for the zine itself and for Katelyn’s nascent block printing enterprise. We put the print as an offering […]

On tour: Lack of infrastructure can't st...

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Mobilians on Bikes on a group ride. (Photos by Ben Brenner) There’s a chicken and egg question I keep coming back to – which comes first, the bike infrastructure or the bike riders? There doesn’t seem to be any single answer except the frustrating non-simple one that you need both at once and that they […]