We proudly welcome two new publishers for 2023: Microcosm Publishing and Southern Illinois University Press!

As we get the Spring 2023 season underway, we’re very happy to let everyone know that we’ve begun representing SIU Press and Microcosm Publishing this month. Any of our customers who wish to order (or reorder) books from Microcosm or SIU can send orders to us now, and we’re preparing our markups for their Spring 2023 catalogs now!

Microcosm Publishing

Did you know? In 2022, Publishers Weekly named Microcosm the fastest growing publisher! But their roots are humble and very indie. They’ve long been on our list of “publishers we wish we represented”! It’s hard to describe them any better than their own site does:

Microcosm was started by Joe Biel in a bedroom closet as a distro and record label in 1996 and is now among the oldest independent book publishing houses in Portland, OR. Microcosm focuses on relating the experiences of what it is like to be a marginalized person and strives to be recognized for spirit, creativity, and value. All books are printed in the U.S., and the company doubles the industry average in number of women authors and prioritizes hiring of special needs employees. Microcosm constantly poses the question “How can we remove barriers to success for marginalized people in our industry?

Microcosm emphasizes skill-building, showing hidden histories, and fostering creativity through challenging conventional publishing wisdom with books and zines about DIY skills, food, bicycling, gender, self-care, and social justice.

You’ve probably sold copies of Raven Bookstore co-owner Danny Caine’s How To Resist Amazon And Why, but you may not have gone deeper into their list! Here’s a gallery of some of their recent best-selling and favorite books:

Microcosm distributes their own books, zines, stickers, videos, and other products. We can help you get started ordering with Microcosm quite easily, if you have not ordered from them before!

Handy Edelweiss links:
Spring 2023 frontlist
Fall Winter 2022 frontlist
2022 bestsellers
2022 Zines
All Sidelines (DVDs, Magnets, Pins, Posters, T-shirts, Cards, Patches, and even a Fanny Pack)

Southern Illinois University Press

SIU Press was founded in the mid-1950s and ever since has been publishing books primarily in the humanities and social sciences. They have some really well-done and interesting books about Illinois and Chicago history.

As their own site says:

“The Press has become especially well known for its publications in First Amendment Studies, Restoration and Eighteenth Century Theatre, and Rhetoric and Composition, and for two exceptional multi-volume scholarly works: The Early, Middle, and Later Works of John Dewey, and The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant. … In recent years, Southern Illinois University Press has focused its list on a smaller number of areas of publication: American history, poetry, regional studies, rhetoric and composition, and theatre.”

We were immediately struck by the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry and by their Chicago history books! Here’s a gallery of some of their best bookstore-friendly trade books:

SIU Press is distributed by Chicago Distribution Center (CDC), so we can easily send in orders for you as standalone orders, or combining with other CDC-distributed publishers we represent.

Handy Edelweiss links:
Spring 2023 frontlist
Fall 2022 frontlist
Bookstore favorite selections
Chicago-interest books backlist
Crab Orchard Series in Poetry backlist

Welcome to our new sales rep, Alice Mesjak!

We’re happy to announce that Alice Mesjak has joined Abraham Associates as a sales rep. She’ll be based in Chicago, working with us a few days a week while still working as a bookseller part-time at Bookends & Beginnings in Evanston.

Alice’s focus will be working with new bookstores as they get ready to open, and working with additional other accounts across our territory to help them order our publishers’ books and sideline items.

She has been a full time bookseller at Bookends & Beginnings since graduating from Denison University. Her favorite types of books involve ghosts, revenge, and/or women behaving terribly.

We’re looking forward to Alice getting to meet (or say hello to) many booksellers at Heartland Fall Forum in St Louis!

Say hello to Phaidon Press!

We are very excited to announce that, effective Feb 1, 2021, Abraham Associates will be the exclusive sales reps to the book trade in the Midwest for Phaidon Press.

Across many of our favorite categories, Phaidon has been publishing for decades with epic scale and innovative design – Art, Design, Food, Children’s Books, Photography, Architecture. Fashion, and Gardening. Phaidon was founded in Vienna in 1923 – nearly 100 years ago! Owned and based here in America since 2012, their publishing program has evolved in terms of its commercial appeal while staying true to its commitment to working with creatives across all the arts.

Phaidon means The Story of Art and The Art Book and major artists like Kerry James Marshall and Yayoi Kusama, as well as children’s book legends like Tomi Ungerer and Hervé Tullet. It means their massive world cuisine food surveys and chefs like Magnus Nilsson, René Redzepi, and Ferran Adria and plenty of cookbooks for home cooks. They have some of the biggest names in photography like Annie Leibovitz, Lauren Greenfield, and Nan Goldin, and collaborations with game-changers like Nike and Supreme and Michigan’s own Herman Miller – not to mention the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The New Museum, and other institutions around the world. Phaidon has consistently published fascinating and instantly accessible books for every interest.

We step into the shoes of longtime Phaidon sales rep, Chris Conti, who recently announced he is moving to a new position at IPG. We are thrilled to be able to take over for Chris and carry things forward.

Phaidon’s head of sales Amy Hordes is from the Midwest, too, like all of us Abrahams – she’s from Ohio, with family throughout the region, so we know that Midwestern store needs will continue to be a Phaidon priority.

We can’t wait to start talking with all our booksellers about Phaidon’s Winter / Spring 2021 list, and really dig into the deep backlist treasures that await us. We are very much looking forward to Phaidon continuing to be a strong partner for our indie bookstore friends in the coming years.

If you’re interested in getting to know Phaidon better, you can follow them on Twitter at @Phaidon and Instagram at @PhaidonSnaps.

Welcome our newest publisher: the University of Oklahoma Press!

We are proud to announce that we’ve added the University of Oklahoma Press to our distinguished list of academic and university publishers. Founded over 80 years ago, OU Press was the first university press established in the Southwest, and only the fourth established in the western half of the country!

Their current publishing program includes both scholarly works and a wide diversity of trade interest titles, from histories of The West, to indigenous peoples’ cultural histories, to business and governmental leaders, to current affairs, to photography and art.

To cite one example, we were excited to discover one of their lead titles from last fall’s season was Tulsa, 1921 – a landmark book of history and reporting about the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. This book digs into contemporary reporting from local newspapers to provide readers more context about this shocking incident. The Tulsa massacre recently came to a much broader national awareness as the foundational centerpiece of the recent Watchmen series on HBO.

Check with your Abraham Associates sales rep to make sure that you have access to the latest OU Press catalog and markup on Edelweiss.

A warm welcome to DISSENT PINS!

We are very proud to announce that Abraham Associates are now the midwest sales reps for Dissent Pins, makers of inspiring pins, jewelry, stickers, and other gift items.

Created by a team of experienced grassroots activists and progressives, Dissent Pins was founded after the 2016 election to honor and recognize Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s famous “dissent collar” that she wears on days when she dissents from decisions being handed down by the Supreme Court, and her message of respectful dissent.

After an initial run of replica “dissent collar” enamel pins were given away as gifts, the company’s founder was inspired to do more, to raise funds in support of the lawyers and organizations helping people trying to come to the US in the face of the administration’s attempted ban on immigration. Now Dissent Pins donates 50% of the profits to organizations that are directly engaged in fighting for better lives for fellow citizens.

In 2018, Dissent Pins donated $170,936.22 to organizations including The International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), the Center for Reproductive Rights, the Bronx Freedom Fund, Planned Parenthood, Black Girls Code, DIY Girls, ChickTech, Trans Lifeline, Transgender Law Center, and the ACLU.

Each group of products that Dissent Pins makes has its own set of organizations that are supported by these donations. For more information about which organizations are supported by which products, check out the product pages on Dissent Pins’ web site. For instance, their new Orlando Ribbon Project Pin supports The LGBT+ Center Orlando.

We’re very happy to be aligned, and indeed, allied, with Dissent Pins in their efforts to support these excellent organizations.

Here’s a gallery of some of the very cool products we are looking forward to talking about this summer!

You can download a copy of their Fall 2019 catalog here and see the whole line of gifts they have to offer. Contact your favorite Abraham Associates rep to place an order!