This post contains affiliate links to books that I personally own and love.
I am an avid book collector. I started collecting books and magazines. Eventually, I had to pare down my magazine collection, for space’s sake and my need to be upwardly mobile, so I tore out all of the pages that I found worth saving from my issues of Vogue, Nylon, and Elle, and kept all of my Readymade, Bust, Venus Zine, Broken Pencil, and various local rags intact. Some sparse articles, but mostly fashion pages going back to the early 90s. All of which I still have to this day.
Back then, I could’ve given you an education about the online craft scene. I was obsessed. I knew everything about every maker, event, and resource.
When I finally stopped moving back and forth across the country in my late twenties, my book collection really started to expand. I love autobiographies, young adult fiction about the trials and tribulations of being a teenage fairy, and Sci fi fan fiction, but my collection is almost entirely built out of craft and indie handmade business books.
Books like The Handmade Marketplace and Grow Your Handmade Business by Kari Chapin sat on everyone’s bookshelf. Everyone wanted a web shop. The women leading the way felt like superstars. These weren’t just books—they were manuals for turning blogs into businesses and hobbies into something that could pay rent.
Then there was the “Inc.” collection by Meg Mateo Ilasco—Blog, Inc. and Creative, Inc., both co-written with Joy Cho (Oh Joy!) and Grace Bonney (Design*Sponge); Art, Inc., co-written by Lisa Congdon; and Mom, Inc., co-written by Cat Seto. They were indispensable, constantly referenced in online conversations. A full cast of creative celebrities, bound into glossy covers.
Everyone used the Craft, Inc. Business Planner. Everyone looked up to the makers featured in each edition.
You would use the planner—but you would never write in the book itself. The blank pages were sacred. Everything had to live somewhere else so the book could stay perfectly, obsessively mint.
There were so many others. Several from Grace Bonney, like In the Company of Women, Collective Wisdom, and Design*Sponge At Home and dozens more that still sit on my shelves.
The books that stand out most in my collection run the full spectrum: sewing, embroidery, machine knitting, hand knitting, crochet, collage, zine how-to’s, and just about every other craft that had a moment in the sun back then.
All of my books are absolutely gorgeous. It’s a carefully curated collection—one I take an enormous amount of pride in.
→ Walk the shelf. Explore the books that show up in each section of this essay.
→ Build your own reading pile — the titles that helped me start are waiting here.
→ Support the work by supporting the books that live inside it.
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AXO (she/her) is a multidisciplinary creator, editor, and builder of feminist media ecosystems based in Toronto. She is the founder of She Zine Mag, Side Project Distro, BBLGM Club, and several other projects under the AXO&Co umbrella — each rooted in DIY culture, creative rebellion, and community care. Her work explores the intersection of craft, technology, and consciousness, with an emphasis on handmade ethics, neurodivergent creativity, and the politics of making. She is an advocate for accessible creativity and the power of small-scale cultural production to spark social change. Her practice merges punk, print, and digital media while refusing to separate the emotional from the practical. Above all, her work invites others to build creative lives that are thoughtful, defiant, and deeply handmade.
