>Just like there are small farming collectives out there, I'd love for there to be micro-magazines and short stories on paper, made cheaply and distributed to small mailing lists with a single stamp (not an email newsletter!). PDF versions available for long-distance readers.

You seem to be describing what I've known (since forever) by "Zine"[¹]

[¹]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zine

I've had the opposite experience. I'm amazed at the types of print magazines on niche topics that still exist. Are you aware of https://www.stackmagazines.com/ ?

There's 100s of literary magazines (litmags) that publish in print and/or online. They tend to focus on fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. But you'll also get commentary, news, art, comics, works in translation, litmags that focus on certain genres etc. etc. Below is wikipedia's list. "One Story" is a good example of micro in the mail, literally one fiction story sent in small print format once a month. Also below is one writer's take on which are "the best" litmags, including what they could find about each's circulation numbers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_literary_magazines http://www.erikakrousewriter.com/erika-krouses-ocd-ranking-o...

I am also into micro-zines (and larger). There's a great community around Sword and Sorcery style short stories, with a handful of high quality quarterly and monthly publications, with strong authors in the genre.

> I'd love for there to be micro-magazines and short stories on paper, made cheaply and distributed to small mailing lists with a single stamp (not an email newsletter!). PDF versions available for long-distance readers.

what do you like to read? i might have some suggestions

Are you ruling our hardcover books that still get written and published? I'm on email mailing lists of two small/Independent publishers, and they still make books.

And where I live, there's a book binders workshop on my street.