Hybrid Publisher: Our Authors Keep 90% Of Royalties!

Note: This is a rough transcript. Errors may be present. 

Alice Draper (00:56)
Can you tell me about a time in your life when you felt rejected?

Nick Courtright (01:01)
Yeah, yeah, think thanks for having me first off. And yeah, it’s interesting because as you mentioned, I used to be a college professor and you know, I’m an author as well. And, you know, now it just so happens that I’m running this publishing company and rejection is a huge part of how I sort of ended up in that world. Right. So

being an author, course, getting rejected a lot, but then also rejection in my academic career. So actually the thing that led me to sort of go all in on the atmosphere press experience and trying to help authors was getting laid off from a teaching job. And I often think back on that experience, know, walking in,

a, you know, to a room where HR was and they were laying off a bunch of people and my head was on the chopping block. And, you know, I had had high hopes for this career, right, for a long time. And now I look back on that and I’m just so grateful for that rejection, like being sort of, you know, cast out of the ivory tower.

Due to circumstance and all sorts of other things, know, just it’s a difficult industry and all of that sort of gave me no choice but to pursue something different. And now that something different has led to a much better life for myself and obviously some pretty good opportunities for a whole bunch of authors as well.

Alice Draper (02:40)
Yeah, thank you for sharing that. You know, the like, cliched quote rejection is redirection. It’s so I think when in retrospect, I think you can look at this now and so clearly see that you’re glad that it happened and it redirected you. But I think it’s the kind of quote that annoys people or

offends people in the moment because like I can imagine when you’re in the thick of it and you’ve just been laid off from this job and someone’s saying like, are you being redirected towards something better? It’s kind of like being in the thick of a breakup and someone’s like, don’t worry, it’s a fish in the sea and you’re like, shut up. this sucks. So I’m this leads me to my next question, which is I’m curious to kind of know what were you feeling and thinking and going through in the moment that you got laid off? Did this idea come to you immediately?

what was that process like?

Nick Courtright (03:33)
Yeah, so it was, you know, obviously I was just really stunned, you know, like this was a teaching job where they had sort of primed me to be, you know, a long -term tenured professor there. And I, you know, sort of pursued that and took steps in my career to, you know, try to facilitate that. But then it was just broader economic forces sort of dictated that that was impossible. So I was really shocked.

because I thought I was sort of a golden boy and like I had really good reviews and stuff like that. And I was like, this is finally like working out in academia after years of frustration. And then so I was very shocked and upset at the time. I in terms of redirecting to something different, I first my first thing was like, I just needed to get more teaching gigs elsewhere. I needed to keep trying to stay in this.

Alice Draper (04:29)
Mm.

Nick Courtright (04:30)
And I’d founded Atmosphere a couple years earlier, but it was just kind of a side gig. It was a side hustle where some authors would say, I was helping them as a writing coach and they would want to help publishing their book. And I’d say, okay, sure, you know, let’s, let’s do that. This is what it’ll take to make that happen. And I can, you know, get your book out there and publish it with this little small press. But then when getting laid off, it was like,

Well, now I need money. You know, I had two kids, you know, I was a single dad. was like trying to figure out how to patch a life together. So all of a sudden I was sort of forced to think more entrepreneurial, which was never in my background. I didn’t have any sort of business background. So all of a sudden I had to be, how do I get clients? Like, how does that happen? Like, how do I find authors? How do I find people who want to go through this process?

So, you know, desperation, or as they say, necessity is the mother of all invention. think desperation also is part of that necessity.

Alice Draper (05:29)
Yeah.

Yeah, I actually said to my partner once, I think I lost like two clients at once. lost, because usually I would never lose more than one client at once, but it was just like complete coincidence that a client’s contract ended and then another client like hats apart ways. And I said to him like, there’s something very,

motivating about losing clients. Like I feel like I do my best work when I feel a little bit of like, my God, like are things on fire? So I very much resonate with the note on desperation. So tell me a little bit.

Nick Courtright (06:12)
Yeah, and I think it’s great. It is difficult when you’re in that moment, but I always think also of that Hindu symbol, the nadaraj, the dancing Shiva, where things are being created as they’re being destroyed, and that’s the cosmic dance, right? And that any time something is being torn to pieces, that’s where new opportunity is going to arise. But obviously, if you’re

Alice Draper (06:25)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Nick Courtright (06:42)
house is burning down, you you’re not going to be able to think about how much more you’re going to love your new house, right?

Alice Draper (06:50)
Were there moments of self doubt or points where you even were rejected, whether it was outwardly or kind of in your head and you questioned whether you could do this?

Nick Courtright (07:01)
of course, like every day. Yeah, yeah, there’s still a lot because I, a big thing is I was just an academic, you know, like I was a poet. have a, a NFA in creative writing. I have a PhD in literary analysis with a poetry focus, right? Like what do I know about running a business? Right. So there was a lot of imposter syndrome, you know, going in a lot of, you know, feeling, you know, insecure about it and

Alice Draper (07:02)
Yeah.

Mm.

Yeah.

Nick Courtright (07:30)
You know, if you have like one bad week, I used to just freak out, you know, like it was really, really scary. Now if I have a bad week, I’ll be like, I’ve had these before, you know, but, you know, having dealing with those issues and obviously, you know, as a hybrid press, you know, when I started this back in 2015, like nobody even knew what a hybrid press was, you know, so, and we weren’t even using that term. wasn’t even known.

Alice Draper (07:35)
Yeah.

Mm.

Mm.

Nick Courtright (07:58)
at that point for me to even know it. I just knew that we were going to be a service -based publisher and that we would be really transparent about how we did things. We’re going to be honest about how we did things. So that was something that sort of guided us from the start. But because there were a lot of people who didn’t like that model, they thought that traditional publishing was the only way to publish, there was a lot of rejection. A lot of people just

not liking what we were doing, no matter how ethical we were, no matter whether we were donating to charity, whether we were trying to, you no matter how great our testimonials were, there were still going to be haters out there, right? And we still deal with that, you know, it’s still something that we have to encounter and like work against. But now it’s a lot better than it used to be just because more people understand that this is a viable way to publish and

Alice Draper (08:40)
Yeah.

Mm.

Yeah.

Nick Courtright (08:57)
more and more of our authors are winning awards and selling a lot of books and getting the type of respect that historically would have been reserved only for traditionally published authors.

Alice Draper (09:08)
Yeah, yeah. There’s so many great things you touched on there. One of the things that really stuck out was when you said one bad week meant like the end of the world in the beginning, whereas later on it’s like, well, I’ve survived these before. And that’s very much my philosophy with normalizing something like rejections is, I think.

exposure therapy works in this context, we habituate and in the beginning it’s gonna sting, it’s gonna hurt, it’s like getting into a really, really cold pool and over time it starts to feel less and less cold, less, stings less and hurts less. But yeah, and then other kind of part being, you know, putting yourself out there as you’re gonna have haters and I think that that’s a part of anything is not everyone’s gonna like what we’re doing and that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t keep moving forward.

Nick Courtright (09:29)
Hahaha

You

Alice Draper (09:58)
the next question I want to ask is I think that as much as people are more educated on what it means to be a hybrid publisher, not everyone still knows what it means. My mom doesn’t know, I had to explain this to her like a few times. So for any listeners who don’t know what it means to work with a hybrid publisher for their book, what is hybrid publishing?

Nick Courtright (10:18)
Yeah. So basically it’s a model that for the most part means that authors are going to maintain a lot more control over their publishing experience rather than trying to go through an agent getting rejected a bit, a jillion times by agents or by traditional publishers. You know, you’re going to have a lot more control over the process. You’re going to get a larger percentage of royalties with atmosphere. get 90 % of your royalties. You’re going to maintain the rights to your book.

you so you don’t have to worry about somebody taking the rights to your book or, you know, anything that’s based on your book. you’re going to get a lot more say over aesthetic decisions, things like this sort of to make this happen. Of course you need to invest in the project, right? So it is a model that requires an investment from the author. and that’s where sometimes people are like, Ooh, I don’t, I don’t like that part. And it’s like, well, it’s sort of the same as any other industry. It’s like, you sort of get what you pay for.

Alice Draper (11:01)
Mm.

Nick Courtright (11:16)
And even with the traditional press, you’re going to get what you pay for it. So if it’s a really like small place, you’re not going to pay anything, but you’re also not really going to get very much out of it. Right. And with a traditional press, you know, you might ultimately at the end of the day, even if you sell, have a best seller, you’re going to be paying them a lot of money on the back end of the project. But since we’re in other reputable hybrid presses are, you know,

Alice Draper (11:26)
Yeah.

Nick Courtright (11:44)
based on an ethics forward, a transparent model. Like our contract is available on our website. You just go to our website, there’s the contract. Like no other publishers that I know of have a contract that they just make publicly available. And that’s where you sort of see exactly how it’s all done. You see all the services that are being provided. It’s not, you know, vanity publishing where we’re just cranking stuff out. We’re still selective in what we work with, you know, but we’re very clear about

the editorial meetings that you get, the involvement that you’re going to have in cover design, the number of cover designs that you’re going to be seeing and being able to choose from and work with designers on, getting publicity on your book, helping you get reviews, doing paid advertising for your book, sort of acting as your advocate through the duration of the entire process.

Alice Draper (12:35)
that was such a great snapshot. So I’m a podcast publicist and a couple of my clients have gone the hybrid routes and I’ve seen like, yes, you secondhand, not firsthand. wasn’t the one writing the book, kind of all the benefits. And a lot of my clients had actually opted, know, like some of them had really, really big platforms and they opted out of the traditional route.

Because of various factors, some being the timeline, because it takes years to get your book out into the world, whereas with hybrid, you can have a lot more control over the timeline. And as you mentioned, the royalties being a big one Are you open to disclosing kind of roughly what an investment would be to work with a hybrid publisher for an author?

Nick Courtright (13:02)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah, it varies a good bit. Different places sort of run at different price points and sort of run in different crowds. You know, I think for Atmosphere, we’re, you know, very, you know, competitive on the pricing side of things. And we sort of see our primary differentiator and just offering people more for the amount of investment that it is. So it ranges between **** and 11 ,700 US.

That’s sort of where our, you know, sort of range, you know, runs. And, but the amount of stuff that you get for that between editorial meetings and cover design and, you know, the amount of publicity that we do for our authors and the distribution and all of that, it’s definitely a lot of stuff that authors. And, you know, the big thing is that what we really think a lot about is that we don’t really want to be a big publisher.

You know, we’d want to be a better publisher, you know, that we want to, we want people to feel, you know, really like valued in the experience. Cause historically in publishing it is hit the whole industry is rejection based, right? It’s like.

Alice Draper (14:15)
Mm.

I know, I just said in one of my questions, it’s like, no matter what route you go, there’s gonna be rejections. Yeah, anyway.

Nick Courtright (14:35)
Yeah, it’s brutal. mean, I was looking at my, you know, because I’m also a writer myself and looking at, you know, my literary journal submissions, they used to submit a lot to literary journals. And, you know, I’ve been published and I can say like, I’ve been published in 100 literary journals. And then I go and I look at the record and see how many rejections it’s like, it’s way more than 10 times that many. Like I was getting rejected, like, all the time. It’s crazy how much rejection is part of the publishing.

So we know that like authors a lot of times are coming to us with battle scars, you know, from years of sort of having sand kicked on their face because of the sort of power imbalance between publishers or agents, you know, and writers were on the one side, these gatekeepers hold all the cards and then the writers, no matter how talented or dedicated they are, are sort of left groveling, you know, to try to get some love. So

Alice Draper (15:05)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Nick Courtright (15:35)
We as a press have just really wanted to help authors, to listen to authors, to make them feel validated, to match them up with an editor who’s going to help them accentuate their own vision rather than us trying to distort it into our own vision and let the authors decide which cover option they’re going to move forward with rather than us trying to just say, this is what marketing says is going to work. Now you’re stuck.

Alice Draper (15:55)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Nick Courtright (16:06)
You know, you know, yeah.

Alice Draper (16:07)
There’s actually so there’s an episode on this show with gay Hendrix, who’s quite a well known author. And he talks about getting this great book deal like a lot of money and, and the editor he was working with ended up leaving and he ended up getting people that didn’t care about his book and did an awful cover. he said like promoting that book felt like promoting something that you like have no connection to you don’t like like it’s just not something that you know, after putting all that

work into writing that book, like grueling hours and hours and because, you know, the traditional route there is it, there runs a risk that you may not have control over what your product being your book looks like in the end. Sorry, so you can carry on.

Nick Courtright (16:52)
Yeah, no, no, it’s brutal. It’s brutal. That happens a lot. And so, and that’s just like different layers of rejection, right? Like even if you get accepted, even if you get the golden ticket, you know, then you’re maybe having your ideas about your vision for the story rejected, you know, by an editor who may or may not care about your work or your vision for how it should look might be rejected. So, you know, there’s a lot of that going in and we do

Alice Draper (17:01)
Yeah.

Nick Courtright (17:22)
you know, sort of try to counteract that at atmosphere press.

Alice Draper (17:26)
Yeah, yeah. And I think it’s probably a balancing act because at the same time you want the book to work marketing wise, you want it to sell, you want it to perform. And I think part of that investment includes a lot of those components. What do you, because there’s obviously there’s the self publishing route where someone just goes and puts the book up on Amazon themselves. But what do they get? What kind of support do they get?

Nick Courtright (17:40)
Mm -hmm.

Alice Draper (17:51)
like marketing wise, I don’t know if you can break it down into the nitty gritties of what they would be getting.

Nick Courtright (17:57)
Yeah, yeah. So we do a lot of that. That was actually something that, you know, we worked really hard just over the last like couple years, because we had all the nuts and bolts of like, producing a book, you know, getting going through the editorial and the design, like we had that locked down, like pretty well by like 2020. But the marketing part, we were still like, okay, let’s try to figure this out. So now, you know, we help get authors interviews, right? We

Alice Draper (18:15)
Hmm.

Nick Courtright (18:27)
help authors get reviews for their books. even like guarantee them a certain number of reviews for their book. You know, we’ll try to get them Kirkus stuff taken care of. We host readings with our authors and really like a big part of what we do is what we do a lot of keyword analysis, you know, to try to make sure that books are like listed properly, you know, so that they’re gonna get.

know, organic traffic when possible. And then the biggest thing of all, think is just the author education, you we do consultations with authors, we give them a lot of guidance. We tell them like, okay, this is how this has worked in the past. These are some things that you can do right from when an author signs on with us. We’re trying to help them, you know, give them some coaching on building their mailing list,

You know, stuff like that, mean, self -publishing is great. Like a lot of authors are, you know, have had wonderful experiences self -publishing, but a lot of people, you know, need more guidance, like not just on producing a good book, but also in like knowing what next steps to take in terms of getting the…

Alice Draper (19:35)
And do you help get the books into bookshops? Because I know that’s something that sometimes helps like getting into Barnes and Noble’s is very hard if you’re just self -harvesting.

Nick Courtright (19:44)
Yeah, that’s definitely something that, you know, there are, it’s complicated, right? Because a lot of times with books, with bookstores, especially like big box stores, you know, you’re looking at like paying for shelf placement, things like that, that are difficult. So some of those things we’ve, you know, dallyed in a little bit, you know, but a lot of them just don’t seem to be really great value propositions for authors. But we

Alice Draper (19:50)
Yeah.

Mm.

Yeah.

Nick Courtright (20:13)
do have our books stocked in a lot of independent bookstores, because they tend to be more amenable, especially working with local authors and trying to help get books on shelves and get them reading events in their local area, and just do anything that you can to try to build yourself a little bit of a profile, if that’s what you want. Some authors don’t even care about that stuff. And then by virtue of that, we don’t twist their arms to try to make them.

Alice Draper (20:17)
Mm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm.

Nick Courtright (20:43)
you know, want to get out there and hit the road and pound the pavement and sell books under the trunks of their cars. You know, some authors are dying to do that stuff and we help facilitate that. And other ones are like, I’d rather just sit at home. You know, and that’s cool too.

Alice Draper (20:54)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I’ve seen some of the commitments like some of my clients have had to their publishers with promoting books and like, I don’t know how anyone could fit that into their schedule. But it is I think it’s one of the challenging things of writing a book is not just the writing process, it’s the post writing process and even pre writing process because getting an audience building an audience of readers for your book is perhaps one of the hardest things. And I think it’s also worth

mentioning just from conversations I’ve had and stuff, but something that is often in the minds of traditional publishing houses when they select authors is do you have an audience of buyers to buy that book? If you have a giant mailing list and like huge social media platform, you are more likely to get a book deal. that

often goes against what writers spend their time doing, which is writing and not getting huge platforms. So those rejections are not necessarily about your writing. They’re often about something much bigger than that.

Nick Courtright (22:04)
absolutely. And that’s, think, one of the most ironic parts about traditional publishing now is that a lot of times it does have a huge bunch to do with what is your platform. Like how many Instagram followers do you have? How many people are on your newsletter? How famous are you? And that’s a big thing that is attractive to traditional publishers. But the irony there is that those are the exact kind of people who would benefit more.

Alice Draper (22:08)
Mm.

Nick Courtright (22:33)
from a hybrid publishing kind of deal, where they get to work with professionals like they would with a traditional place, but they just invest upfront and then they get so much more on the royalties return that they’re gonna end up like quadrupling the amount of actual like financial takeaway. Because if it’s not the publishers’ publicity apparatus that’s selling the book,

Alice Draper (22:34)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Nick Courtright (23:02)
It’s just the author’s own following, then they’re in perfect position to either self -publish or hybrid publish and just, you know, bypass giving such a huge percentage of their royalties to a traditional publisher.

Alice Draper (23:17)
Yeah, which as I mentioned, I’ve seen some of my clients do and do very well as doing that with kind of going the hybrid route. So I’m going to go on a limb here and kind of share my own perspective on what was my perspective on hybrid publishing until I saw good examples of it.

I, as a writer, and I’m sure you can relate to this, I’m sure a lot of writers can relate to it, thought that the only way, and I haven’t written a book yet, I haven’t even tried to write a book yet, but I plan on writing a book one day, like every writer in the world. And my kind of belief system has been that I, quote, unquote, made it if I land a book deal. Like a book deal is like the ultimate ticket.

that says, you have done something good and worthy enough that, you know, we want to put it out there into the world. And that really was challenged by seeing clients of mine actually reject book deals and go like the self -publishing, hybrid publishing route. So what I want to know from you is for any listeners out there who feel like they like,

and Grote failed or were rejected by the literary world because they didn’t get a book deal and now they’re considering alternative options. Do have any thoughts on that? Any thoughts on kind of like navigating those thought processes?

Nick Courtright (24:41)
Yeah, I mean, well, rejection is fuel, right? So and that’s great. And I understand, you know, it still has that like old school like cache to it, like getting the book deal. But the thing is, is that it’s just for such a like, it’s like saying that, I, if I’m gonna be a gambler, I didn’t make it until I win the lottery. It’s like, well, that’s it’s just like the thinking is just a little flawed, right? Because

Alice Draper (24:44)
Yeah.

Mm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Nick Courtright (25:11)
There are so many amazing writers who are getting passed over maybe because they don’t have 200 ,000 Instagram followers. Like writerly talent has less and less to do with this sort of equation. If you’re gonna try to write a book that’s just purely and bluntly super marketable, then yeah, traditional publishing can be a good route for you. But the fact is,

most writers write because they love writing. They write because they feel like they have something they want to say. You know, whether that be nonfiction, whether it be memoir, they’re telling their own story, whether it be they just had this sci -fi idea in their head that they just needed to get down in a novel, like they’re a poet, whatever. It’s like they’re writing because they love writing. And the thing is, is that that doesn’t have a whole heck of a lot to do with traditional publishing in this day and age.

Alice Draper (25:44)
him.

Yeah, unfortunately.

Nick Courtright (26:10)
Right? So if you love writing, you know, yeah, if you love writing and you feel like you created something that you really want to be cared for, it’s like, you’re just going to have such a better experience, like taking control over your, you know, writing journey and your publishing journey, like by working with a place like atmosphere or some other reputable firm or self publishing on your own.

It’s just going to be such a more validating experience because you know that, you you did it on your own terms. You weren’t waiting around a decade, you know, to have somebody say like, you’re good enough because that the definitions with which they’re deciding who’s good enough might not necessarily even be aligned with yours.

Alice Draper (26:52)
Mm.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So if a writer has decided they want to go the hybrid route, they’ve weighed up the options and this is what they want to pursue. What do think that they should take into consideration before choosing a publisher to work with?

Nick Courtright (27:54)
Yeah, well, I think it’s really just about the clarity of the contract and the deal, right? And that’s, like I said, why we make ours public online, because it guarantees that authors keep their rights to their work. They get a large royalty share, and they have final say over some key aesthetic moves. And it also is very clear cut. And this is probably the most important one of all, honestly, is the most important one, is what are you getting?

What types of meetings are you getting? What type of design are you getting? Like what distribution are you getting? Like, are these people actually going to be working with? And another really huge one, look at the masthead, you know, go to the website, see who is on the team. Like who will you actually be working with? Because if it’s, you know, a place like a publisher or a hybrid publisher where you can’t tell like who’s working for them.

Alice Draper (28:25)
Yeah.

Mm -mm.

Mm.

Nick Courtright (28:51)
Like who knows, like you might be getting like outsourced to, you know, interns in a call center somewhere, you know, like people who aren’t going to care about your book, who have worked for the company for like five minutes, they might be gone tomorrow. You might lose your editor, like that story you told about the traditional published author. Whereas with us, you know, we’ve got our team on our website, like 90 % of our team has been working with us for multiple years.

Alice Draper (28:53)
Yeah.

Nick Courtright (29:20)
You know, and these are people who, you know, they have MFAs or PhDs or creative writing backgrounds or design backgrounds. If they’re in that, they’ve worked in book publicity for years. They’ve been web designers for years. You know, these types of skill sets and being able to actually see their faces, you know, see their names, look them up online. They’re real people. You know, that I think really goes a long way and knowing that you’re working with.

Alice Draper (29:20)
Mm.

Nick Courtright (29:49)
you know, really reputable people. That’s going to be, you know, much better than just, you know, trying to, you know, jump on whatever service might be the cheapest or the path of least resistance.

Alice Draper (29:59)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I haven’t gone that route, but I think that that all makes perfect sense. And, what I’m really leaning from that is take a look at who you’re working with and choose the people, make them like, make that kind of a key part of your.

decision -making process, which I’ve seen again, some of my clients as they like would choose PYGRA publishers based on the fact that the marketing team are like experts and have connections to certain media people or something. I think getting to know who you’re working with is probably what you’re saying. So Nick, I’m curious to know a little bit about your own literary journey. You’ve written four books. The most recent one is The Forgotten World.

Nick Courtright (30:18)
Mm -hmm.

You

Alice Draper (30:46)
What has your relationship with getting your work out there as a poet been like?

Nick Courtright (30:52)
Of course it’s been utter torture. Yeah, so I’ve published three books of poetry and one book of literary criticism. And in all of the cases, it was grueling to some extent, sending it out, getting it rejected. Yeah, just getting it rejected. My second book was actually the first one that I wrote and it had

Alice Draper (30:54)
You

Nick Courtright (31:21)
been rejected dozens of times. had been a finalist to a bunch of different contests. And then I just got so discouraged that I actually just put it in a drawer. I gave up on it. And then just wrote a whole new book, which ultimately became Punchline, which was my first book. And then only after that one came out, did I go back and say, okay, let’s try to rehabilitate this other one. I like changed it, put a new title on it, like rearranged.

Alice Draper (31:25)
Mm.

Yeah.

Nick Courtright (31:49)
how it was laid out, all of that, and then finally ended up getting that one out there. And then after that, was another six or seven years before I published another book of poetry. And I’d written multiple books in that time period, right? But just the thought of going out into that ringer of rejection again, you know, definitely just wasn’t very appealing.

Alice Draper (32:05)
Hmm.

Nick Courtright (32:16)
So it’s been difficult. And then the book of literary criticism, like that was another one where, you know, I had to go through all these like rounds of proposals with like academic publishers and, know, and then they just take forever and ever and ever to respond to you. And then when they do respond, they might give you like a line, like a sentence. And then ultimately with that, I still had it out for consideration with some academic publishers, but I ended up getting an offer from a

Alice Draper (32:17)
Hmm.

Nick Courtright (32:46)
BlazeFox Press, which is like a small independent publisher based out of Buffalo. And I was just like, I’m just taking this, you know? So I was glad to have that, glad to have the book out there, you know? But yeah, like any writer, you know, has gotten, has taken their licks, I think.

Alice Draper (32:54)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

How did you stay resilient in the face of all those rejections and actually get your writing out there? Because I think there’s probably so many writers who never get their work out there, never sees the light of day.

Nick Courtright (33:19)
Yeah, well definitely like perseverance is a big part of it. And I think like now it is really great that there are like self -publishing and hybrid publishing are options because they do mean that you don’t have to give up on your project. There are alternatives. That’s different than how it was, you know, even like, you know, 10, 15 years ago where like, like those were

Alice Draper (33:23)
Mm.

Mm.

Mmm.

Nick Courtright (33:47)
still very much seen as being like, like you sort of gave up on your work kind of viewpoints. And now that’s not the case anymore. So please don’t give up on your work. know, sometimes you need to let it sit for a while. Sometimes you need to think it through. That’s great. Like you always want to, you know, be thoughtful in your decisions, but don’t give up on it. You know, it’s just because you haven’t found the right.

publisher, the right editor yet doesn’t mean they’re not out there. They are out there. You just haven’t found the right one.

Alice Draper (34:18)
Mm.

I think there’s great wisdom and also letting it sit and coming back to it. Cause I think that when it’s very fresh, you’re probably not the most objective viewer of the writing. You’re probably leaving your book in your drawer for a few years. You probably came at it with a completely different set of eyes and approach to, getting that book edited and ready for the world.

Nick Courtright (34:44)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, think it’s, you know, a lot of time, a little bit of perspective helps. Like, I think a writer’s never going to be able to be like fully objective about their own work, like, even if it’s been years, but it does get easier. Yeah, which is why editors are important. Everyone’s, well, we’ll end up with some, you know, author contact us and they’re like, I can just like skip the editorial stage. I don’t need that. I like already know. And it’s like, it’s like, no, I’m pretty sure, you know, like that every

Alice Draper (34:49)
Mm.

why editors are important.

You

Nick Courtright (35:13)
you know, like TS Eliot needed an editor, you know, like every great writer through history has like benefited from editors because, you know, it’s just impossible to see your work.

Alice Draper (35:24)
And I mean, many great writers take it a step further and go through like countless beta readers, like before even reaching that editing stage, because there are so, the human brain has so many blind spots, there’s so many things we can be missing.

Nick Courtright (35:33)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah. And also another key thing was sort of on the counter of that is don’t listen to everyone, right? You know, cause there are always, you know, nothing venture, nothing gained, you know, like fortune favors the bold, like all of these ideas. It’s like, if you’re, if you are putting yourself out there, if you’re doing something interesting, like not everybody’s going to like it, you know, so it’s, it’s less about pleasing everybody and more about like pleasing your exact audience and ignoring.

Alice Draper (35:45)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mm.

Yeah.

Nick Courtright (36:07)
everybody else.

Alice Draper (36:08)
I’m curious to know, because you probably have a lot of experience with this, is how do you strike that balance? Because there’s, on the one hand, major blind spots that you could have as an author, which I’m sure many of your authors have, where they’re just not hitting the mark and the book’s just not living up to its potential, versus them holding conviction of, this is an idea I want to keep and it’s very central to the book.

navigating that as an author, where like what is bad and should be scrapped, kill your darlings and should be reworked versus what is good and should stay. How can an author discern between like those things, I guess, when they’re getting feedback.

Nick Courtright (36:44)
you

Yeah, I mean, it’s always going to be a balancing act, right? And I think if you’ve got to, like, if you’re going to go into a writing workshop, for example, it’s like, you don’t want to listen to everybody in the workshop, you want to listen to the one person who gets you, right? And that’s sort of the same thing. And I always think that, you know, you shouldn’t necessarily try to write to a particular audience, you should just try to be better at

Alice Draper (36:58)
Mm.

Yeah, yeah.

Nick Courtright (37:23)
the skill set that you have as a writer. If you just hone your own craft and work on your craft and work and work and work on getting better at your craft, at reading things that you admire, modeling after them, you know, taking efforts to improve your technique. If you’re doing those steps over time, you’re going to have an audience. Like the audience is going to exist, right? You can’t necessarily try to write towards them.

Alice Draper (37:46)
Mm -mm. Mm.

Nick Courtright (37:52)
It’s almost like they sort of emerge out of the woodwork once you become sufficiently expert at your own style, because you’re not the only person who would find that style appealing. So I think it’s odd in that way, right? That the audience just, they’ll find you rather than you needing necessarily to try to change your style to match up.

Alice Draper (38:01)
Mmm.

Mm.

Yeah.

Mm.

Nick Courtright (38:22)
You just need to be you really, really well and there will be others who like who that is.

Alice Draper (38:27)
Yeah, I love that so much. So when you’re speaking about this, is this writing in a way that it’s being shared publicly continually so that that audience can find you? What is this process where the audience is finding you? Or is it just holding your craft so that when the book goes out in the world, the audience will find you?

Nick Courtright (38:45)
I think it’s a little bit of both, right? And it takes time. A lot of times authors want their first book to be a big hit, right? But you’ve got to build audience over time. know, like people now I’ll hear from somebody and they’re like, I really liked this book of yours that I read, but I wrote it like seven years ago. You know, whereas like back then, you know, I might’ve been like, I wish I had another reader and it just took time, you know, to like find that audience. And then you…

Alice Draper (38:47)
Mm.

Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Mm.

Yeah.

Nick Courtright (39:16)
then when you find something and they’re like, are into what you’re doing, then they might go back and they find your other books and then they read those and then it sort of grows organically over time. And that’s just the way it is with writing. There’s not gonna be something, especially in literature and like fiction and poetry, everything is nuanced, everything is idiosyncratic to some extent.

Alice Draper (39:33)
Yeah.

So what comes to my mind? Cause I agree with everything you’re saying. And it’s something that I practice in the sense of like marketing myself as you know, like I just need to put the post out there, put it in the world. Like, doesn’t matter if it just gets a lot of engagement and over time you kind of see that compounding effect of, you know, growing an audience and like kind of compounding gains of what’s happening by putting yourself out there.

But when it comes to, I again, haven’t written a book, but it’s probably a reason why is when it comes to doing something like writing a book, I think that that would be the area I would be the most, I would have the most perfectionist tendencies towards out of everything like ever.

because I identify as a writer more strongly than I identify as anything else. So, you know, even an entrepreneur, like my business means so much to me, but I identify as a writer first, is the thing that I identified as when I was seven years old and continue to throughout my adulthood. So the thought of writing a book and that book going out in the world and that book bombing and no one reading that book is like the ego.

dying and like I don’t think I’m ready for that. So I wonder if this is something that authors have like where they’re just so scared that this book is not going to perform in a way that they kind of are more scared of this than anything else not going right in their life if that makes sense because they are too entwined with their identity as a writer.

Nick Courtright (40:48)
You

absolutely. I mean, I feel like a big part of what we do at Atmosphere is actually a bit of sort of therapy on that because it is scary. know, publishing a book is scary, you know, getting it out there, you you don’t know how people are going to react. Like everybody wants to be loved. Everyone’s going to be like nervous about the haters.

Alice Draper (41:26)
Mm.

Nick Courtright (41:38)
You know, and the thing is, is the more successful your book is, the more haters you’re going to have, you know? So it’s like, it’s definitely like a devil’s bargain there. You’re like, I want everybody to know about my book and be like, well, get ready. You know, like you’re going to have people who don’t like it. And like, that’s, that’s great. That’s fine. You know, somebody who’s picks up your book, they flip through it and they put it down. You know, you’re like, why didn’t you like my book? It’s like, well, you know, that just wasn’t the right reader. You know, it’s fine.

Alice Draper (41:43)
Yeah.

Mm.

Hehehehehe

Mm. Mm. Mm.

Nick Courtright (42:08)
But yeah, so the perfectionist thing is a huge issue. We really like try to, you know, coach people towards letting go, you know, they’ve got to be sort of like the empty nest writer who’s like children, you like left the nest and now they’re like at home alone and they don’t know what to do with themselves anymore. And they’re worried about what their children are gonna do out there in the world, you know, it’s a very, it is a scary thing, you know, and we try to, you

Alice Draper (42:23)
you

Mm -hmm.

Nick Courtright (42:36)
coach people through that, make them more at ease about it. And also just always remember that a book is just, it is a historical document. Like every book is a time capsule. So if you write a book and it comes out and you’re like years later, you’re like, I wish I’d done this differently or I didn’t really like this book. And then that just means you got to write another one. And yeah.

Alice Draper (42:47)
Yeah.

Yeah, different perspectives.

Nick Courtright (43:04)
you know, and you’ll become a different person. Like I look back at the one that I published in 2012, that’s not me anymore. You know, that was written by a different person. I even look at the Forgotten World, which came out, I think in 2021. And yeah, different person, you know, cause I wrote a lot of that between like, you know, 2015 to like 2020. And it’s like, that was a long time ago, you know? So, and it’s always going to be like,

Alice Draper (43:11)
Mm.

Yeah.

Nick Courtright (43:33)
So just sort of cutting the cord, realizing that yes, it is just a document of history. And then, you know, you will continue creating new history from there, I think is definitely a chasm people need to cross.

Alice Draper (43:44)
Yeah.

The chasm you need to cross. love that so much. Such a great apt metaphor and a document of a history. And I think, you know, something that I look at when I look at my decisions is, will I regret not doing this thing more than this thing not working out? So I think as an author,

if you as an aspiring author, if you have not written that book, this is how I would look at it is I would be like, will I regret not writing the book more than writing the book and the book not being successful? And it’s always a former like I would much rather know that the book wasn’t successful than always have that question of like, what if like what if I did like went and did that thing that I always wanted to do? So yeah, anyway.

Can you talk to me a little bit about your latest book? So I know that you explore a bunch of themes. It’s a poetry, it’s a collection of poems, explores topics kind of around the world. Love, colonialism, whiteness. Did the poems come first or did the themes come first? It’s just a question I’m curious about. I’ll jump into.

Nick Courtright (44:56)
Yeah, yeah. So The Forgotten World is basically, it’s a book, it’s sort of traveling a lot. I wrote most of the book not in the United States. So I was around in a lot of other different countries, you know, sort of like, in oftentimes alone. And, you know, being adrift in the world, in a sense, and trying to make sense of that, trying to make sense of culture, trying to make sense of

you know, being an American in the world and all the ramifications and moral quandaries that that provides. So the book is in a sense sort of a travelogue, like going geographically around the world to these different places and sort of commenting on it. Ultimately then in the final part to come back to the United States, which at the time was sort of being, you know, roiled by, you know, the Trump

administration by the early stage pandemic, by the George Floyd murder, like these sort of things, and then trying to reconcile, like the complex issue of America and American -ness in the global context. And it’s called The Forgotten World because the book came out during the pandemic, you know, at a time where it’s like, wow, there is a lot of other world out there, but we’re all

Of course, like it is in a state of having been forgotten because we are incapable of accessing.

Alice Draper (46:32)
Yeah. And I like that you’re writing about it from the other side, because I’m not American, but I talk to Americans all like all the time. All my clients are American. And I’m South African. I’m living in the Middle East right now. Like you have traveled fair bit and spent time in other places. And America is so central to the psyche of people in other parts of the world. When George Floyd and Black Lives Matter was happening in 2020,

Nick Courtright (46:40)
You

Alice Draper (47:01)
That was a central part of discussions in South Africa. sometimes I have clients ask me, how do you work with Americans? How do you keep up to date? And I’m like, I don’t think you understand. Your news is our news. It is very much like America kind of shapes culture. there is a kind of, from the other side, there is this, I don’t know what the wording would be. Where you feel.

There’s this distinct feeling of loneliness slash gaslighting. I don’t know what, how to describe it, but when you, when things go wrong and other parts of the world, when global catastrophes happen, genocides happen, whatever is happening and you see Americans who are very vocal about social issues as it pertains to America, not say anything. And it’s like, there’s a whole other world doesn’t exist beyond America.

And I mean, I’ve had very smart clients be surprised that it’s summer in South Africa when it’s winter in America, because the concept of the global South having opposite climates is surprising. So I’m very curious, like kind of your journey towards reconciling that. I know it doesn’t relate too much to rejection, but it’s just something.

Nick Courtright (48:18)
Yeah, well, mean, it’s definitely a huge part of it because America is so central, you know, and that is almost in the book sort of a sense of shame, you know, because of that. It’s like if you’re an American traveling around the world, it’s like, we already are like pumping our culture like into everyone’s ears, like everywhere they go. It’s like being like so like almost borderline irritated being in a place like

Alice Draper (48:32)
Mmm.

you

Nick Courtright (48:47)
you know, Egypt or Cambodia and the, you know, person driving the car, like turns the radio on and it’s playing like Taylor Swift or something. It’s just like, gosh, you’re like, you can’t escape American -ness, you know? And then of course, a big part of the book is helping trying to remind people that there is an other world, that there are other people out there, that it’s not just like Americans, naval gazing at American -ness, right?

Alice Draper (48:56)
you

Nick Courtright (49:17)
There is, there are other cultures and that they’re not scary. You know, there’s a lot of like, because America is just huge and a lot of people don’t get out of it sufficiently. Or if they do get out of it, they’re just like going to Europe, you know, which is not as, you know, different as it probably needs to be to actually like show them the reality and the richness of experiences in places like, you know,

Alice Draper (49:22)
Mm -hmm. Mm.

you

Yeah.

Nick Courtright (49:47)
Africa, Asia, South America, et cetera, et where there are people living their lives and they’re like good honest people, you know, with different cultures that maybe a lot of Americans are sort of oblivious to.

Alice Draper (50:04)
So you’ve mentioned, and I think you mentioned this in one of our emails, that creators can take charge of their creative destinies. What do you mean by this?

Nick Courtright (50:15)
Yeah, so I just mean, you know, if you are, you know, an author, if you’re a writer, if you’re, you know, wanting to get your book out, you don’t need to wait around, you know, like you can take steps today to like have the sort of publishing experience that you want, you know, so, you know, with Atmosphere Press, you know, like I recommend, you know, just check us out, you know, go to AtmospherePress .com.

Alice Draper (50:26)
Mmm.

Nick Courtright (50:43)
You can submit a manuscript on there. We have free book giveaways on there. We run a free author interview series for writers at all stages of their project completion. We even have a publishing quiz on there where you can take this quiz and just answer questions about your personal vision on your book cover, how you view marketing, how you view…

or how complete your work is, other sort of questions just about the publishing experience. And then we’ll send you advice based on the answers that you gave to the quiz, whether that means, hey, you should do self -publishing or hey, you should seek an agent or hey, you might actually be a good fit for Atmosphere. So one of the big things about us

is that we want to be supportive of all writers and give resources to all writers regardless of whether they ultimately end up working with us. So that’s the type of thing where you don’t need to wait around hoping that somebody is going to knight you. You can go out there and you can start taking some steps to make a difference for yourself as a writer.

Alice Draper (51:51)
Mm.

Yeah.

I love that so much. And I think this is not related to writing, it’s related to entrepreneurship, because we’re both here, as both of those sorts of people. I think that one of the keys to running a sustainable business that where either you have clients to you retain, which obviously book publishing.

Maybe they come back to you for the next book. Or you get referrals as being able to tell the client when they’re not a fit, which it sounds like you do through those quizzes. And it’s something that I believe in very much. like, I want to tell someone when I don’t think they’ll benefit from my services because ultimately it breeds trust. It means that the people that I do work with are right for me and for the business and they stick around for longer. So yeah, I love that you included that.

Nick Courtright (52:23)
Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm.

Alice Draper (52:50)
so Nick, just want to thank you so much for being a fantastic guest on this show.

for listeners listening, you can order a copy of Nick’s books on Amazon. They’re all there. I’ll include links to show notes. I’m also going to be giving away a copy of the Forgotten World to a listener who subscribes and reviews the show. You just need to email me screenshots at media at hustlingwriters .com. Thank you again, Nick.

Nick Courtright (53:13)
Thank you.