Nick Courtright, Atmosphere Press

[00:00:00] Sanjay Parekh: Welcome to the Side Hustle to Small Business podcast, powered by Hiscox. I'm your host, Sanjay Parekh. Throughout my career, I've had side hustles, some of which have turned into real businesses. But first and foremost, I'm a serial technology entrepreneur. In the creator space, we hear plenty of advice on how to hustle harder and why you can sleep when you're dead.

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Today's guest is Nick Courtright, the founder and CEO of Atmosphere Press, an author friendly publishing firm that aims to put the author first throughout the publishing journey. Nick, welcome to the show. 

[00:01:08] Nick Courtright: Thank you for having me. 

[00:01:10] Sanjay Parekh: So, I'm excited to have you on, because I don't know that there's anybody that has never thought at some point, I should write a book.

And you've actually gone down that rabbit hole and, you're helping authors do that. But before we get into all of that and, what that entails, give us a little bit about you and what got you to where you are today. 

[00:01:28] Nick Courtright: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. So I, was a writer. I was one of those people who wanted to write a book, starting when I was all the way back in elementary school. It was just part of my DNA right from the very start.

And I ended up pursuing being a writer, ended up going and getting a master's degree in creative writing, ultimately a PhD in literature, and I was a college literature and creative writing professor, plus a lot of freshman composition as well. And I was just doing that and then, I was helping some writers on the side, the proverbial side hustle, right? And one writer wanted me to help him publish his book and I blew him off for a little while, but then ultimately I was like, "Okay, yeah, I'll help you publish your book." And that was 2015. 

[00:02:23] Sanjay Parekh: And at this point, had you ever published a book at all before?

Or was this the first time doing it for somebody? 

[00:02:29] Nick Courtright: I'd had a couple, by that time I'd had a couple of my books published, so I knew it from the author facing side of things, and I'd also been involved with a small literary press, a place that only published like two to four books a year, so I had some idea of like how the distribution side of things went, so I had a little bit of knowledge. That was why I was, "This project for somebody else."

But yeah, that sort of became the first Atmosphere Press book and now here we are and we've published about 1200 books. So, one thing led to another. 

[00:03:05] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. So, was this the first time you'd ever started a company, a business, done a side hustle? Like were you, was your first one when you were a kid, maybe? What's the first time you did something like this? 

[00:03:19] Nick Courtright: I definitely didn't have sort of an entrepreneurial background. It wasn't something where I was like, "Oh, I'm just going to start my own thing." I wasn't really thinking like that. But I always had a passion, a lot of gigs. I was always a gig heavy person.

So rather than having, this is my full-time job and this is what I'm doing, I always had a bunch of little things that I was cobbling together in existence on. And then if one of them started scaling up a little bit, I would get excited and then it would like flop, and then I’d scale down another one.

And I was always somebody who had five jobs at the same time. But I had tried to start another business, before Atmosphere, like it was just like an editing company where I was going to try to help businesses edit their materials, but I just had no idea what I was doing, so that ended up not really going anywhere.

But I was still just a college professor. That was what I was doing with the majority of my time.  

[00:04:25] Sanjay Parekh: Right. Were there any entrepreneurs in the family like parents, siblings, anybody like that? 

[00:04:32] Nick Courtright: No, not at that time, so my dad worked for the Ohio EPA. So, he was working for the government, trying to do the good work for the environment, and his father was a steel worker and his father was a farmer and worked in coal mines.

So I came from a very like working class, then slowly but surely upwardly mobile, family background. But no entrepreneurs really in the mix. 

[00:05:07] Sanjay Parekh: Interesting. So then, when you started this endeavor, was there anything that made you nervous? Because this is all new. You were going down the path of being a poet and instead you became a businessman.

What made you nervous? 

[00:05:22] Nick Courtright: Yeah, I was definitely very anxious. At first I was like, so 2015 to 2018, I just took projects on when they came to me and I was still teaching classes and stuff. But then 2018, one of my teaching gigs fell through and I was like, “Oh, no." Like I need to like actually try to turn this little side hustle and see if I can make some money.

And that was the first time I really tried to go out and seek clients. And lo and behold, there were clients to be found. And I remember just the first month, going from a two grand a month side hustle and then trying a little bit and it was seven grand in a month and I was like, "Oh my God," like this was crazy money because I didn't come from a wealthy background.

So, I was like, "This is insane." I was like going nuts. I was like buying all the Doritos I wanted, and but it didn't make me.

[00:06:26] Sanjay Parekh: It's good to see that the pinnacle for you was all the Doritos that are possible. 

[00:06:31] Nick Courtright: Yeah, at that stage, I feel like I moved beyond that a little bit now, but you know. So, still some love for Cool Ranch.

[00:06:37] Sanjay Parekh: Now it's Cheetos, not just Doritos. You got to expand the repertoire there. Okay, so you start this visit start only a little bit more than triple your monthly income in a minute. What does that make you do? Like then do you start thinking "Oh wait, should I get rid of all the other jobs?"

Like when does that epiphany come of, “Wait, I should go all in on this?”

[00:07:03] Nick Courtright: Yeah. So that wasn't until 2019, because I was still in a PhD program at that point. And I was like, I was going to finish the PhD. I didn't, I was too deep in. But I left behind all my other teaching jobs by that point and it was scary.

It was like nerve wracking because I was really — I'd worked very hard for a dozen years to try to eke out a little bit of a foothold in academia. But yeah, so it was nerve wracking to pull the plug on that career but I was glad to do it. I had burned myself out on teaching.

And then once I really went all in 2020, completely 100 percent Atmosphere Press, that was when things really started to grow and I realized, "Oh no, I need to become a businessman," which was not on my list of things to do. 

[00:08:03] Sanjay Parekh: And one quick question when you were in academia, were you on a tenure track kind of professor type of deal or where were you? 

[00:08:13] Nick Courtright: Oh, I was mostly contingent adjunct life. I had a couple like full time or visiting assistant professorships, but there was no like you're set for life kind of situation. And I'm very grateful for that because I worry that if I'd had that, I wouldn't have had the urgency to pursue something that ultimately was a much better option.

[00:08:37] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Yeah. So, reflecting back, you think that would have been a bad thing for you? 

[00:08:40] Nick Courtright: Oh, terrible. The job that I lost in 2018, I'm so grateful for that. Like it's that weird thing where it's like the blessing in disguise, right? Where you don't necessarily know and sometimes a really bad piece of news for you in the short run like really ends up playing out well for you in the long term.

[00:09:03] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. 2020 hits. When in 2020 do you decide to go all in on this? Is it pre pandemic or post pandemic? 

[00:09:12] Nick Courtright: Oh, it was literally, I did my PhD defense in February of 2020. So, I was one of the last live defenses. And from there I was like, "Okay, I'm finally out. I'm completely out of academia.”

So, I went all in and then the pandemic obviously was crazy. And, it was actually crazy good timing in a lot of ways because I had nothing else to do, right? It was the perfect time to go a thousand percent in on a business. And I was just working like a bajillion hours a week, because what else was I going to do with my time?

[00:09:56] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Did you find, did that accelerate things for the business or was it the same pace as before? You went from two to seven in a month. Do you feel like it got faster because of the pandemic? 

[00:10:09] Nick Courtright: Oh, absolutely. Like, it blew up. I don't want to say blow up. It's not like we're a billion-dollar company, but it got significantly larger.

I'd have to look at the numbers exactly, but it was probably like 50 plus percent growth, 2020 over 2019, something thereabouts, so it was substantial. And then, it didn't hurt that the way the world was at that point, people didn't have anything else to spend money on or invest in so people were very interested in investing in a passion project that they'd been writing for a long time. And then now they needed an editor, and they needed a book designer, and they needed distribution, and they needed somebody to help mentor them through this process. And they had the liquidity to be able to invest in themselves like that.

So yeah, that really worked well. And I think if I knew everything then that I know now, it would have been a considerably larger given all going on, but I was still trying to figure a lot of things out. 

[00:11:20] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Well, so if you knew then what you know now, what would you have done differently?

[00:11:26] Nick Courtright: I think a big thing is just like clarity and marketing, like having a newsletter, I didn't even have a newsletter at that point. It was still very much just trying to cobble things together. There were no real, there was no real advertising going on. So, it was just a lot of new business stuff where a lot of systems weren't in place.

And now, if we had, then the sort of clarity of vision like now we're very clear. We're an author forward press, our all of our mission is very clear on our website about what we do, how we try to help serve authors, the value that we're providing, the values that we stand behind, all that stuff was still pretty rudimentary back then. So those are definitely things where, you know, going back at that point I would have been like "Okay, you've got a lot of work to do." You know, even though I was basically maxed out at that point. 

[00:12:28] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Super interesting. So many businesses obviously suffered greatly because of the pandemic, but obviously people sitting at home needing an outlet, this is the perfect thing. So, for you, so you didn't have all that stuff in place, marketing and advertising, all that stuff. So how did you go out and find those people? Was this just networking? You couldn't really go out to events and network because we were all locked down. So, what did you do? 

[00:12:56] Nick Courtright: Yeah, well a lot of it, I kept trying to find silver bullet situations for marketing, "Oh, I'm going to try to hire an agency to do it."

And I tried hiring agencies and it never really worked, because they just weren't going to be invested enough in the outcome because it wasn't their company. So ultimately, I just came to the conclusion, I just need to learn, and I’ve been learning my whole life. I went through so many years of school and so I was like, "Okay, I just need to educate myself." 

And I just went crazy like listening to podcasts, reading books, trying to follow best practices and really just had to teach myself. And then once I had gotten to the point where I could teach myself and knew then I was much more capable of finding people and hiring people because I knew what I was actually looking for, rather than just throwing darts at the wall and seeing what happened.

[00:13:58] Adam Walker: Support for this podcast comes from Hiscox, committed to helping small businesses protect their dreams since 1901. Quotes and information on customized insurance for specific risks are available at hiscox.com. Hiscox, business insurance experts.

[00:14:19] Sanjay Parekh: Okay. Let's switch gears a little bit. You went from this being a side hustle to a full-on business. How did you manage that transition in terms of stress and focus and time and just, all the other things that are a part of life? And dealing with, you talked about working a bajillion hours when the pandemic, I think all of us were doing that, either that, or we were all playing video games for a billion hours. There's one or the other. Like now, how do you think about that and how do you deal with kind of the time and the stress of it all? 

[00:14:58] Nick Courtright: Yeah, well, at that point, definitely like 2020, 2021, I was working an unsustainable amount of hours, where it was very stressful.

It was all consuming. I was on the phone constantly trying to close deals and then build a business. And then, you have to hire people, you have to hire yourself out of work as much as you can, and I've really worked hard to try to do that. And it always is a tricky thing trying to find that balance in life, right?

My wife, she's always like, "How about you stop working?" So it's good to have people in your life that encourage you to prioritize a little bit differently and try to balance things out, try to hire people who are going to be able to take a little bit off your plate. And that is a challenging undertaking, but it's important.

[00:15:58] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, okay. So, along these same lines, how do you think about exercise, sleep, wellness, all of those things, in terms of running a business? Do you prioritize them? How do you schedule them in? How do you fit them in? 

[00:16:15] Nick Courtright: I am a thousand percent in on all of that stuff. I think that it's just absolutely essential and I've become as I've gotten less young myself — I'm in my 40s by the way.

[00:16:32] Sanjay Parekh: I like that phrase, less young. I like that, not older.

[00:16:35] Nick Courtright: That's the poet. That's the poet.

[00:16:37] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. He's paying off.

[00:16:40] Nick Courtright: Yeah. Yeah, one dollar at a time. Yeah, I think that stuff is really key and as I am older now, I do start thinking about more about like longevity. You know, long term health stress management is a huge part of that. High cortisol levels, being stressed out, overworked, lack of sleep. These are all things that are going to just diminish your longevity and your good years in your life.

So, I do put a lot of emphasis on that. I'm currently training for a marathon, which is terrible. But, also really excellent. I try to make sure to get an extra, like some sort of like significant exercise, either run or weights or something like that in, or some sort of other cardio or sport or something, like six days a week. So, I do prioritize it.

If I get under eight hours of sleep, I'm a mess. So, you know, really prioritize that. I cut alcohol out. That was something that obviously was a very fun thing, but I think it's a lot easier to have time for taking care of yourself and balancing things if you're not spending too much time drinking and then in recovery from drinking.

So yeah, all of that sort of self-care stuff. Fitness and diet and all of that. I think it's really important for anybody who's running a business because there's going to be a lot on your shoulders, and you got to do it. You can't keep that weight up. 

[00:18:22] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Do you have a specific time — like, I'm in bed at this time every day and I wake up this time every day? Is it like that regimented for you or is it a lot more flexible than that? 

[00:18:32] Nick Courtright: It's pretty clockwork. I'm rarely up past 10. And my alarm goes off at, during the week, it goes off at six every morning. I hit snooze once religiously.

So 6:09 is my time to shine. 6:09, I'm up, and yeah, and I try to stick to that. Obviously, if you're traveling across time zones that like messes everything up, right? But, yeah, and then I try to get the workout in either early or if it's like tennis or something like that, it'll often be in the evening. But I do find that prioritizing that stuff makes me a lot more effective when I am working. 

[00:19:15] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, okay I want to dive in a little bit into the kind of minutia of book writing and doing this. Like you've now done 1,200 or so books, there's probably one mistake that all authors make religiously, like you just see it over and over. What is that one mistake? 

[00:19:38] Nick Courtright: Yeah, I think a lot of them think that the publishing process is going to be easier than it is. 

[00:19:45] Sanjay Parekh: Okay. And what is it that they don't understand about the process? 

[00:19:49] Nick Courtright: I think a big part that they underestimate is interior book design, right? Because everybody's "Oh, cover design."

That's like this big dramatic thing. It's like one of the most exciting parts of the whole process. Everybody's really excited about it. They know that going through developmental editing, they might have a tough time and I need to make some changes and they also know it's going to be collaborative and exciting.

They know proofreading is going to be a slog. They understand these parts, but then interior book design, they're like a lot of times authors just think, "Oh, okay, you design it and then it's back and it's easy." And it's no, this is often a like page by page, meticulous iterative process that requires like multiple rounds of collaborative work over the course of sometimes two months’ worth of work back and forth. So, it's definitely, that's something that I'd see like chronically underestimated by authors who are coming into the project. 

[00:20:51] Sanjay Parekh: And what is it? I'm just trying to imagine, ‘cause I've never gone through the process, interior book design.

So that's the page to page, the layout or whatever. What has to be tweaked on every page that, because it seems like all the pages are basically the same, right? 

[00:21:08] Nick Courtright: Yeah. Yeah. You'd think, but then there are strange things where it's like the spacing is the line breaking weird at the bottom of the page, huh?

If it's breaking in a strange place at the bottom of the page, then we might need to adjust it. Adjust the kerning, which is the spacing between the letters. There's so much meticulous stuff that goes into it. And then obviously like chapter headings, if there are images, if there are footnotes, if there are labels on images, the table of contents, getting all that stuff lined up.

And the thing is, that we have a really professional team that does it, in a very fine fashion, and then they'll send it to the author, and the author might, want something that actually isn't advisable. And then we'll need to be like, "Oh, actually, you probably shouldn't do it like this for these reasons." And then there's always, education is a big part of what we do as we are trying to help coach authors through the professionalization of going from being a writer to being an author. Because that is a transition, right? 

[00:22:19] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. I think all of us that are out here listening to this are like, you just type it up in a word editor and hit print. Like I know it's the big deal, but, clearly, it is a big deal. And for a lot of us that have read books, we probably haven't noticed this stuff, which is a good thing because it was done the right way. As the shift to more, digital interfaces like Kindles and things like that, has that made that process easier? Because it's just an ongoing flow thing and you don't have to worry as much about the kerning and the spacing and things like that? Or is it still as much of a deal now? 

[00:22:54] Nick Courtright: Well, the tricky thing is that we need to be ready for both types, right? So, it's like there's always the print one which might require certain things to make it look good in print that then need to be undone so that it looks good in a reflowable ebook format. Because ebook, because it's reflowable, you can change the text size and all this other sort of stuff too, zoom up, zoom down, et cetera, et cetera.

It can actually just make things look like a total hot mess if it's not designed separately and specifically for an ebook. So that's like a whole separate process getting ready for an ebook. And you can tell like you said, if you're not noticing, that means it was a job well done.

[00:23:46] Sanjay Parekh: Right. Okay, last question for you on the business side of it, because I'm sure somebody out there is like, "Oh, I hope he asks this." What do you think about generative AI and the impact on book writing and have you seen it? And what do you think? Are you worried about it? What's your thoughts? 

[00:24:05] Nick Courtright: Yeah, I could definitely talk about that for a while, but in the long story short, I don't think that anyone gets anywhere from just crying about it, or like complaining or trying to wish it away. I think that there are some people in publishing who are like, "Oh, this is going to mean that fewer people are going to write."

But they've said the same sort of things, that it was going to be the corruption of writing when the typewriter was invented, right? They said it when the word processor or computer was invented, that it's "Oh, the tactile nature of the typewriter or the ink pen is gone forever, the writing is going to be terrible."

And it's no, actually, those things just made it easier to write, and therefore it was democratizing and more people were able to do it. And I think the same thing about generative AI. I think that there are lots of people out there who have really great stories to tell, but maybe they don't have the 100 or 200 or 300 hours it takes to write a book.

But, if they team up with an AI, to help them write the book, there are going to be a lot more people who are actually able to see their vision come into reality and be able to get something out there. Obviously they're still going to need to be the one in charge, the AI is not going to just write your book for you. But I think a lot of people who are short on time and big on ideas are going to be able to enter the world of authorhood in a way that they weren't before.

[00:25:44] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Have you seen this with some of your authors? Are they starting to use these tools and how well is it playing out for them? 

[00:25:51] Nick Courtright: Yeah, we're starting to see it a little bit. I think one thing that's important for us to know is just disclosure, like for us to know. What we're dealing with because the thing is that a lot of the AI tools now tend to be really repetitive. You know they'll just use the same phrases again and you can tell. If you use AI a lot, like you'll be able to see "Okay, it's just like saying this using the same structure over and over again," right?

You can coach an AI towards diversity, right? But if you're take your eyes off the ball, then you know, it's just going to spit out stuff. That's just not very high quality. So, we have seen people trying to submit work that's AI-assisted, and I think, we can work with that as long as we know what we're working with. We just want there to be transparency."

[00:26:45] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. Let's, shift gears again a little bit and let's talk about your advice for somebody else who's thinking about launching a side hustle or going like you did from a side hustle to a full-time business. With all of the experience that you have now, coming up on a decade, right?

I think you said 2015 was the beginning of all this. What advice would you have for somebody that's thinking about doing what you did and maybe not necessarily in book publishing, but just in general? 

[00:27:18] Nick Courtright: Yeah, I think that if you've got an idea, I think you've got to pursue it, and you've got to keep your eyes open to opportunity.

Like I mentioned at the beginning, that one author was like, "Hey, are you going to help me with my work? "And I was like, "Ah, like, I'm busy doing this teaching thing." And I've often thought back like, I could have gotten all of this stuff started so much sooner if I'd gone all in, in 2016 or 2017. It could have been, we would have just gotten such a greater head start on everything we'd be so much more advanced now than we are. But I was just too oblivious, like they say, sometimes if you have a goal, that can be great, but it can also be limiting, because if you're only looking at that goal, you might be blind to opportunities that are outside of that goal.

So that's a big piece of advice that I have for anybody, that if you have something that you're really aiming at, that's great, but also be careful that you aren't unilaterally obsessed with that, that you miss another opportunity that might be there right beside you. 

[00:28:38] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, that's great advice.

Okay, last question for you. As you progress, we talked about generative AI just now, tools and systems and tech has changed. Is there anything that you've implemented either for yourself or your business that you're like, "Oh, this is a golden thing right now. If I didn't have this, I'd be in trouble?"

[00:29:00] Nick Courtright: Yeah, I have to say, HubSpot. Yeah, was a major game changer for us, because we used to just, I was just living in the inbox trying to keep track of things and spreadsheets and all of that. And it took a while for me because, I didn't have the business background, so I didn't know what Salesforce or HubSpot was.

I didn't know what CRM meant, like I had no idea about these things, but then one we went in with HubSpot, it was a real game changer for us, just to keep track of our clients. And also, then we started building out systems for automations to help actually matriculate projects through the publishing process, using HubSpot.

And that's really helped us maintain our consistency and our efficiency. So that's been a real big thing and it's helped us. Be able to use our website, like atmospherepress.com, where we accept submissions from authors to be considered for publication, and help them when they submit a manuscript, get connected to the right editor, the right publisher, so that we can have a conversation with them, see if partnership is going to be something that's going to be beneficial for both us and for the author. Because we are selective, and we want authors to really know what they're getting into. So HubSpot has really helped us do right by the authors who contact us.

[00:30:36] Sanjay Parekh: That's fantastic. Nick, this has been really great and really enlightening. Where can our listeners find and connect with you online? 

[00:30:44] Nick Courtright: Yeah. Yeah. So, as I mentioned, atmospherepress.com, that's going to be the sort of front door of the press where you can see the books that we've won awards for.

We also have a publishing potential quiz. If you're thinking, "Oh, should I publish? Am I qualified for this?" Like just answer these questions and we'll give you bespoke feedback based on how you answer the questions, whether that sort of steers us towards, steers you towards potential partnership with us or away from us.

We'll be honest about it. And so that's a great thing. Also, of course, me personally, I'm on LinkedIn and the other various social media platforms. I definitely would encourage anybody who's thinking of writing a book or has written a book, to reach out, because as I mentioned, we're an author forward press, I think we're a good bunch of people to talk to, regardless of whether you ultimately work with us. 

[00:31:47] Sanjay Parekh: That's great. Thanks so much for coming on the show today, Nick. 

[00:31:51] Nick Courtright: Thank you for having me. 

[00:31:54] Sanjay Parekh: Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the Side Hustle to Small Business podcast, powered by Hiscox. To learn more about how Hiscox can help protect your small business through intelligent insurance solutions, visit Hiscox.com. And to hear more Side Hustle to Small Business stories, or share your own story, please visit Hiscox.com/side-hustle-to-small-business. I'm your host, Sanjay Parekh. You can find out more about me at my website, SanjayParekh.com.