Richard Nash is a coach, strategist, and serial entrepreneur. He led partnerships and content at the culture discovery start-up Small Demons and the new media app Byliner. Previously he ran independent publishers Soft Skull (not Skill) Press and Red Lemonade where he published Maggie Nelson, Lynne Tillman, Vanessa Veselka’s Zazen, Alain Mabanckou, and many others, for which work he was awarded the Association of American Publishers’ Award for Creativity in Independent Publishing in 2005. In 2010 the Utne Reader named him one of 50 Visionaries Changing Your World and in 2013 the Frankfurt Book Fair picked him as one of the Five Most Inspiring People in Digital Publishing. In 2017 he founded Cursor Marketing Services, a shared US publishing office for the world’s leading English-language independent publishers.

As a coach, building on decades of mentorship and consulting, he now works directly with artists, writers, and entrepreneurs, helping them navigate personal and professional transitions.

We met via Zoom to talk about his influential article ‘What is the Business of Literature?’

(Our cat Boo Bou insisted on getting her thoughts on the record as well during the first several minutes of the conversation. Apologies for the distraction).