About

Books that make you question your choices.

The mediocre origin story not fit for a movie

Here at Nat 1 Publishing, we like the strange, quirky, and unique. Our origins were the product of a string of jokes and shitposts that went too far; they went so far that half a dozen novellas later we thought, “Well, damn. Might as well legitimize this monstrosity.”

The first paragraph that you likely just skimmed over is the honest truth. Nat 1’s founder, Brandan Roberts, acts as the DM for his Dungeons & Dragons group and when one of the players asked if his PC could find any “smutty romance books,” his response was “You’ve found The Wizard’s Staff by Macy Blush.” (Thank you Terry Pratchett for the inspiration.) In between sessions he drew up a crappy cover as a joke. The cover got posted to Reddit’s DnD community where it got bigger than a bard in a brothel and the overwhelming consensus was that it just had to be written. Between too much Covid-induced free time, an insatiable need for fake internet points, and some brand-spanking-new anxiety medications, Brandan took those encouragements to heart and wrote it.

Then the next one.

And the one after that.

And the one after that…

What about the “Nat 1” part? That was born from the need to put something in the corner of The Wizard’s Staff audiobook cover which could be cropped out if necessary during promotions. “What could possibly fit there? This is a DnD parody, so how about a D20? That landed on a natural one, because this book obviously failed successfully!” It fit, people liked it, and so it became incorporated on the cover of every Macy Blush book (some retroactively) and made an appearance in the copyright page with the tagline, “A fake publishing house for an independently released book.” Well, in addition to moving civilization one more step towards annihilation, the Macy Blush books also broke some tax brackets and Brandan had to declare himself a business owner.

A business owner!
Ugh, isn’t that, like, work?

So when we decided to open our digital doors to new authors to give them a chance to publish their own wacky stories, what better name would there be to use than Nat 1 Publishing? And so, slightly less than a year after The Wizard’s Staff was released, we were officially formed in the state of Maine as NAT 1 LLC.


Meet the Nat 1 Team

Like hell does Brandan want to take full credit for the monstrosities that he creates and their part in bringing the world a little closer to the edge. It also wouldn’t be true. Several critique partners, dozens of beta readers, and an audible narrator are just as guilty. The same can be said about Nat 1’s official staff—there are three of us running the shenanigans (or rather, two teaming up on Brandan in an attempt to keep him reeled in) as well as a non-voting member attempting to weasel his way into the board, and a strange collection of volunteer officers and editors. We’re all pretty awesome, and I swear there’s no bias in that statement whatsoever despite one of us having written this blurb. Nope, none at all. Click here to meet the team and know exactly who to blame!


Are we the right fit for your story?

We’ll be the first to admit that we are an incredibly niche publishing house.
We’ll also be the first to admit we are small. So very small—but we aspire to grow bigger.

So, why choose us to publish your story?

We’ll take a chance on you. We like the campy, we love the intentionally-cringy, the off-kilter, the little socially awkward black sheep that doesn’t quite fit with the other stories.

Even better? We aren’t a shady novelty press. You keep your copyright and will get money for your story, not spend it. This is true for both short stories and novellas. We’ll work with you on editing and provide an equally off-kilter book cover or illustration, advertise, and promote it.

So, take a look around the site and see if we’re a good fit for you, and if we are, hit up our submissions page!


Nat 1 LLC is an avid supporter of the LGBTQ & POC communities.


Proud member of [clmp] Community of Literary Magazines & Presses www.clmp.org