By Brendan O’Meara
What is a “hungry author”? Setting aside pre-breakfast jokes, what does it mean?
Authors Ariel Curry (@arielkcurry) and Liz Morrow (@liz_morrow), it’s:
A writer who is determined to succeed. They want to and will be published. They take feedback well and don’t shy away from the hard work. You will find their butts in the chairs and fingers on the keyboard. They believe in their ideas and know they will impact others.
And so it is in their book Hungry Authors: The Indispensable Guide to Planning, Writing, and Publishing a Nonfiction Book (Rowman & Littlefield). Lots of great, juicy tidbits in this book that really makes you think your Big Idea through.
Ariel and Liz also co-host the helpful Hungry Authors (@hungryauthors) podcast, another fine resource to lean into.
Ariel and Liz have been in the publishing business for many years, be it editing, book proposal coaching, ghost writing, you name it. They see it from all the angles, which gives them the authority to deliver in a book like Hungry Authors.
Where many books focus on craft and bolstering the writer’s confidence (valuable in their own right), Ariel and Liz’s take focuses on the reader, and getting you as the writer to be thinking about your reader. There’s agency in being able to choose your audience. There’s greater agency in general, and we riff on that in this conversation.
What struck me the most in the book was the section on platform. As many of you know, I’m something of a social media hater. I think it’s useless and we’re just sharecroppers tilling the land for just about nothing. So it’s heartening to hear their take that platform — so often conflated with social media — isn’t just about social media followers. It’s far more holistic, as I riffed in a recent rager.
You can learn more about Ariel by subscribing to her newsletter, Notes from the Editor, and for Liz, visit wellwrittenco.com.
TL;DL: On Social Media (TK)
