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How can the ‘hungry author’ mindset help you become more of a successful author? Why do you need to shift your point of view to that of the reader so your book resonates with them? What are some of the key aspects of writing and marketing non-fiction books? Ariel Curry gives her tips in this episode.
In the intro, tackling imposter syndrome [Ink in Your Veins];
Novel Study: Decoding the Secrets and Structures of Contemporary Fiction by Kristen Tate; StoryBundle for Writers; Publishing for Profit conference from ALLi; Tap to Pay on mobile for live events [Zettle/PayPal]; Blood Vintage and Discovery Writing webinar; I’m on The Unreserved Wine Talk Podcast, and The Nightmare Engine Podcast.
Plus, Leveraging AI for book covers and ads [Brave New Bookshelf]; More controls coming for Google NotebookLM [VentureBeat]; Meta’s new generative video model, Movie Gen.
Today’s show is sponsored by FindawayVoices by Spotify, the platform for independent authors who want to unlock the world’s largest audiobook platforms. Take your audiobook everywhere to earn everywhere with Findaway Voices by Spotify. Go to findawayvoices.com/penn to publish your next audiobook project.
This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn
Ariel Curry is a writer, editor and book coach, and the co-author of Hungry Authors: The Indispensable Guide to Planning, Writing, and Publishing a Nonfiction Book.
You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- What is a hungry author?
- The mindset needed for a long-term author career
- Subgenres of nonfiction and how to find and market to their audiences
- Key elements of a book map
- Writing with a reader-focused mindset
- Top reasons why editors and agents reject books
- The importance of platform for nonfiction authors
- Leveraging podcasts for marketing nonfiction books
You can find Ariel at HungryAuthors.com
Transcript of Interview with Ariel Curry
Joanna: Ariel Curry is a writer, editor and book coach, and the co-author of Hungry Authors: The Indispensable Guide to Planning, Writing, and Publishing a Nonfiction Book. So welcome to the show, Ariel.
Ariel: Thank you so much for having me, Joanna. I’m so happy to be here.
Joanna: Great. Well, first up—
Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and the publishing industry.
Ariel: Sure. Well, like many people in the publishing industry, I was an English major who didn’t really know what she wanted to do. I thought I might do teaching. I tried that for a little bit. That did not go well.
So I thought, you know what, why not just shoot for the stars? I’ve always loved books, and so I thought, well, it never hurts to apply to publishing internships. So I did that. I got an internship in London at Anthem Press, which is a little bit more of an academic publisher. That eventually led to a role as an editorial assistant at Corwin Press in California. Then from there, I moved up the ladder to acquisitions editor.
Then I took a little bit of a break from the traditional publishing corporate world for a few years. I was freelancing, I was doing collaborations, and I was doing developmental editing.
Then just recently, I decided to rejoin the corporate publishing industry, and I took a role as an acquisitions editor at Sourcebooks. So that’s where I am currently, and I specialize in nonfiction.
Joanna: What is it like being on the other side of the fence as an author?
Ariel: It is a lot of fun. The thing that I always remind authors of is it’s a business. So my job there is to be an investor in great ideas, and great writers, and great writing. I think that’s the part that a lot of people don’t necessarily understand.
Sometimes it’s a little sad because it seems to take some of the romance and the feelings of creativity out of it, I think, but at the end of the day, everyone in the publishing industry just truly loves books. So we totally get the romance and the special feelings that come with pouring everything that you have into a book.
Someone has to be the person to make it successful on a broad scale. That’s what people in the publishing industry are here to do is to take the very, very, very best of writers and writing and help to blast that, hopefully as to as wide an audience as possible. That’s what we’re all here to do.
Sometimes it takes a little bit of the romance away, but honestly, I absolutely love what I do. I love working in the corporate publishing sphere, so I don’t see that going away anytime soon.
Joanna: That’s great. Well, let’s get into the book because I think it is good to know of your background, too. For nonfiction authors, in particular, is what we’re really talking about today. Also, to know the mindset of an acquisitions editor is great. So getting into the book—
What is your definition of a ‘hungry author,’ and why is mindset so important?
Ariel: Yes, so here’s our official definition of a hungry author.
We say, “A hungry author is 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. “
So we wanted to write this book, and we called it Hungry Authors because my co-author, Liz Morrow, and I—she is a full time collaborator, she’s a ghost writer, and obviously I work in acquisitions.
We just saw every single day that authors, even with small to no platform—which is the thing that everyone says you have to have but —
Authors with little to no platforms still can, and do all the time, reach the pinnacles of publishing success.
Like if you look at the New York Times Bestseller list, you will often find authors that you cannot find on social media. We were like, what is it about those people? How do they break the code or go against the grain of all of this advice that we typically hear that, “Oh, you have to…”
Especially for nonfiction, “You’ve got to have a great platform. You’ve got to be a celebrity.” There’s all of these myths around what you have to be or have to have to make it and to succeed as a traditionally published author. We know from both of our experience that that’s not necessarily true.
As she and I both started working with more clients who were doing that, who were getting traditional book deals, who were self-publishing their books to great success, we were like, what is it that makes these authors so different?
In the reverse and opposite end, why is it that some authors with huge platforms can publish a book and it’s a total flop? We’ve realized it’s their mindset.
Hungry authors are determined that they’re going to make it happen no matter what.
It’s that gumption and determination and grit that compels them to succeed. Those are the kinds of authors that, especially as an acquisitions editor, I’m like, I want to work with someone like that.
If I have confidence, and I can see that they are determined to succeed and to make it work, and they’re working as hard as they can to make it happen, then I have more confidence in them. I want to go wherever they’re going.
So that’s what we wanted to encourage authors with, is to have that gumption and to embody that determination.
Joanna: Yes, I totally get what you mean. It’s interesting, I first self-published in 2007, and in the last almost 16 or 17 years, whatever it is, there have been so many authors who I’ve seen along the way who have left the industry. It’s one of the things I’ve asked often is—
How do you have a long-term career as an author?
This comes up over and over again, this grit, resilience, bouncing back, trying again. You’re calling it being hungry, I guess, being hungry for it. It’s almost like just keeping going.
It might not happen with the first book or the second book, or I will often think it might not ever happen. You might not ever hit the New York Times list or whatever.
If you’re creating the books you want to create in the world, and you’re making the impact you want to make, then that’s what keeps you going.
So I guess this is important for longevity as well. You must see this in the industry.
Ariel: Yes, that’s right. In fact, in chapter one of our book, we’ve got five tenets or five components of the hungry author’s mindset, and one of them is, “This book is just my first book, or my second book, or my third book, but I will write more books.” That longevity piece of it is really vital.
To me, that’s almost the most important component of the hungry author’s mindset because that component says, “I’m in it for me. I’m in it for the belief that I have in my own writing. It’s for the determination and the commitment I feel to serving my readers.”
So when you have your “why” aligned in that way, when you really know I’m in it for the journey, and not necessarily the destination, you will be able to keep going and to be resilient. You’ll also have more success, ironically.
Joanna: Yes, that is ironic. We’ll come back to that because we are, in this approach, designing a book, but sometimes that doesn’t work either. So let’s just first define nonfiction because I feel like it’s quite a misunderstood term, almost. There’s so many subcategories.
Can you talk a bit about what goes under this broad category of nonfiction?
Ariel: Yes. So at the broadest level, nonfiction are books that, if it’s a story, then it’s grounded in reality, and it’s based on true events that truly happened and usually can be factually proven. Although sometimes in memoir, there aren’t necessarily other sources that can verify the story.
Certainly in narrative nonfiction, there are going to be primary sources and other things that you’re using that would validate the story as you were telling it. Then it’s also informational books.
So in the story category, we’ve got the two primary genres are going to be narrative nonfiction, which are stories about real life people or places, or even time periods, where that thing is the subject of the story. Then you’ve got memoir, which is the author’s own story about a situation or event in their life.
On the informational side, you’ve got self-help, which is nonfiction that is directed towards a transformation in the reader’s life. Then you’ve got thought leadership, which is a book that is meant to transform our society as a whole.
So when I think of thought leadership books, I’m thinking of like Siddhartha Mukherjee or like Simon Sinek, or the really big names that you hear about in these kind of groundbreaking books.
Like I would say, Jonathan Haidt’s new book, The Anxious Generation, would be an example of a thought leadership book. His aim is really to expose this part of our society, and part of how the world works, and what’s happening in the zeitgeist right now, and help us have a deeper understanding of that.
He’s not necessarily trying to change the reader at an individual level, although that may happen, but really the goal is more broad societal change for thought leadership books.
Joanna: There would also potentially be the academic side.
So for example, a book on history, that’s not either of those other things.
Ariel: Right. Yes, that’s true. In the Hungry Authors book, we don’t talk a lot about reference books. We kind of narrowed it down to what are the genres that people come to us for help with the most and that are the most like commercial nonfiction genres.
So, yes, there is certainly history, there’s reference books, there’s even like professional development books in some more niche categories. I used to work in education professional development.
There’s books that are professional development for bankers, or for finance experts, or whatever. There’s all kinds of nonfiction books that are in more niche categories as well.
Joanna: Well, I think this gets to an important point. You mentioned the word commercial, and I feel like that is what a lot of beginning authors certainly forget about.
I was thinking back to when I wrote my first nonfiction book in 2007, I later rewrote it as Career Change, and I really thought it was for everyone. Like, when people say, oh, who’s the book for? I’d be like, oh, it’s for everyone.
I still hear that, and I’m sure you hear that. It’s like, okay, this is a real issue with new authors, but can be an issue with established authors as well.
How can we identify our audience and our target market and use that to shape the book and the marketing?
Ariel: Yes, that’s such a good question. You’re right, it comes up all the time, and it plays into that genre factor that we were just talking about too.
So we always tell authors to think about who would enjoy your book most, or who would benefit most from your book. Start there.
Yes, maybe everyone could find some kind of way into your book, but who are the people who are going to see your book and just immediately think, “Oh my gosh, that is for me. I need that,” and they’re going to get the maximum benefit out of it. Think about those people.
That’s going to be your primary audience. Then if there are other audiences that might also benefit, but maybe to a little bit lesser extent, those are going to be your secondary or tertiary audiences.
It really, for me, starts with that question of:
Who is going to enjoy my book the most, or benefit from it the most?
We like to say too about audience, that you have to find your goldilocks audience.
You don’t want your audience to be too big because, like you said, if it’s too big, if you try to make something that’s going to appeal to everyone, it’s not going to deliver the maximum benefits for anyone.
So that’s not going to be good because no one is going to pick up your book and feel like, “oh, this is for me,” if you try to make it work for everyone. On the opposite side, you also don’t want it to be so incredibly niche and specific that your audience is like 20 people.
For example, I had someone come to me one time and say, “Okay, I want to write a book that is for Christian campus leaders who serve veterans with PTSD through paper craft making.” I’m not joking there, that is a real story.
I was like, there are so many filters on your audience there that I would be shocked if we can find five Christian campus leaders who serve military veterans with PTSD through paper craft making. I would just be shocked if we could find five. So that’s clearly too small of an audience.
So it has to be somewhere in between, and the right in between is going to look a little bit different depending on whatever your topic is.
You want to find enough people that you could sell a lot of books, but not so many people that your book doesn’t appeal to anyone.
Joanna: Yes, it is really hard.
I’ve written one memoir, which is called Pilgrimage, so even with just the word, you’re going know if either you’re interested or you’re not interested. It’s a solo travel book, and there are a lot of other intersecting audiences, but the title I feel like makes a big difference.
I mean, like your book title. Again—
For nonfiction, a title and a good subtitle is a really good way to niche down your audience.
Ariel: Yes, definitely. As many authors do, when we were dreaming up the book that would become Hungry Authors, we did have a moment where we were like, well, should we just make this really broad? Should we make it about finding your purpose or whatever?
Then we’re like, hold on, hold on. We serve writers. That’s who we can serve best and who would benefit the most from our work. So we put some reins on our dreams for a minute, and maybe we’ll branch out later in future books, but it is really important to really get clear on those questions.
Yes, the title has to reflect the people that you’re trying to reach. They have to see your title and immediately go, “Ooh, that could be me,” or, “I really want that transformation in my life.”
Joanna: Let’s get into the book map because you really emphasize mapping out a book before writing a draft. I’m a discovery writer, so I find this challenging.
Give us the key elements of what goes into a book map.
So people can kind of picture it. I know there’s a lot in the book, but try and give us an overview.
Ariel: Yes, definitely. I love the term discovery writer, rather than pantsing. I think discovery writer really captures what you’re trying to do so much better than pantsing. To be fair, I do think that a book map can be helpful for discovery writers as well, almost as more of an intervention.
So I have had authors come to me before and say, “I wrote this—for lack of a better term—like word vomit type draft. I kind of poured out everything I know, but I know it’s a mess, and I don’t know how to start organizing it. So I’ve got 60,000 words, but they’re all a loose jumble of puzzle pieces, and I need you to help me create a picture from them.”
So in those kinds of situations, I would also say a book map is super helpful for imposing a structure, even after the fact. After you’ve got all the puzzle pieces on the table, a book map is going to help you arrange those puzzle pieces into something that looks like a comprehensive and cohesive picture. So to answer your question—
A book map is a visual depiction or visual representation of your book’s content.
That can be a straightforward outline at its most basic level. Like in school, most of us learned how to make a super basic outline.
I would say that’s the foundation of a book map is the outline concepts, but we take that initial outlining so much further. What we saw kept happening is that authors would start writing, and even if they had created a very vague table of contents.
They’re like, okay, I know I’m going to need an introduction. I know I’m going to need a chapter one. They map out 10 chapters and a conclusion, and then they start writing, and they still get stuck somewhere in like chapter four, chapter three, because they don’t actually know what’s going to go in those chapters.
So sometimes we saw that a lot of authors when they create an “outline”, they were really just identifying topics for each supposed chapter. That kind of an outline did not give them a really clear pathway to how all of those pieces fit together, what is actually going to go in those chapters.
What we do is start with identifying the transformation that you’re trying to accomplish. If you’re writing memoir, then you’re trying to depict the transformation of yourself, your own transformation through an event or circumstance in your life.
If you’re writing a prescriptive nonfiction book, and that’s going to be self-help or thought leadership, then you’re trying to accomplish a transformation for the reader. So you start with—
What is the transformation I’m trying to accomplish for the reader or for myself?
Then you say, okay, what are the big steps that need to happen to convey that transformation? So where am I starting? Where are we trying to end? Then what are all the big steps in between to get from beginning to end? Then those big steps are typically going to be your chapters.
From there, then you have to say, okay, for each chapter, what is the little big idea that I’m trying to convey in that chapter? So, often for prescriptive nonfiction, each chapter is going to have some kind of smaller argument that is going to contribute towards the reader’s change towards that transformation.
Then you have to say, okay, well, how do I defend that little argument? If chapter seven is about why you should never take your car to a mechanic and you should learn how to fix your car yourself, what are the things you’re going to need to defend that argument?
So a book map is going to help you think through all of the pieces that you need to defend your argument in every single chapter, and then on a broad scale, for the entire book.
So we like to see a book map that identifies the overall transformation, all of the chapters, and all of the stuff that’s going in the chapters.
Obviously, for memoir, for narrative nonfiction, what’s going to go in the chapters is going to be a little bit different. It’s going to be the key scenes that add up to a smaller bit of the transformation in your story. I feel like that’s a little complicated to talk about without a picture, but hopefully that helps.
Joanna: My two cents on this as a discovery writer is, first of all, your book has a lot for people who are discovery writers. So I think that’s important to say.
Secondly, as a discovery writer who has written quite a lot of nonfiction, and even for the memoir I wrote, I kind of also think about it as bottom up or top down.
You’re doing a top down structure where you’re like, it goes this way and then it goes back up. Whereas discovery writers write a ton of stuff and then organize it later.
So every single nonfiction book I have written and published, I have not known the structure until I have enough words that suddenly it kind of fell into place. Every single book I have restructured about three quarters through the project.
I think that the same thing ends up happening regardless of how you write, but the idea of the book map—so if people listening are like, I’m a discovery writer and what you just said was just too structured, then you can do it later on in the process.
It’s actually a really good thing when you start to, I say—
Change your head from the writer to the reader.
Once you switch your head to the reader, you have to structure this.
Ariel: Exactly, and I think that’s part of why my co-author, Liz, and I believe so strongly in this method is because it’s very reader-focused. A lot of writing teachers come at it from a very author-focused perspective, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
We firmly believe in the benefits and the power of writing for the benefit of the author.
As professionals who work in the traditional publishing space, again, our bias and our lens is towards that commercial end product.
We are trying to create every single day, and our full time jobs are to create marketable, successful, commercial books. So if that’s the kind of book you want to write, something that has the potential to sell on a broad scale, then you’re going to need to think about it from the reader’s perspective.
Like you said, knowing that transformation and being able to convey some kind of structure that feels really intuitive to the reader. Actually, I would say, often the structure facilitates the reader’s understanding of what you’re trying to say.
That’s what you’re going to need at some point, whether it comes at the very beginning or even after you write the draft. You’re going to need that commercial lens at some point.
Joanna: Yes, absolutely. I just feel that for discovery writers, it just comes later on in the process, but it still has to come.
You are an acquisitions editor, and this is something that if people are pitching nonfiction, it’s differently to fiction. With fiction, you generally have to have finished the book, but with nonfiction, people can pitch projects without having written the book.
What’s interesting, in the book you say, “Much of the job is saying no, even to authors, books, and possibilities you think are good.”
Tell us a bit more about why editors and agents might say ‘no’ to book projects?
Ariel: Sure. Well, on the most basic level, it could just be that it’s your project. As wonderful and as amazing as it sounds, and as good as your writing is or whatever, it’s just not something that we do. Or it’s just not something that we have the resources to support.
So every publisher, to some extent, except maybe the Big Five because they tend to kind of do everything, but even within the Big Five, there are imprints where they specialize.
Like, there’s Portfolio that does more business-type stuff. Then there’s Atria that does more of the commercial, interesting, more scientific stuff sometimes. There are different imprints that focus on different things, even within the Big Five.
So a really wise literary agent is going to be looking at a proposal and thinking which imprints or which editors at which publishers specialize in this thing. Those are the people that I’m going to be trying to pitch.
So an agent themselves will have, here are the things that I’m really passionate about, here are the things that I love to represent, and here are the connections in my network that I have.
So if a literary agent focuses on nonfiction and they get a book of poetry, they might go, “Well, I just don’t have the connections to all of the poetry editors in the industry, so I just can’t represent this.”
You’ve got to make sure that whoever you’re pitching actually does the thing that you’re trying to do. That’s kind of at the ground level, but then we can talk about platform.
Platform definitely plays a part as well.
I would say there are different platform expectations, depending on the publisher, depending on your genre. With fiction and memoir, platform isn’t quite as strong a requirement as it is for prescriptive nonfiction.
In prescriptive nonfiction, the reader is looking to you as a credible authority. So if you don’t have some kind of proof as a credible authority, it’s going to be hard for a publisher to sell your book or an agent to sell your book. So that’s something to keep in mind as well.
I would also say that often authors have not done enough research to know what other books are already out there that are doing the same thing. Often I reject books because an author comes to me and they’re like, “This is brilliant. This is groundbreaking. This is going to be the book that changes the game on X.”
I’m like, okay, how is it different from these five other books on that same topic? Either they don’t know, or what they tell me is actually exactly what those other books say. I’m like, okay, clearly you have not done your research.
That is honestly the biggest thing is that the idea an author’s pitching isn’t actually new, or isn’t actually that different from what everyone else is saying.
That is one thing that I tell authors over and over again. I’m like, okay —
Go read your five comps and come back and maybe think harder about how you want to offer something new and different to the conversation.
Joanna: Yes, and I have a tip for everyone here.
If people haven’t tried ChatGPT for this, it is so good. If you say, “My book is like ‘this book, this book and this book.’ Please give me a list of 30 more books in this area,” it’s going to give it to you, and then you can go research them.
I find it super, super useful. I’ve been doing it with a latest folk horror novel, but I find this very useful.
I feel like authors struggle with comps because it’s pretty research intensive. Use the tools where you can.
Ariel: That is such good advice. We are big fans of using AI where appropriate and in ways, obviously, that are ethical, but certainly comps research. I’ve been using Blinkist. Do you know Blinkist?
Joanna: Yes, it does summaries, right?
Ariel: Yes, so I’ve been using Blinkist. If I need to know what is this book about, and I need the top five points about it, but I don’t really have time to go read a 320 page book, then I go to Blinkist and see if I can find a really in depth summary.
It’ll even read it out loud to you so I can almost listen to the summary like a podcast. Then it’s like, okay, all right, now I know the main gist of this book. It is so incredibly helpful. So use your tools, absolutely, to help you do that research.
Joanna: On that, I mean, obviously you mentioned the dreaded word “platform”, but also said it is important for nonfiction. So what are some of the elements?
I feel like there was a period where people really wanted high social media followings, and then I think publishers realized that high following on social media doesn’t necessarily translate to high book sales. Has that changed?
What are the things that you think nonfiction authors, in particular, should look for with their platform?
Ariel: Yes, I think you’re right that there has been a softening, I’ll say. Platform is still important, and I still see a lot of agents who will not work with authors who do not have a platform.
I don’t just mean social media because sometimes, like David Grand, I don’t think David Grand is on social media, but you better bet that every agent would love to be his agent, and every editor would love to be his editor. He does have a platform because he’s a prolific writer and he’s earned his stripes in other ways.
So that’s the thing with platform, is there are lots of ways to build a platform. So I think nonfiction authors, if social media is not your thing—and I get it because it’s not my thing either. I do it because I kind of feel like I have to, which is the same for a lot of authors I know.
You can build your platform in many ways. You can build your platform with speaking engagements, or with selling online courses, or doing consulting, or writing for the New York Times, or pitching articles at whatever publications.
You can build your platform in a lot of other ways that are not dependent on social media.
I would say that’s probably a smart way to build your platform anyways because social media is fickle, and the algorithms change, and it’s really hard to grow a platform on social media.
So I do still see that agents and publishers want a larger platform. They care about it because it is, like I said, it’s proof that you can attract an audience to your message.
Again, going back to the fact that agents are investors. Think about it from if you were looking to invest in something, and you’ve got two projects in front of you.
One of them is like a really great idea, really great writing, but entirely unknown in the universe. Versus a project that has a really great idea, really great writing, and they’ve already got 20,000 subscribers to their newsletter list, and they’ve already proven that they can sell online courses, and they’re out speaking.
I mean, which one do you think is going to be more successful? Obviously, the second one.
You just have to look at it like agents and editors are investors, and they’re going to pick the best bets for potentially getting a return on their investment.
Joanna: I think that’s a good way to think about it. Just on social media, my husband is in corporate and uses LinkedIn a lot.
I feel like there’s such a focus in the media industry around BookTok and Instagram, but— LinkedIn, for nonfiction, seems to be the very best social network to build on. What are your thoughts on that for nonfiction?
Ariel: Yes, I think that’s a really good point. LinkedIn has a lot of tools that are cool, like you can do a LinkedIn newsletter. Again, the downside of that is that you’re not necessarily able to keep all of your subscribers’ email addresses. So that’s the downside.
I wouldn’t be dependent on LinkedIn, but if you can use LinkedIn to grow your network and then use that to convert people to actual email subscribers, that seems like a really, really good way to go.
You’re right, that is where a lot of the more professional spaces are. So if you’re a nonfiction author, especially doing prescriptive nonfiction, LinkedIn might be a really good place to build your audience.
Joanna: I get a lot of my recommendations from podcasting because I mainly listen to podcasts, and I listen to audiobooks and nonfiction as well when I’m walking and all of this. So I actually get so many recommendations from podcasting.
You have The Hungry Authors Podcast, and obviously you’re here, you pitched my podcast.
What part do you think podcasting plays in marketing nonfiction?
Obviously, people don’t need to start their own show, but any tips around doing audio?
Ariel: Yes, I personally think that podcasting is such a great way to build your platform because you’re able to leverage other people’s platforms.
To be totally transparent, obviously I pitched you because I’m like, well, I’ve been following you for over a decade, and I know you’ve got a great audience already built in. Any nonfiction authors who are listening to you, I want to reach those people, so I’m going to pitch her to go on this podcast.
You don’t have to have your own podcast, like you said, to do that. In fact, sometimes it’s almost better to just be a really frequent guest on other people’s podcasts because you’re reaching new audiences all the time, and you’re growing your own audience by utilizing their audiences.
So I think it’s a super smart strategy for building your platform, building your audience, and getting word about your book out there. It’s one of the top things that I recommend to authors all the time.
When I was ghost writing book proposals for clients, I would always include a podcast section of the book proposal and say, okay, let’s identify like 20 really likely podcasts that you feel comfortable pitching, and let’s promise that you’re going to pitch those podcasts when your book comes out.
Obviously, you don’t know yet if they’re going to say yes, but that’s going to look really attractive to publishers. Just like you, so many nonfiction listeners are listening to podcasts because it’s an information based platform, and they love reading information.
If you’re selling a prescriptive nonfiction book that is entirely information, then it makes sense to market it on another information-based media.
Joanna: Yes, then on that, I get so many pitches every day, like a ridiculous number of pitches. I think traditional publishing discovered podcasts, and now it’s crazy.
I mean, I get them from big publishers every day for books that are completely irrelevant to my show. So when a pitch like yours arrives, I obviously am interested.
What tips can you give people for pitching in a way that makes the podcast host go, “Yes, please!”
Ariel: So I always start by identifying the podcasts that your complimentary authors have been on. So if you say, okay, these are my top five comp books—by comp, I mean complimentary or competing or comparative books, whatever you want comp to be short for.
Identify those top books and then look at the podcasts that those authors have been on. Those are going to be your most likely podcasts to start pitching. You can say in your query to them, “Hey, you had this person on.”
For a writing podcast, I might say like, “Oh, hey, you had Jane Friedman on your podcast, or you had Joanna Penn on your podcast, or you had AJ Harper on your podcast. Guess what? I’m friends with that person, and we have a lot of things in common. I’ve written a similar book, and I think it might appeal to your audience in these ways.”
Being really careful about podcasts that you pitch is the first part. Just like with pitching agents and editors, pitch the right people.
Then using some kind of personal connection like that is really, really helpful too. “Like I am acquainted with the person that you’ve already interviewed,” or, “We have some kind of connection.” I find that works really well too is finding a point of connection.
Even being able to say, like, “Hey, I’m a big fan, genuinely. I’m genuinely a big fan of yours.” That is obviously very complimentary to people, and tends to soften the awkwardness, potentially, of a cold email.
Then being really explicit about how your information or your topic can benefit their listeners.
So that’s the key thing, too. In any cold query that I’m making, I like to just do kind of a bulleted list of like, here are the things that I can talk about that I think your listeners would love to learn about. So hopefully that’s going to seal the deal for you.
Joanna: Yes, I think that helps. That bullet list of how your book has specific topics that my audience will like, that is the key. It’s just incredible how many pitches I get, mainly from traditional publishing now, and they are just a press release about a book.
Actually, that’s not a pitch, but they’re using the email to pitch the podcast. They’re like, “Do you want to interview this author?” and then they put in a press release about a book.
I guess, like you were saying, a lot of the time you don’t have time to read the whole book. Like with your book, I’ve scanned through it. Obviously, I didn’t read every single line, but I went through it and looked at little bits of it and pulled out quotes and things.
It seems to me that so often when people are pitching, they don’t put themselves in the position of the podcast host.
So again, it’s so funny because it echoes what you were saying earlier around thinking about what the reader wants from a book, or an editor wants, or an acquisitions person wants.
The big tip is putting yourself in the position of the person on the other end.
Ariel: That’s right. Yes, that is exactly right. It’s such an important skill. With pitching, like publicists sending you a cold query and just including the press release, I would say that’s just a factor of they just don’t have a lot of time.
They are trying to pitch several books to so many people, and it does take time to really put together a thoughtful query and a thoughtful pitch. So for myself, I guess this is another tip, I tend to block out some time.
Like, okay, I’m going to do an hour, and I’m just going to do five pitches. My goal in that hour is to do five pitches. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but actually, when you are taking the time to put a lot of thought into a query and really customize it for whoever’s receiving that query, it does take time.
So certainly with podcasting, and definitely with pitching books, you’re going to want to take some time to be really thoughtful about how you’re making a query.
Like you said, it really makes a difference to the person who’s receiving it. You’re wanting that person to say yes to you, so it’s worth the time to make sure that they’re going to really enjoy receiving your query.
Joanna: Yes. It is a super useful book. It’s very well organized. I think people will find it useful.
Where can people find you, and the book, and everything else online?
Ariel: So you can find everything that we do on HungryAuthors.com. We’ve got the podcast, which you mentioned. We also do online cohorts a couple times a year. We obviously have the book. Then you can follow us on social media at HungryAuthors as well.
Joanna: Brilliant. Thanks so much for your time, Ariel. That was great.
Ariel: Thank you so much, Joanna.
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