A call for guest authors.

Are you a writer, blogger, journalist, or even just a hobbyist that likes to write? Are you looking for more exposure or a creative outlet?

Consider being a guest author for Know Your Brewer.

What’s involved in this?

It’s easy. Take a little bit of time to interview a brewer and write it up. That’s it. We’re interested in helping the general public to get to know the craft beer industry through the very people who make it as exciting and unique as it is: the artisans who are out there hand-crafting your beer. We have a rough format in mind, but we want the content to be from you, to be in your voice and be from your unique perspective.

What’s this rough format?

It expands a bit from the previous interviews you’ll see posted up here on the site.

Know Your Brewer: Every Monday, we will profile a new brewer.
Know Your Beer: Every Thursday, we’ll feature a beer crafted by Monday’s brewer.

We’d like at least one photo to accompany each post.

That’s all. We’re shooting for a very lean structure, without many distractions or clutter. We don’t have any plans for a calendar, advertising, or other real estate. Simplicity is the name of the game.

I’m busy, I can’t really handle a whole new writing gig!

We understand. We’re all busy. We’re bloggers, writers, and entrepreneurs ourselves. We’re not looking for a 40-hour per week commitment, we want to give you another outlet for writing and another way to be connected to the craft beer community. We can work to make it as painless as possible, if you’re interested in helping out.

What’s in it for me?

Look, we’ll be honest. We don’t know if these benefits are going to resonate with you, the beer writer or blogger. It could be the equivalent of the old “your brewery will receive great marketing exposure” line put forth by beer festival managers. If that’s the case, please tell us. This is about the brewers, the writers, and American craft beer…it’s not about us.

We do believe that Know Your Brewer could serve as a gathering place for some of the most interesting profiles in beer, written by you and your contemporaries. This gives your writing and your name added visibility. We’ll prominently highlight each author’s name (see the left hand column here for an example), and we’re going to organize interviews by author name, in addition to region/state. Lastly, we want to extend full ownership of content to all authors. If a story gets picked up on a regional or national level, all earnings will to go to the author.

If Know Your Brewer is successful, we may look at compiling the stories into a book or some other publication platform. If that’s the case, then we’d need to explore publication rights. But that’s down the line and a remote possibility. We’re doing this because we believe in American craft beer and we want the media and the American public to get to Know Their Brewer. That’s what it comes down to for us.

Okay, this sounds fun. How do I get involved?

Awesome. We want it to sound fun. It is fun. Getting involved is easy: Either leave a note in the comments here or send an e-mail over to erik@topfermented.com or sean@fullsteam.ag and let us know that you’d like to write. We’ll set you up with all of the information that you need to contribute.

We’ve got authors lined up on the Eastern Seaboard (and we’ll take more), but the MidWest, Plains, Mountains, and West Coast are tragically under-represented, especially given the amount of breweries out there. We’d love to see you out there talking to them.