Editor-in-Chief Tanya Steel was in town recently to promote Epicurious.com, home of 30,000 recipes, at the farmer’s market at the San Francisco Ferry Plaza. I thought I’d stop in to get her thoughts about today’s food writing scene.

Over spearmint tisane (for me) and coffee (for her) from Blue Bottle, she said she tries to keep her ear to the ground, stay ahead of trends, and innovate. To do so she scans 10 to 12 blogs and aggregate sites from around the country every day, including The Food Section, Cold Mud, and newspaper food section blogs. Her staff scours social networking sites.

It must be working. Her latest accomplishment, the free Epicurious app, available for the iPhone, iPad, Droid and other mobile devices, has more than 2.5 million copies in circulation, making it a leading app.

When asked how today’s food writer could get ahead, she said every writer should be learning “on a parallel track.”  You must be “platform agnostic,” she advised.”Think of yourself as a brand and expand your writing into every platform.”

There’s no such thing as enough, she continued. Writers should “have a website and blog every day. Whatever excites them is what they should blog about.” Food writers should also be building up expertise at the same time. So “if you’re passionate about meat, take classes on butchering and grilling.”

Today’s writers have to be tech and social media savvy as well. “Everyone should know what SEO is, how to submit to Digg, how to Twitter when you put something up.”

Steel, a former magazine editor turned website editor and apps developer, walks her talk. She has also pushed into a yet another new area, publishing her first cookbook. For less experienced writers who want to write books, however, she’s big on self publishing because there are “so many ways to sell content online.” “You could bypass any publisher and create an e-book, then sell it on Amazon, and with the right keywords and tags you could be on the front page.” She also suggested food writers explore self publishing through sites like Blurb.

When asked about freelancing possibilities for Epicurious.com, she said the daily online food publication already uses “a ton of freelancers,” who write about restaurants, wine and drinks, travel and health. They include many writers she has known from her print days as an editor at Food & Wine and Bon Appetit. “We try to go with people who are experts in their field, people who have a track record and are well established,” she said. Like other national magazine editors, she rarely takes a chance on a new writer.

Is her advice doable or implausible? Exhausting or exhilarating? Profitable or income-starved?Let me know your thoughts.

p.s. Want to win a copy of my book? Head over to Wasabimon and enter.

Just got off the phone today with the group of bloggers I’ll be on a panel with at the upcoming BlogHer annual conference in New York. And what a group it is: funny, thoughtful women, all prolific writers. I’ll be the moderator of the session, called How to Use Your Blogging to Make You a Better Writer. Here’s the line-up:

• Humor writer Mary McCarthy of Pajamas and Coffee, who posts about such things as testing a duck-shaped dildo
• Suzanne Reissman of Cuss and Other Rants, a New York public policy wonk by day and writer of various rants on her blog
• Jennifer McGuiggan of The Word Cellar, who ’s working on her MFA and blogs about the writing process.

After the session on August 7, I’ll be signing books, so if you happen to be at the conference, please stop by and say hi.

Elisa Camahort, one of the co-founders of BlogHer, was on the call and brought up how the writing process can vary  based on whether you’re an introvert or extravert. When she has a writing project, she writes it first in her head, over and over, and by the time it comes out it’s fully formed and she doesn’t have to do many drafts or revisions.

Jennifer said, on the other hand, she must be an extrovert, where the piece evolves from writing or talking. She might have the nugget of an idea, but doesn’t necessarily know what it will be. She has to write it down to discover what she thinks and how she wants to approach it.

Do you fall into either of these camps? (I’m definitely in with Jennifer. I build on the part I’ve already worked out in my head.) Maybe you’ve never thought about it until now. If not, how does your writing process work?

I thought you might like to know how a book revision works, and in doing so I’ll discuss how I approached a large writing project and how I interview.

It seems that hard and fast rules about what constitutes a book revision don’t exist. Usually it’s because the author or the publisher feels the information needs updating. And that’s how it happened.

Last year I decided to update Will Write for Food, mostly because of advances in blogging and social media. I couldn’t go back to the editor I worked with and discuss it, because a new publishing company (Perseus) acquired the original publisher of my book (Avalon). So I met with my new editor at Da Capo Press, an imprint of Perseus.

A girl needs to be prepared, so I brought her a list of what I thought I could enlarge upon from the first edition.  I wanted a big new chapter on food blogging. I wanted to incorporate information from bloggers in other chapters such as freelance writing and how to get started. I had co-written a cookbook in 2008 and wanted to say more about the process of writing and production, photography and collaboration. Self-publishing had changed, particularly when it came to e-books and print-on-demand. And freelance writing had changed, some of it drying up. There had to be a positive way to approach that.

She said a revision had to be 25 percent larger than the original book. That meant adding 20,000 words, about 80 pages of 8 1/2 x 11-inch paper, double spaced. We spoke in pages, though: 50 pages on blogging, 7 more pages on freelancing, 9 more pages on cookbooks. Fortunately, our meeting was enough, and I didn’t have to write a full book proposal. The manuscript would be due this spring, the book to come out in the summer. That’s considered a rush job, doable because it’s a paperback with only type, no photos.

The editor hoped I would make all changes on a hard copy, to save time in production. Soon a huge envelope of 8 1/2 x 11-inch pages arrived by UPS. I tried. I really did. I would write in a sentence in pencil, erase it, write it again, erase it because my writing was hard to read, then change my mind about what I’d written and erase it again. It was torture! I begged her to let me edit my original Word file using Track Changes, a mark-up program, and she agreed. What a relief!

I tackled the chapter on food blogging first, since it comprised the majority of the update. I read books on blogging, scoured Internet sites such as Problogger and Copyblogger for tips, and interviewed many of the biggest names in food blogging for insights. I interviewed by phone or by Skype, wearing a headset, typing into a Word file. This system works a whole lot better than sending questions by email, where people typically respond with  as little information as possible. Just about everyone I approached was open to being interviewed.

About halfway thorough my research, I wrote an outline based on what I thought made sense for a beginning blogger and, as the chapter progressed, for experienced bloggers who still wanted to learn something. Because I had started a blog that summer, I had many questions and issues to answer for myself too:

• Why blog?
• Choosing a software service
• Deciding on a title
• Creating an About page
• What to write about
• How to make people care
• How personal should you be?
• Developing a distinctive voice
• How to come up with and structure a post
• How blog recipes are different from print
• How to write book reviews
• How to take great food shots
• Accepting and reviewing products
• How to get noticed
• Increasing your readership
• Can you make any money?
• Going from blog to book
• How to stay inspired.

Organizing the chapter halfway through gave me a chance to review my research and see where the holes were, and to decide who else I needed to interview. I also figured out which sidebars to add and where to put them.

It took about a month and a half to write the chapter. Once I broke it down into the sections above, I filled in the information in each part. That’s a secret of big writing jobs: breaking it down into small steps. Otherwise it gets overwhelming. I let myself write whichever sections I wanted, just to keep writing. In the old days I’d force myself to start at the beginning. I’m more relaxed these days — I know I’ll get there, and it doesn’t have to be in order. I made a point to keep my tone consistent with the rest of the book: be helpful and inspiring, but realistic.

As for the rest of the book, I decided which info — and people — needed updates. Some info was dated, some less relevant. People had left their jobs, some had new titles. I worked the advice and experience of bloggers into other chapters. Molly Wizenberg’s reflections on writing memoir and how it was different from blogging, for example, went into the section about memoir.

I could have kept going and kept revising, but at some point, I had to decide I was done. (Having a deadline helped.) My editor had a few comments, and then the chapter went off to the copy editor. From there we worked on a cover (a whole other story I’ll share soon) and a new index, and then…off to press. It was much easier than writing the whole book, but a big project nonetheless.

So that’s my story. What about yours? If you’ve worked on a big writing project, what’s your secret to managing it all?

Thanks to LoAnn Mockler for the suggestion.

]]> http://diannej.com/blog/2010/07/anatomy-of-a-book-revision/feed/ 12 http://diannej.com/blog/2010/07/food-writer-busted-on-free-wedding-meal/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed http://diannej.com/blog/2010/07/food-writer-busted-on-free-wedding-meal/#comments Fri, 02 Jul 2010 04:46:56 +0000 diannejacob http://diannej.com/blog/?p=3845

Befriending chefs and purveyors when you’re a food writer can be perilous. Worse yet, the practice can come back to bite you in the butt.

And that’s exactly what happened to Josh Ozersky, a food writer who got married recently in New York and showed poor judgement when planning for his wedding.

The trouble started when he accepted food from his buddies in the business as  presents: free bread, dips, seafood, lasagna, strip loins, and a free place to hold the event.

Then he devoted his column on Time magazine’s website to promoting the food and purveyors, never mentioning that his buddies supplied the goods for free, and saying most caterers “aren’t really good cooks” anyway.

Another food writer, Robert Sietsema of the Village Voice, busted him in an open letter, suggesting the food and venue could have cost $24,000 and asking whether he paid. And then the New York Times did a fascinating story about not only Ozersky but the whole issue of restaurants getting an increasing number of requests for free meals.

Time got so many comments on Ozersky’s column that they closed it, and later issued a statement: “Josh is friends with a variety of chefs and those relationships inform much of his writing. Usually, those connections are clear in his work. This piece describing his wedding, however, lacked adequate disclosure. Josh should have made his personal ties to the chefs in the piece clear and disclosed that the food and the venue he was describing were gifts. Josh understands that such proper disclosures are to be made in the future.”

So obviously, Ozersky screwed up. It’s best to disclose when you get a free meal or product, at the very least. Whenever you’re being treated in a way that’s not identical to the way your readers would be treated, you have to fess up.

So let’s discuss: Are you friends with food purveyors and chefs? Have you ever considered whether this might cause a conflict for you? Or do you think it’s inevitable to have friendships with the people whose food you admire, and whatever happens, you can handle it?

Thanks to Cynthia of  Life of Cyn and Carole Bidnick for sending me links.

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me…oh, hello there. My blog has made it to the one-year mark and I’m celebrating. Want to join me?

I know I’m a piker compared to many of you, but when I started blogging about food writing, I didn’t know if I could continue posting at least twice a week, or if I’d have enough to say (hah!).

I just looked back at my first post, and I think I’m still delivering what I promised: a useful place to read and comment on the world of food writing. I also said you’ll find  links to lots of articles and sites on food writing, and while that’s true,  you can now find more in my tweets, so people can read them right away. I had no idea why Twitter was valuable back then.

Launching the blog has been exhilarating. Here are some of the benefits, for those of you who might still be on the fence:

• I’ve had a ball getting to know food writers and bloggers from all over the world
• I write regularly again
• 2009 sales of Will Write for Food were up 50 percent in the first six months after I launched
• A reader hired me to edit her cookbook based on my posts about recipe writing
• People have hired me to advise them on starting or repositioning their blogs, and
• I’ve been invited to speak and teach at blogging conferences, including BlogHer Food and the Club Med Food Blogger Conference.

I’ve also got a better idea of what not to do: criticize another blogger publicly and then let her have her say on my blog. When I did so, five months in, my readership  peaked and the numbers were never that high again for the rest of the year. But that’s no way to get the page views up, and the whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth. (In fact, I wondered if I should even provide the links if you missed them the first time around, but in the interests of full disclosure, I’m trusting you.)

As for what works, I still like to be controversial and opinionated sometimes, and that has a certain appeal. You can see, at the top right, which posts have generated the most comments. Sometimes, in your replies, you have helped me see that I’m wrong. I love that, actually.

Beyond popularity, I’m still deciphering which posts work and why. Sometimes I don’t care and write whatever I like, including personal stories. I guess that is the privilege of having my own space. I give myself permission to get off track and see what happens. I sometimes post things that don’t strike a chord. It’s all part of the mix, and I enjoy the wide range of content and the freedom to write about whatever strikes me.

Most of all, thank you for taking me seriously with thoughtful comments, debates, engaging with other commenters, adding resourceful information, and helping me generate a thoughtful discussion about all the different ways we express our passion for food by writing about it. It’s been a heck of a year, and I’d be nowhere without you.

I’m still deciding on whether giveaways are right for my blog about food writing.

On one hand, giveaways (mine are almost always books) drive traffic to my blog and bring page views to the site. Both those things are valuable. And I like to give a reader recognition and appreciation. It’s fun to get return emails from excited contest winners.

On the other hand, giveaways strike me as kind of cheesy. I don’t like putting the words “free” and “giveaway” in my tag list. I feel like I’m selling shampoo. Also, now that I have a BlogHer ad, the company restricts what I can give away to under $40, and says I can’t have a contest for anything given to me for that express purpose.

I wonder whether the people who come for the giveaway become regular readers, or whether I’m just drinking the Koolaid. Maybe it’s like when food bloggers get photos published on Tastespotting. Readership spikes that day but doesn’t stick around.

And I wonder who these people are who enter giveaway contests. Some are regular readers, but I wonder if many are people who cruise the web looking for free stuff. Sometimes they’re fans of the author. When David Lebovitz posted on Facebook that I was giving away a copy of Ready for Dessert, I got way more entries than usual.

What’s your take? Do you enter giveaways or host them on your blog? Why or why not?

© photo courtesy of Ruhlman.com.

People get worked up about recipe writing on this blog, me included. It used to be that my posts on taking freebies got the most responses, but now my “Most Popular” list (on the right) is mostly about recipes.

So excuse me for pandering to the crowd, but I spent all last week editing recipes written by bloggers, and I’ve got another seven nits to add to my original list of 7 Common Recipe Writing Errors. Here they are:

1. Vague titles. “The Ultimate Cookie” doesn’t tell the reader anything other that, in your opinion, this is a darn good cookie. And so it should be. Why else would you blog about it?

The other issue is SEO. Let’s say your recipe is for Snickerdoodles. If potential readers type “Snickerdoodle recipe” into a search engine, you’re making it more difficult for them to find your post.

2. Incomplete directions. “Toast cumin seeds and grind them.” Unless your readership comprises Indian cooks, they’re probably going to need a few more clues. Remember that your readership is probably less sophisticated in the kitchen than you are, and they don’t want to feel intimidated.

3. Action takes place without vessels or tools. “Beat butter with sugar until creamy.” Where does this action take place? On your countertop? With your hands? Or “Bring cream to a boil.” Missing are: in a bowl, in what size saucepan, over what kind of heat. It’s also useful to mention a stand mixer, electric mixer, or a wooden spoon to help your reader along.

4. Duplicate approximations of timing. If you say it takes “about 3-5 minutes,” you have two approximations. “About” is the first, and the range of time is the second. Use either “3-5 minutes,” or “about 5 minutes.”

5. Too many exclamation points in the headnote and method! OMG! I deleted exclamation points last week until my fingers were sore! Please, by all means, be funny, be exhilarated! Convey your emotions through words, rather than through this one symbol! It gets a little tiring, and you might look like an ditz after a while!

6. Making every step a separate number.

1. “Keep warm” does not appear on a numbered line by itself in the method.
2. It goes at the end of a paragraph.
3. Group your actions based on how to make and complete a particular part of the recipe.
4. Otherwise you might end up with 25 numbered actions.
5. The recipe will look daunting when it isn’t.

7. Taking too long to get to the point. If your title is “Strawberry Jam,” and the first five paragraphs of your post are about your father’s time in the Navy, the reader’s going to get a little confused.  Work in the strawberry jam early on, and then make the connection to the Navy.

© photo courtesy of Ruhlman.com.

A few Saturdays ago I taught a day-long class on food writing to about 50 people (about half of whom were bloggers, and some of whom drove up from Portland) at the oh-so-chic Seattle Fairmont Olympic. Keren Brown of Foodportunity organized the event and invited me. Professional photographer and blogger Jackie Donnelly Baisa wrote a post about it and made her images available, so I thought I’d share a few with you.

I must say, I’ve never taught a class in such elegant surroundings. We had a large private room with an entryway for coffee, tea and sponsor displays.

Rebecca Mongrain from Sur La Table brought several copies of the company’s gorgeous new hardcover cookbook, Eating Local: The Cookbook Inspired By America’s Farmers for raffles throughout the day. (Disclosure: I researched the chapter on urban homesteading.) Other sponsors were Greek Gods Yogurt (OMG that fig yogurt) and Viv Agave, a prebiotic.

We spent the morning reviewing writing techniques and doing a writing exercises focused on the senses, using Red Hots candy. A few brave students read what they’d written, and some got laughs and smiles.

Then came an elegant lunch of sandwiches and salads, presented with panache by the chef at the hotel’s Georgian restaurant, Gavin Stephenson. He also made a jar of preserves for each attendee.

For dessert, Chef Stephenson created a chocolate ganache lollipop with chocolate Pop Rocks, an idea developed after studying with a Spanish chef specializing in molecular gastronomy.

After lunch, I tried to keep people awake (it’s the deadliest time of the day for a teacher) by having them pair up to interview each other. Then we talked about food blogging, recipes, cookbooks, and the publishing process. These students were no amateurs: some were already published cookbook authors, and publishers had already approached some of the bloggers. It was a lively discussion with many knowledgeable people lending their insights. I’m always amazed by what I learn at these events.

At the end of the day I helped my young host Keren, who blogs at Frantic Foodie, shlep the props back to her place. It being Seattle, it poured as we made a run for her door. But never mind. I had a fantastic time and I can’t wait to go back.

]]> http://diannej.com/blog/2010/06/snaps-from-my-seattle-food-writing-class/feed/ 9 http://diannej.com/blog/2010/05/best-takeaways-for-food-writers-from-bookexpo/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed http://diannej.com/blog/2010/05/best-takeaways-for-food-writers-from-bookexpo/#comments Fri, 28 May 2010 17:27:59 +0000 diannejacob http://diannej.com/blog/?p=3499

I’ve been scouring the web to see what happened at BookExpo America 2010, the book industry’s annual trade show, and what it might mean for food writers. Here’s my 4 most interesting trends, quotes, and statistics:

1. DIY publishing is changing fast. Kindle has most of the e-book market. Can you come up with a Kindle e-book and sell it directly to Amazon?

From a Publisher’s Weekly report: J.A. Konrath, blogger of A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing, said on a panel that he self-published on Kindle a number of the books he never sold to publishers. “He priced those books at $1.99, thinking they would be loss leaders to bolster his print sales. Instead he said he made $3,000 on the titles in the first month they were available. Now, he said, he’s selling 220 to 250 Kindle editions per day and that, in July, when Amazon’s royalty rate on titles authors self-publish to Kindle goes up to 70%, he’ll be bringing in roughly $170,000 per year (assuming his volume doesn’t abate) on a bunch of books the New York publishing establishment wasn’t interested in.”

2. Bowker and the Book Industry Study Group did research that showed the computer is still biggest e-reading device (37%); then Kindle (32%); iPhone (10%); iPad (3% after 3 weeks in market!).

More than 2 million people already have the free Epicurious Recipes & Shopping List iPhone/iPad app. It’s got to trickle down to food writers releasing inexpensive apps and e-books. Got a plan? If you have a recipe database and videos, it’s a start for an e-book. Apps usually require more interaction, such as entering info.

3. According to an article in Publisher’s Weekly, Cursor’s Richard Nash said on a panel that success in the digital age is no longer about securing lifetime monopolies associated with copyright, or controlling the content pipe, but about “your moxie.”

While the digital realm brings with it a degree of uncertainty, there is also greater opportunity, he said. “There are so many ways to monetize content, more ways to consume it.” He said the real challenge for authors is negotiating the “signal-to-noise ratio,” in other words, helping users find quality, and offering visibility to authors and publishers.

What I get from his message is: stop worrying about putting your recipes online. Instead, focus on visibility and quality content.

4. Diane Gedymin, founder of The Publisher’s Desk blog, said: 7% of published books generate 87% of book sales. And 93% of all published books sell less than 1,000 copies each. I knew about the first statistic. As for the second, if your book sold more than 1,000 copies, you are in the top 6 % of published authors. High five! Today is your day to feel successful.

Remember back in 1996 when Texas cattle ranchers sued Oprah Winfrey for discussing mad cow disease on her show? The ranchers lost in an appeal, but the lawsuit had a lasting effect.

Or did it? Did you know that we have to be careful when writing critically about any food or ingredient?

Food libel laws, like the ones in Texas and in 12 other states, are still very much alive. They allow a food manufacturer or processor to sue for what they believe are disparaging remarks about their products. Apple growers sued CBS a few years ago after the Alar apple scare, and McDonald’s has sued two environmental activists in England over a critical pamphlet.

Carrie Vitt of Deliciously Organic reminded me of these laws recently. She’s working on a book based on her blog, and her publisher is concerned about what she says in print. “I am allowed to say, “I don’t eat conventionally grown spinach because when I do I get a severe migraine. That would be OK because it’s just my opinion and I’m not telling anyone what they should or shouldn’t do,” she says.

But she has to make sure she does’t tell readers which foods to avoid or make any comments that could be considered disparaging. “I am telling people I use unpasteurized foods and whole wheat flour, and then also explaining why I don’t eat some foods.”

Carrie  noticed when Michael Pollan was on Oprah that “he was very careful in the way he talked about what he eats and made sure to say that it’s what ‘he’ prefers to eat, and not what he thought others should eat.  Oprah even laughed at one point and made a comment about ‘how you have to be very careful what you say.’”

“I could be going overboard,” concludes Carrie, “But I don’t have the millions like Oprah to defend myself. So the extra step of precaution, even if unnecessary, makes me feel like I’m doing a diligent job.”

I’m kind of surprised to hear this, because it seems like there are disparaging remarks everywhere about  such products as high-fructose corn syrup and factory farmed meats. Do you ever think about these laws when you write critically about certain foods? If not, does reading about these food libel laws change your mind?