Will Write For Food » Recipe Writing

Want More Work? Get into Video, Advises Chow’s Jane Goldman

diannejacob — Wed, 09 May 2012 03:13:55 +0000

Jane Goldman doesn’t mince words. When I asked Chow.com’s head eater whether food writers can make a living, she suggested finding another profession. Ouch!

At least she has a suggestion: Learn video.

Now the vice president and editor-in-chief of CBS Interactive’s Entertainment and Lifestyle division, Goldman was a writer and editor in the past, including for the Industry Standard, New York, Rolling Stone, and Wired. She has also been a screenwriter and producer.

Goldman founded Chow as a print magazine in 2004. CNET acquired it in 2006, along with Chowhound.com, and turned it into an online site. CBS Interactive Media acquired both in 2008. There are 3,000 to 5,000 recipes on the site.

I spoke with her about the opportunities for food writers at Chow.com and beyond:

Q. What are your responsibilities at Chow?

A. I’m the combination publisher and editor, responsible for the budget. Ad sales people do not report to me but I am obviously implicated in the bottom line. I run the operation, engineers, product people, designers, writers, editors, and recipe developers.

Q. What is Chow doing that’s different from other food websites?

A. Our attitude, the demographic and the reason we exist stay the same: to provide an informal, intelligent, irreverent voice in the world of food. It’s about beautiful food but it’s about having fun.

We’re moving very heavy into video series. We have one I love called “You’re doing it all wrong.” It’s easy to watch, intelligent, tightly edited, and doesn’t waste your time.

Chowhound is also an incredible resource for cooking and restaurants. The home cooking board is one of the most popular boards on the site. Ask a question and sometimes you get an answer in seconds from some really experienced cooks.

Q. On your site it says most recipes are developed in house or by members. You don’t hire people to write recipes?

A. Rarely. We asked Leah Koenig to do some Passover recipes. Sometimes if they’re specialized, we hire someone. But we have three people in test kitchen to do the recipes.

Q. You’re heavily into video and you don’t pay for recipes. What I’m getting from you is that food writers need to evolve, if this is the future.

A. Yes. People think they can have a meal and write about it, but that is not valuable to anybody except your immediate family. The principles of journalism need to apply. You need to add something: your own point of view, your personality, some research.

Q. So food writers need to become videographers?

A. I think that would help. Right now it’s a more vibrant medium. It’s still hard to read online. The web is turning into a directory and people are using it as an in-house library or as entertainment.

Video is about paying attention and not letting stuff slip. You’re looking to tell a story in the most engaging way: Move stuff around, cut stuff out, add graphics and titles and information and make it dense and interesting.

The tools for video are amazing. It’s easy, with simple software like iMovie, to make a good video.

Q. Hmm. How can you make this sound less scary for a word-based person like me?

A. Well I can’t. There’s always going to be a market for stories. The sources of written information are going to become far far fewer. Also words can be reproduced.

Q. Do you still hire freelancers for general stories?

A. We started cutting down our freelance contributions about three years ago. Our staff writes and we have a chef who writes because he has a very particular point of view.

Q. So people should not be pitching you for stories?

A. That’s correct, unless you have a video idea.

Q. That’s really depressing.

A. I know. I love the stories. But the appetite for written stories is just not as great as for video. I’m not saying food writing cannot be a profession. I’m just saying that’s how it works at Chow.

Q. How does a freelance food writer make a living then?

A. Probably find another occupation.

Q. Like become a videographer?

A. Yeah, I think that’s really right, or by writing treatments for video.

Q. Can you say more about that?

A. At Chow we’re looking for video series, concepts that are web series. Those need to be written and produced. The job of a producer is very similar to being an editor, and the job of a writer is similar. The producer is making the phone calls, finding people for the job. Someone once told me it’s like throwing a party: Get all the right people together and hope for the best, come back when it’s getting out of control.

Script writers write dialog. Otherwise it’s more like screen writing in that you come up with scenes and what’s going to happen, not necessarily how it’s said. What’s said is secondary to what’s going to happen.

What works online is repetition and a series. There’s very little context on the web, where people don’t necessarily know where they are. A one-off video on YouTube doesn’t have a context, but a series does. Readers see the sequence, they can tell what’s happening.

Q. Can we talk about food bloggers for a minute? Do you read any food blogs?

A. Yeah I do. Not regularly, but in binges. I go to a blog and I read a lot of it at a time. I read 101 Cookbooks, and I read the blogs of a few people because I’ve met them and know them personally.

Q. Should food bloggers continue to give away recipes?

A. They don’t have any choice, do they?

Q. How can food bloggers make money? So many want to know.

A. It’s a longshot, to make a living. It’s like making music and putting out a record. You throw it out there and hope something happens. Obviously there are people who are very good at developing an audience, creating a brand, marketing a brand, and getting press.

Q. Do you have final career advice for food writers?

A. Don’t be generic. When I first started writing I thought I had to sound like everybody else, like a magazine article. What I found was the more I let my own personality come through the more successful I was.

That doesn’t mean indulgence. It doesn’t mean just letting it flow onto the screen. It means to be as much yourself – your highly polished best of self.

Be diligent, persistent and write regularly. Don’t limit yourself to the written word. Don’t do the thing that anybody could have done. Add that bit of effort to turn something into something special.

Writers are supposed to do what people don’t have the guts or the energy to do. Find out why or how, not just what.

I get so pissed off when people are lazy.

* * *

For a related story, see:

Chef John Strikes Gold with Allrecipes Acquisition

Tired of Recipes? 7 Other Subjects to Post Instead

diannejacob — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 01:04:48 +0000

Recipe posts are a ton of work. You’ve got to develop and test a recipe, photograph it, write it, upload and edit photos, then write the post. It takes up to 6 hours to complete a post, food bloggers tell me.

Why not take a break from all the cooking and testing? The occasional non-recipe post won’t hurt, and doing so will let you expand the subjects you cover in a new way.

Typically, narrative posts mean advice and recommendations. Here’s how some food bloggers do it:

1. Start a series. Choosing Raw, for example, has an inspirational Green Recovery Series about people who moved to a raw diet. Aida Mollenkamp has several regular columns, including this one called the Monthly Mood Board.

2. Write about an experience. Gluten-Free Girl & the Chef wrote about what kind of gluten-free food she could safely eat in airports and on flights. No recipe needed, and she connected with readers who often face the same problem.

3. Give away a cookbook. Support a friend who’s recently published a cookbook, purchase a cookbook and give it away, or say yes to an email query and have a publisher send you a cookbook. Here’s a giveaway post with gorgeous photography by Averie Cooks.

4. Write about kitchen products you adore. Kitchen Corners wrote this post about products she thought would tickle her readers. Here’s another example, a post just called Recent Acquisitions from Lottie + Doof.

5. Write a round-up with a theme and link to past recipes. It’s a sneaky and perfectly legitimate way to take a break. Pinch My Salt offers photos that link to past posts inspired by Valentine’s Day, then caps them off with links to other blogger recipes.

6. Conduct an interview. Cakespy found a blog that teaches how to make cookies that look like flowers, so she interviewed the blogger about her technique.

7. Give advice. Canal House writes about how to plan for a picnic. Recipe Girl gives readers a money-saving tip on sponges.

What about you? Have you found more ways to write food-related posts with no recipes? I’d love to know.

(Photo courtesy of David Castillo Dominici, Freedigitalphotos.net)

Q&A: Doc Willoughby on Perfecting Recipes in America’s Test Kitchen

diannejacob — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 18:19:57 +0000

Twenty years of perfecting recipes. That’s how long America’s Test Kitchen has cooked, baked and obsessed over the results. Based in Brookline, MA, it’s the test kitchen for a PBS television show of the same name, where the staffs of Cook’s Illustrated and Cook’s Country magazines work out their recipes.

How does the staff create a recipe that works every time? I asked John “Doc” Willoughby, the company’s executive editor for magazines. The Harvard grad began his career at Cook’s Illustrated when Chris Kimball founded the magazine in 1993. In 2001, he left to become executive editor at Gourmet magazine, then returned to America’s Test Kitchen in 2010. Willoughby, who writes cookbooks with co-author Chris Schlesinger, a chef, has written nine, including the award-winning The Thrill of the Grill.

Lori Galvin, executive editor of America’s Test Kitchen and a reader of this blog, sent me the company’s latest cookbook, Cook’s Illustrated Cookbook: 2,000 Recipes of 20 Years of America’s Most Trusted Food Magazine, and suggested I talk with Willoughby about the company’s process of developing and testing recipes:

Q. What do you do as executive editor of America’s Test Kitchen?

A. I’m in charge of the two magazines plus 24 special issues for newsstands. I follow along the process for each magazine, starting with ideas like, “Do readers want another roast beef recipe? If so, which kind?” Then we survey readers before doing an article.

Q. How much do you rely on readers for your content?

A. Once we decide what we want to do, we come up with a recipe and send it to readers to test. Eighty percent of those who make it have to want to make it again. Sometimes we end up never publishing the recipe because it’s too complicated or some other reason. Then we do a post publication survey where readers tell us which recipes they like the best and why.

Q. Does the test kitchen staff start with a pre-existing recipe?

A. We use a spectrum of sources. We try to find the early version of a traditional recipe, and we look in major and specialty cookbooks. We look for different approaches. The same approach to apple pie is not helpful.

Q. Then what happens?

A. The standard way to test is to take as many as five different approaches. We make those recipes and the test kitchen staff tastes and rates them, and then gives feedback for each. The cook discusses what she learned from that process and which approaches she liked. She might decide to put three approaches together in one recipe. Then she follows whatever tangents come up. The reason it takes so long is that you have to test one variable at a time.

Q. What are these variables? I read that the average America’s Test Kitchen recipe is prepared an average of 65 times, over a period of six weeks.

A. For a gingerbread cake, you’ll test it at a range of different oven temperatures, with the rack at different levels. The amount of leavener might vary, and then there’s the liquid you might use – water, milk, orange juice, and different kinds of beers. Someone will ask if lager is better so you have to try different beers.

For roast beef, if the goal is super-evenly cooked juicy meat, it’s a different kind of testing. You get into a lot of science, like if you cook it to X degrees and let it sit, then put it back in the oven. Once you get started down that road, there might be 40 tests to do to get those variables right.

One of my favorite discoveries is where we microwave the bananas for the banana bread recipe. It’s a little absurd but it works. The problem is that you want the banana flavor without the banana mushiness. When a discovery like that happens, it’s exciting.

Q. Let’s say you find a technique from someone else and you use it. Do you credit that person’s recipe?

A. You try to. I was making dulce de lece, and I noticed that when people use baking soda, it worked better. It helped the browning and it had a more butterscotch-y flavor. I found a lot of recipes that used the baking soda, but if I had found that only Rick Bayless used it, then I would say so. I saw that he used cinnamon, which I hadn’t seen before, so if I use it I will credit him.

In the gingerbread recipe, the tester used a technique from a colonial recipe, so she said so. She had visited Plimouth Plantation. That also made it a better story.

Q. How did the gingerbread work out?

A. I thought the development process was crazy, just insane. But sometimes the center of the cake sank. The tester was not satisfied and testing went on for weeks. Had it been up to me, at week three, I might have said, “That’s good enough.” But the test cooks get obsessive, which is a good thing.

I made the gingerbread this weekend, for a dinner party. When I poured the batter into the pan I thought it wouldn’t work. The batter was like water. But the tester had solved the problem. (DJ: Here’s why, according to the headnote: “Incorporating the baking soda with the wet ingredients instead of the other dry ones helped to neutralize those acidic ingredients before they get incorporated into the batter and allow the baking powder to do a better job.”)

Q. I have more questions about the testing. You said the editors might taste five versions of a dish and decide what they want. Why have a goal versus the serendipity of creating a great new dish?

A. For the cook, if you leave it wide open, they could do their favorite chocolate chip cookie, and that would be it. But it helps to have a more defined goal. We say we want this kind of cookie, so go make it. It’s a group process so we have to agree at the beginning.

Q. That wasn’t how you did it at Gourmet.

A. A lot of Gourmet was done in menus, where you would have an individual cook who would create all the recipes. There was a lot of tasting as well, but it was more about “Is it good?”

Q. How much of this rigorous process is applicable to people who come up with their own recipes?

A. We have 42 cooks and we can do this. But some of it is applicable. If you’re not satisfied with your dish, the process of looking at all the recipes you can find and asking how do they do it differently and what you could do differently will take care of it.

I did an eggplant recipe for the New York Times and I made it 10 times because I couldn’t get it right. I thought three tests were enough but they weren’t. If you decide “I like this” after two tests, you don’t need to go any further. I hate salting and draining eggplant, and I kept thinking I could get away from it, but I was wrong.

I’d say that if you think of something and it seems silly, try it anyway, like microwaving bananas.

Q. How does this rigorous process of developing and testing influence you as a cookbook author?

A. I write recipes with chef Chris Schlesinger, and most of the recipes come from him. So if I make lamb kebab with Middle Eastern flavors and we both really like it, that’s that. We use recipe testers. We’re just starting a cookbook now, on grilling.

Q. It seems that a lot of your magazine recipes are about teaching technique to readers. There are sidebars that say things like “To keep baked chicken breasts juicy, poke the meat with a fork and salt each piece.” Is your job to help readers understand why a certain step or ingredient is important?

A. Yes. One reason is global and one is more practical. I think people can learn how to make a recipe work better. Two, if you don’t explain why, people won’t do it. Many people don’t actually follow a recipe.

Q. Doesn’t it make the recipe longer, to explain why?

A. Hopefully people read the stories. We put the critical information in the headnotes. We also use a sidebar to explain why the science works and why you should do it.

Q. Cook’s Illustrated puts its recipes behind a pay wall, for $34.95 per year. Why did you decide not to give away recipes, like other magazines do?

A. Because it’s a different business model than other magazines. Traditionally, magazines sell advertising space on their websites. We don’t have advertisers, and the only thing we can make money on is our product, and we can’t give it away. We do have a free website, but it’s not a recipe repository.

Q. How many paid subscriptions do you have?

A. The three company sites have a combined paid circulation of 450,000.

Q. What do you think about food bloggers who give away their recipes for free?

A. Well, they’re not going to make a lot of money! Blogs have their plusses and minuses. You can put work up without a company behind you, put up your own stuff. But not that many people have made money.

Q. Do you read any food blogs?

A. I read Smitten Kitchen, but I don’t read a whole lot regularly. I’ve found that if you follow people on Twitter, other people point out interesting things and then I go read them.

Q. Do you think there’s such a thing as an original recipe?

A. I do. I don’t think there are a million of them. But some people can come up with a combination of flavor and ingredients that no one has seen before, if you search for it and you don’t find it.

Jean-Georges Vongerichten thinks about food in a different way. Maybe the recipes have been made before at some time in history, but it’s the first time you’ve seen it, and it’s not from a culinary tradition but out of his head. Grant Achatz probably has tons of original recipes.

Q. Is it chefs, then, who are more likely to come up with something new?

A. No, cookbook authors can do the same thing. But they’re probably going to get less attention.

Q. Does Cook’s Illustrated go after people who use the recipes as their own?

A. We have gone after people who use 15 or 20 of our recipes on their websites, because then they’re starting to take something we can no longer sell because they are available for free.

Q. What is your advice for someone who wants to be paid to develop recipes?

A. Contact cookbook editors to be recipe testers. My guess is it’s easier to break into.

Trouble for Two Recipe Adapters

diannejacob — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 21:53:53 +0000

Food Network fired star Anne Thornton for adapting recipes a little too closely. (Photo: Food Network)

Yes, one of my favorite subjects was in the news again recently: the perils of adapting recipes. Here are two recent developments that affected a cooking show host and a food blogger:

1. Show cancelled because of adapting recipes. The Food Network cancelled the show of TV Chef Anne Thornton because she adapted recipes based on making small tweaks to the recipes of others, apparently.

Media outlets went crazy when the news hit that her show, Dessert First, was not renewed because many of her recipes were “plagiarized” from Martha Stewart and Ina Garten, specifically a German chocolate frosting and lemon bars.

“You take what you learn from them and then you riff on that,”she said in her defense in a story in the UK Daily Mail. “As for lemon squares, there’s only so many ways you can make them, so of course there will be similarities.”

Her comment sounds similar to those I’ve received on this blog. And I don’t necessarily disagree with her, in principle. There really are only so many lemon bar recipes, and is it your job to find the original one? Here’s what I’d say to her: “If you have nothing new to offer about a lemon bar, move on.”

What’s great about the Daily Mail story is that you can see a side-by-side comparison of her frosting recipe and Stewart’s. Scroll down to the end of the article and read the recipes. Clearly, Thornton made a few minor edits. It’s one thing to be inspired from someone else’s recipe and write your own, and another to just tweak a few words and amounts.

That rule you’ve heard, about changing three things in a recipe to make it yours? It didn’t work for her.

I asked on Twitter and Facebook what people thought about Thornton’s recipe writing skills. Here are some of the replies:

Food blogger Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen asked, “Why is it plagiarizing Martha or Ina, not the other 10K people who have published riffs on these?”

Cookbook author Nancie McDermott said (in a series of tweets) the report’s tone was sensational. “It presumes we can & should come up w/Unique NeverB4Seen Creations. Stealing = bad&wrong. But…who created lemon bars? Where? What time? If I could come up with something “new,” why couldn’t another 1 come up with same thing on own?” This stinks of ‘faux-righteous’ outrage. Seldom can we track ’1st Ever!’ And why bother?”

Food blogger and cookbook author Beth Sheresh of Kitchen Mage tweeted, “Nothing is new. Created a recipe from nothing but my head. Found THREE different recipes that were exactly same thing.”

On My Will Write for Food Facebook page, food blogger Amanda McInerny of Lamb’s Ears and Honey wrote, “I just wonder if there isn’t another agenda here. It is a rare and remarkable cook who can come up with a recipe which doesn’t reference some other dish, somewhere in the universe. With the popularity of food books, mags, tv, blogs etc I can’t see this issue going away or being resolved any time soon. …not at all sure that rare and remarkable is what tv execs look for in anything. I suspect they are after looks and marketability to attract the advertisers – it would be nice to think I’m wrong, though.”

2. Food blogger harassed for adapting recipes. Lest you think that people only notice when televisions hosts adapt recipes, Australian Food Blogger Amanda McInerney (whose comment you read above) posted an adapted recipe by UK cookbook author Dan Lepard on her blog. She left the ingredients list the same, but wrote her own headnote and method. Lepard’s business manager, David Whitehouse, came after her in the comments of her blog post and requested she take her adaptation down. She refused. Read the blog’s comments to see what ensued. Two intellectual property lawyers came to her defense! Whitehouse’s argument is that her work was derivative, and therefore subject to copyright law.

I dug around and found three other brownie and sweet potato recipes:

On The Kitchn, the writer linked to the original Leopard recipe and listed only the ingredients, converting them for an American audience. I like that, even though readers have to print his recipe and The Kitchn’s.
The blogger of PaleOMG changed the ingredients to include honey, coconut oil and coconut flour and didn’t mention his recipe — if indeed she got it from him.
Most fascinating was a brownie and sweet potato recipe from Body-Soul from April 2009, more than two years before Dan Lepard published his recipe in the UK Guardian. So whose recipe was it in the first place?

What is the message in these events? Adapt recipes at your own risk? Or should we all just get over it, because everyone does it, and recipes can’t be copyrighted anyway?

A Tip for Writing and Editing Recipes in MS-Word

diannejacob — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 23:03:22 +0000

I do a lot of recipe editing in Microsoft Word, both for individuals and publishers. The number one mistake I find is when ingredients are listed out of order, compared to how they’re used in the method.

Before I learned this tip, I drove myself nuts scrolling up and down in Word to check: Did she put the olive oil first? Scroll up, then scroll down. Does the garlic come before or after the Herbs de Provence? Scroll down, then scroll up.

The "Split" feature in MS-Word lets you see two parts of the same file.

Now I use Word’s Split feature so I can see both the ingredients list and the method on my screen. That way I can check the order of ingredients without scrolling like a maniac.

Here’s all you have to do:

1. Open an MS-Word file that has a recipe in it.

2. Under Window in the Toolbar, select Split. You’ll see two parts of one file on your screen. Each section scrolls independently.

3. Position your recipe’s list of ingredients in the top half of the file and the method in the bottom. Voila! Both are visible. Now check that you’ve listed the ingredients in the order you use them, of course.

Got any other tips you’d like to share about recipe editing or using MS-Word? I’d love to read them.

Whole Lotta Lifting Going On

diannejacob — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 19:57:25 +0000

Increasingly, recipe writers are finding their own content appearing somewhere else.

Part of the problem is how ridiculously simple it is to lift work verbatim. On the net, just copy and paste. Some online companies write code that does it. In print, just retype a recipe verbatim, and present it as yours.

Here’s what Gwen from Bunky Cooks said in the comments of a previous post here in Will Write for Food:

“I was amazed at the number of people who came up to me after I spoke on a panel on ethics at IFBC in New Orleans last year. They said they had no idea that there were ethics they should be adhering to when writing their blogs.

“Isn’t some of this just common sense? Aren’t we responsible for our words and actions just as you would be in a job or at school? Why do some people think the internet is a place where everything is free and anything is yours just for the taking?”

Good questions. At least she and I got the opportunity to educate. I also spoke on an ethics panel for IFBC last year, and talked for 50 minutes on the subject last weekend at Food Blog South in Birmingham, AL.

Here are some new developments from last week where both individuals and companies are involved:

1. Recipes ripped off as an e-book. Elise Bauer got Amazon to shut down a page where someone in Bangkok scraped the content of Simply Recipes into an e-book and sold it on Kindle. A reader of her site tipped her off. One week later, eight more Kindle e-books appeared on Amazon that ripped off Bauer’s recipes.

2. Recipes appear on a recipe database site — surprise! A food blogger emailed me to say she recently stumbled across several of her recipes on Tastebook. She didn’t add them. She has contacted the company but has not heard back from them yet.

Similarly, some big bloggers are fighting with Velvet Aroma and Feastie, which scrape blog recipes into their sites, without permission.

3. Recipes ripped off by a future cookbook author. That’s right, people don’t just steal online content. An editor at a publishing house emailed me to say that, after receiving a cookbook manuscript, she discovered two plagiarized recipes during a taste testing.

“Someone at the table said something like, ‘I swear this is just like a (celebrity chef’s/magazine’s) recipe I’ve made.’ We went online and found the original recipes in a matter of minutes. Everything’s nearly a straight copy-paste, including a typo!

“We had an intern spot-check some of the recipes the author had submitted, and we found a third had also come from the Internet. We talked with the author, who blamed an assistant. The author sent us replacements and assured us they were original recipes and not taken from other sources. The plagiarized recipe we discovered today was one of those replacement recipes.”

I introduced the cookbook editor to Amanda Hesser, who deals with this issue of lifted recipes during Food52 contests. She suggested a search of recipes at Eat Your Books. The site won’t show you the entire recipe, but shows a list of ingredients that appear in recipes in cookbooks, magazines and blogs, so you can take a first step in determining which are similar.

What can you do if you find someone’s stolen your recipes verbatim? First, take a deep breath. Second, read Bauer’s post about copyright theft, and read all the comments. Not everyone who does this is evil. Some people are simply naive. I hope, if this has happened to you, the person is in the latter category.

Photo by chanpipat from Freedigitalphotos.net

Who Gets Paid to Write Recipes?

diannejacob — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 22:32:53 +0000

In preparation for a recent recipe writing panel for the International Food Blogger Conference, I decided I wanted to know more about career recipe developers and how they work.

So I spoke and emailed with professional recipe developers who work for retail food manufacturers, growers, commodity boards, and commissions such as the California Walnut Commission. My goal was to get more information about corporate recipe writing, and also to understand what kinds of opportunities exist for food writers.

Here’s the first thing I learned: The culinary experts who get these jobs are not necessarily food writers or cookbook authors. These professionals might have backgrounds in nutrition, or they’re dieticians, or they have a degree in home economics or food science. While they may not have been to culinary school, they are skilled cooks who can write recipes using a variety of techniques and styles. They also might be members of IACP’s Test Kitchen Professionals Special Section.

When coming up with ideas, these recipe developers study food trends and know what kind of ingredients are current and which have staying power. They know what level of sophistication clients want, depending on their target audience, and they consider variables such as pan size and substitutions.

Recipe developers might work with chefs to rewrite recipes that work in a home cook’s kitchen. Some have clients who want recipes that conform to dietary specifications or require nutritional analysis. Sometimes their clients ask for product concepts first, which means writing out ideas for recipes, such as five variations on a turkey sandwich. Oh, and don’t even bother with a pannini or a sandwich with pesto or cranberries — they already have those in their files, thanks.

Once clients select the recipes they like, the finished recipes could appear in several places, including:

In a magazine ad
On product packaging
On a company’s website, or
In a press release directed to newspaper and magazine editors who use free content.

Recipe developers charge between $300 and $600 per recipe, depending on experience or on complexity of the recipes. Reimbursement for groceries is always separate. Typically, the recipes will belong to the company, not to the writer. And one last thing – the client might have a test kitchen, so the recipe better work flawlessly, be well written, conform to food safety standards, and taste great.

I’m looking forward to learning more by talking with my fellow panelists at this weekend’s IFBC conference in Santa Monica. I’ll be on a recipe development panel with Amelia Saltsman, author and publisher of The Santa Monica Farmer’s Market Cookbook; and Martha Homberg, former editor of Fine Cooking magazine. Hope to see you there!

(A version of this post first appeared in my quarterly newsletter about food writing. My newsletter contains tips and links to helpful articles and resources. If you’d like to receive it, sign up here.)

(Photo courtesy Simon Howden, Free Digital Photos.)

Blogger Quits Day Job, Creates Successful Online Business

diannejacob — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 23:32:36 +0000

Jenny McGruther quit her job as an office manager last year to devote herself to her online cooking business, Nourished Kitchen. (Photo by Kevin McGruther)

Do you dream of making enough money from food writing online to quit your day job? Do you want more income as a self-employed writer and educator?

Jennifer McGruther started down a path to lucrative self-employment in 2006, when she switched to a traditional foods diet. She defines this style of eating as “the foods that your ancestors ate prior to the industrial revolution in the 19^th Century and the green revolution in the mid-20^th Century.” The focus is on raw dairy, cultured and fermented foods, broth, offal, and grains and beans that have been soaked, fermented or sprouted. Protein sources must be grass fed, pastured or wild-caught.

She had trouble finding enough information about traditional foods (Sally Fallon’s Weston A. Price Foundation and her book, Nourishing Traditions, are pioneers). So in 2007, McGruther started a blog as a way to track the recipes she developed.

Based on the amount of interest in her blog and her newsletter (begun in 2009), she launched an online business of teaching people to cook traditional foods. She charges by the month and by the class for her online cooking classes and healthy meal plans. Hundreds of people sign up. Last year, she quit her day job as a Colorado office manager to work full time at her business, Nourished Kitchen.

Today, her newsletter has more than 21,000 subscribers. (Her Facebook fan page has more than 22,000 Likes.) Now she has a full website that sells two kinds of products: meal plans and recipes ($10 per month/ $85 per year) and video cooking classes ($149 for 13 installments), all aimed at an audience interested in pursuing the traditional foods diet.

We spoke recently about how her online business evolved and how it works:

Q. What’s interesting is that your readers are willing to pay for recipes, even though the web — and your blog — offer so many recipes for free.

A. When you develop a relationship with your readers, they are wiling to pay something more. I have solid, well-tested recipes that can be reproduced easily, and people value that.

When I decided to branch into premium content, I had about 2000 newsletter subscribers, and about 80 ended up making purchases. Their feedback was excellent and it gave me the confidence to continue providing premium content in addition to the free content offered on the site.

Q. That’s a good number, as a start. What came next?

A. In February, 2010 I launched free daily emails based on giving up processed food for a month. I increased my newsletter subscriptions by 1500 subscribers and was featured on CNN. That taught me people were interested in getting more involved. They kept emailing me with questions. I realized they didn’t know how to cook unprocessed food.

The daily emails were my pilot program for unveiling cooking classes. I worked with several other bloggers to create online cooking classes. We work together to cross-promote each other’s premium content, which helps us all to reach a broader audience. We also share suggestions, tips and technical advice with one another.

In May 2010, I launched a 12-week video cooking class on preparing traditional foods. There were 24 videos on things like how to truss a chicken, make sauerkraut, and make kombucha. My husband and I shot the videos together.

The new cooking classes are on making cultured and fermented foods. For $149, each class offers between eight and 13 installments, and each installment covers a particular topic, with 3 to 6 videos, print materials, and recipes, which usually amount to about 20 pages of content.

(To see an example of a video, watch this one on How to Ferment Anything.)

Q. How many people will buy these cooking class series?

A. Typically, each cooking class sells to several hundred people.

Q. How did the first one go?

A. There were lots of learning curves. I offered lifetime access to the site. People kept coming back and asking for help, asking if I was offering more classes. They were struggling with time management and kitchen management issues, such as remembering to soak oatmeal for breakfast 12 hours in advance.

Strawberry, rhubarb, eggs and homemade cream. (Photos by Jenny McGruther.)

That’s what led to the meal plan program. I also felt I needed a range of price points, so I allowed people to subscribe to the program for only $10 per month.I found that people couldn’t commit to traditional food seven days a week, so I gave them plans for three days a week.

(For the meal plan program, customers receive three full dinner menus each week: For each menu, there’s one dessert, one ferment recipe, one soup, a to do-list, a shopping list, cooking tips, and make-ahead lists. There’s one slow-cooker meal. See this sample of a meal plan.)

I’ve found that some people stick with the program for six months, and then they have enough recipes. Others make every single recipe every single week. And some use it to access new recipes.

Q. How many subscribers do you have for your meal plan?

A. Several hundred per month.

Q. I can see why. I’m amazed by the amount of information you provide, not just recipes but a lot of handholding and explaining so people can understand exactly what they’re getting. How did you know to create all that material?

A. I determined what I would like to see before I purchase something. With a physical product, you can see it. With digital information, it’s a little more challenging. I did my best to make sure it was very clear to see exactly what people were getting. That helps me create informed buyers who are not confused about the product.

Q. Why do you think your programs are successful?

A. They provide info on what people need, and they know exactly what they’re getting. The price points are effective, between $50 and $200, and work for most people. Plus, I was fortunate to be one of the first people to tap into this particular niche, so my site is more prominent. People get that one-on-one information and attention from a trusted source, and that’s enormously valuable. Also, I’m accessible. If a subscriber called me about cookware recommendations, I am happy to provide one-on-one information.

Q. What is challenging about this new business for you?

A. I get hundreds of emails and it’s really challenging for me to go through all of them. And when I go through them, that’s time I don’t spend developing new recipes for my blog and time I don’t spend with my family. It’s exhausting! I got an assistant for customer service, but an assistant can’t help with specialized expertise. I try to answer emails in two business days. Now I’m looking into an assistant who has specialized knowledge in traditional foods.

When I do a launch, I’m working an 80-hour week. I launch the cooking classes about three times each year with large promotions, though they’re open for enrollment at any time. I haven’t done a large promotion or launch for the meal plans yet, but I promote them periodically by social media or in blog posts.

Q. So what are the lessons for people who are still trying to figure out how to make a living from food writing?

A. They need to build a devoted audience based on their specialized knowledge. Once they have a way to convey that knowledge to their readers, they need to make it very clear about what the product will do for their readers. If they outline it directly and hit a price point that provides substantial value, they’ll be in a good position.

(Disclosure: I met McGruther when she contacted me about working together, and she is a client.)

Getting Paid for Recipes, One Year Later

diannejacob — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 21:24:56 +0000

Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen (left), says that absolutely, bloggers should charge for recipes. That's Kate McDermott of Art of the Pie in the middle and me on the right. (Photo by Lora Giorgi, Cake Dutchess)

What a difference a year makes. Last year at The International Food Blogger Conference (IFBC), Amy Sherman of Cooking With Amy got a ton of push-back on our recipe-writing panel when she suggested food bloggers should get paid for recipes.

Even I wrote a conflicted piece on giving recipes away for free, which continues to be one of my most-commented upon posts ever.

This year, at IFBC in New Orleans this past weekend, Deborah Perelman of Smitten Kitchen stated, firmly, that bloggers should not give away recipes for free because companies make money from them. There was silence. Hobby bloggers occupied half the room.

And then a woman in the audience, from Wilton, said her company pays for recipes, and that bloggers should always ask for payment. Shauna James Ahern of Gluten-Free Girl, also in the audience, tweeted: ”Love hearing @thesmitten, @katemcdermott, and @diannej encouraging women to advocate for themselves when charging for recipes. #IFBCNOLA.”

That’s an improvement over last year, when people talked about giving away recipes for “goodwill” and “connection.” But complicated questions remain about who is asking for these recipes, what you get from giving them away, and what should you charge or not charge in each case. Let’s look at three examples:

Company or corporations: These firms have budgets to pay for work.The rate is anywhere from $250 to $600 per original recipe, according to recipe developers I spoke to when doing research for the IFBC panel. Groceries for testing are never included in the price, and the company will probably own the recipe. Some companies want to pay you in goods. If so, the goods should be worth more than the fee to make it worthwhile.
Cookbook author. If an author wants to put your recipe in her cookbook, charge him or her a nominal fee, unless it’s for a charity you deem worthwhile. But how much, and what if they say they can’t pay? Decide if it’s worth it. An obscure book with a small publishing company might have few readers. On the other hand, it doesn’t cost you much for a recipe already published on your website to appear in a book. And on the other hand, if you believe inclusion would be prestigious, such as in the Food52 cookbook, then you might find it worthwhile from a credibility standpoint.
Company website. If someone offers to post a recipe from your blog for no pay, should you do it? I’d prefer that the answer is no, but I’ve worked with beginning bloggers who have given away content from blogs because it’s good for their credibility and creates incoming links. I don’t like it, but I understand. I just hope it’s a short-term philosophy that bloggers can use as a stepping stone to paid work.

The best approach, the panelists said, is to ask, “What is your budget?” Sometimes after saying no, companies come back with a budget. This moment can be the turning point for many food bloggers, who thought of themselves as hobbyists, and then find that people are willing to pay for their work. And they should. Just because writing recipes is your passion doesn’t mean you should do so for free, outside of your blog.

What is your experience? Has anything changed from last year? Are companies still asking for recipes for free, or is it more common to offer payment now? Are you at the point now where you won’t give away any content for free?