Welcome to 2018! If you’re lucky you’ll have a quiet week ahead. There will be time to read these 15 must-read links. You’ll find terrific advice, arguments, stories, and round-ups relevant to food writing.
I’ve curated this list for food bloggers, writers, social media mavens — all of us obsessed with food and communicating about it. I’ve narrowed the links down to what gives us insight into our work.
If you’d like to receive curated lists like this twice a month, sign up for my free food writing newsletter. You’ll get my free e-book, “The 15 Biggest Errors to Avoid When Writing Recipes.”
And now, on to these 15 must-read links:
- The Cookbooks That Cookbook Authors Give as Tips. Useful info here about what successful authors like and don’t like in a cookbook.
- The Pitch: How to get the attention of a senior editor at Smithsonian Magazine. General advice for freelancing success.
- The Best Food Writing of 2017. According to The Gannet. Keep yourself entertained and occupied, and try to figure out the techniques.
- How to Properly Disclose Sponsored Instagram Posts According to the FTC. Plain language and examples of how people are doing it right.
- Cookbook overload: How to maintain a keeper collection — plus some 2017 releases to add. Advice about how to deal with too many books.
- Story Telling With Food. Just gorgeous tutorial on food photography from Saffron Street blog.
- The One New Year’s Resolution Every Food Blogger Should Have. Advice from the founder of Food Bloggers of Canada.
- Why Does Every Online Recipe Begin With the Preface to a Personal Memoir? This complaint generated tons of comments, but to me, it’s “much ado about nothing.”
- David Lebovitz and Deb Perelman in Conversation. How lucky are we that we didn’t have to go to New York to see these two in action? They have such a good time together.
- Layers of Deceit: Why do recipe writers lie and lie and lie about how long it takes to caramelize onions? I’ve always wondered this too, and it makes me mad!
- Breaking The Bubble Of Food Writing: Cultivating Diverse Stories. We need more opportunities for writers of color, says Adrian Miller.
- Café du Monde and 230 Fifth Are the Most-Instagrammed Restaurants in the U.S. A chance to analyze what people photograph for Instagram.
- This Food Photographer Sees You Stealing Her Photographs. What she did about it.
- How to find the best Instagram course for you. Long-time blogger My Custard Pie breaks it down from her own experience.
- Some books aren’t meant to be sold. A fun piece on how hard it is to sell books.
Wish you a happy new year, Dianne. And thanks for this wonderful list. I hope you stay in 2018 as generous as you usually are 🙂
Thank you Angshuman Das. Lovely to hear from you.
These are great Dianne! Especially appreciated the rant about recipe cooking times.
That was a really good one! You’d hope that maybe it changes recipe writing, but I wrote a rant about “salt to taste” a while ago and still see it all the time.
Happy New Year Dianne! Luckily I’m still in Austria on vacation so still had some free time on my hands to read your wonderful list. There is a bit for everyone. I got a bit depressed with the photo stealing piece but had to laugh about the books that aren’t meant to be sold and the caramelize onions. As for the cookbook overload I wish I could follow the sound advice but I’m hopeless when it comes to getting rid of any books, cooking or other. I’m still hanging to my 4000 books although I always have to move them around the world every 4 years.
That is a lot of books, Maria. Maybe they are like your children at this stage. Thanks for reading so many of the links. It feels good to know that someone took the time. Happy New Year to you, and I hope our paths cross again.
Working my through reading this list – as super useful as always. Happy happy New Year. And so thrilled to be included.
Hey, only the best stuff gets included, Sally. Glad to have you as a reader.
Thanks for including my post Dianne! As always, it looks like a great group of links. I’ll be checking them all out with a big cup of tea!
You’re most welcome. I also tweeted it and it got lots of action. Thanks for checking out the other links and Happy New Year, Melissa.
Thank you to Melisa for sharing this link. Diane, I read an early edition of your book a few years ago and it taught me so much. That was a time when I thought it would be easy to write a cookbook and get it published! As time passed I decided to become a food blogger instead. Blogging has become a great creative outlet for me. It’s so much fun to write about food! I’m delighted to be reconnected with you through FBC as I hadn’t even realized you had such a great website. I’ve signed up for your newsletter. Meanwhile just settling into a cozy spot to read your website and all the links.
Hello Rita and welcome to my blog and newsletter. Yep, it’s easy to stay connected and get new content after reading my book. I’m so pleased you’re enjoying being a blogger. I look forward to hearing from you again.
Dear Dianne,
Happy New Year! Much health and prosperity in 2018!
Thank you so much for publishing these links. I took the time to read them all. There was so much to learn.
In particular, I’m so touched by the story of Brittany Wright, to a point that I ordered her book “Feast Your Eyes”:
https://www.amazon.com/Feast-Your-Eyes-Brittany-Wright/dp/0316275786
I was unaware of her art, and also unaware of the massive scale of plagiarism that her story reveals. Maybe it would be very useful for food bloggers to have a list of resources that they could possibly use if they face similar circumstances? Maybe some tips on how to approach such a situation and what kind of professional bodies to contact along the way? I assume, there is no such a thing like a ‘best practice’ or one-size-fits-all solutio to plagiarism related to food photography…
Anyways, thank you again! It made me think a lot.
All the best, M.
Hello M, lovely to hear from you. Thank you so much for reading each link.That is really something!
Yes there are many lists of standard practices when people are stealing your work as a food blogger. If you search on them you will find them. I deal mostly with writing on my blog, so if you want more, I wrote:
https://diannej.com/2014/how-to-write-recipes-that-are-harder-to-steal/ and https://diannej.com/2010/5-lessons-about-stealing-recipes-and-web-justice/ and https://diannej.com/2012/whole-lotta-lifting-going-on/
Thanks for including my post on ‘Storytelling with Food’ Dianne. I loved writing and shooting for the post and I’m so happy it has reached some awesome people like you. ❤️❤️
Sweet of you to reply, Meera. It was my pleasure. And it was a great post!