Dianne Jacob, Will Write For Food

Useful Tips, Interviews, and Stories to Inspire Food Writers and Bloggers

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The Joy of Passive Income, Through Self-Published Books

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A Guest Post by Jill Nussinow

Jill-Nussinow

Culinary Educator Jill Nussinow sells print-on-demand cookbooks on her website, which lead to passive income.

Just last week, I made almost $100 in e-book sales with almost zero effort. The cost was a minute or two of my time to login to e-junkie.com, enter the buyers’ information and hit the Send button. The money showed up in my PayPal account like magic. Who wouldn’t love that?

I got the idea to sell a downloadable cookbook in March 2011, when I hired a designer to format my manuscript. Within a few weeks, I had something saleable but wasn’t sure how to sell it. A publisher mentioned [Read more…] about The Joy of Passive Income, Through Self-Published Books

Do Women Writers Have a “Confidence Gap?”

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Confident-Businessman

Are you as confident as this guy? According to most surveys, probably not.

Well duh. Of course we do. Since it’s mostly women who read my blog, I feel we can talk amongst ourselves. So just between us, when I read this article about our lack of confidence, I felt a blush of familiarity.

“The Confidence Gap” posits that there’s another reason why women are not breaking the glass ceiling, besides the tug of motherhood and entrenched sexism. It’s our confidence level.

That’s so us.

As a speaker, teacher and coach, I see this “confidence gap” with women clients, female students, and at conference sessions full of [Read more…] about Do Women Writers Have a “Confidence Gap?”

Who Wrote the Bestselling Cookbooks of 2013?

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Bestselling-Cookbookx-2013

Click on the image to see the cookbook names more clearly.

I was on a panel last week (during the Julia Child Food and Wine Festival at Bacara in Santa Barbara, CA) where the moderator showed this slide of the bestselling cookbooks of 2013 in the US, according to Nielsen research. If you haven’t seen it yet, I think you’ll find [Read more…] about Who Wrote the Bestselling Cookbooks of 2013?

Food Writing that Pays Well, with a Nutrition Degree

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Diane-Quagliani

Dietician Diane Quagliani started out as a freelance food writer but eventually turned to the corporate side.

At an Oldways conference where I spoke recently, I met a dietician who is also an accomplished corporate food writer, Diane Quagliani. I wondered how her writing work is different from general food writing, and what advantages her degree gives her.

Diane, a registered dietician, has worked for many large food companies including Kraft Foods, McDonald’s, PepsiCo, Campbell’s Soup, Nestle, General Mills, and many public relations firms. She has also been a freelance writer and media spokesperson. She specializes in nutrition communications for a consumer and health professional audience.

Here’s what she had to say about how her degree as a dietician helps her with corporate work:

Q. What are your degrees?

A. I have three: a Bachelor of Science in Dietetics, a Bachelor of Science in Psychology, and an MBA. To become a registered dietician, I had [Read more…] about Food Writing that Pays Well, with a Nutrition Degree

Agent Prefers First-Time Book Authors

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Literary Agent Danielle Svetcov

Literary agents are notoriously coy about interviews. So it was a pleasure to meet Danielle Svetcov, a San Francisco-based cookbook agent who’s part of a New York agency, Levine Greenberg Rostan, who welcomed the opportunity.

Here’s what she has to say about why she became an agent, what she’s looking for in a new author, and what’s new in cookbook publishing:

Q. So you’re a journalist, a professionally-trained chef, and you have an MFA. How did this massive education lead to you becoming an agent?

An agent wears a lot of hats: editor, writer, reader, critic, life coach, translator, therapist, news-junkie, diplomat, lifeboat driver — you need a lot of degrees for those jobs!

Here’s the actual path: age 13, request Sunset Magazine subscription, discover bologna has a fancier cousin, prosciutto; 18, fancy self a journalist and [Read more…] about Agent Prefers First-Time Book Authors

7 Outrageous Requests of a Food Blogger

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Frusted-BloggerA well-known food blogger loves to forward outrageous requests from food companies to me. I’ve kept them them in a file, until now, when I got her permission to share them.

As you know from the countless emails you delete, food companies want product coverage from bloggers. Nothing wrong with that, of course. It’s just the way  [Read more…] about 7 Outrageous Requests of a Food Blogger