diannejacob

Blogger Stalks and Copies Another Food Blogger

July 19, 2011 by diannejacob 103 Comments

Strawberry Rhubarb Smoothie. Photo courtesy of Jennifer Strohmeyer of Virtually Vegan Mama.

What do you do when another blogger copies your recipes, ideas, and even gets the same freelance gig? That’s the situation food blogger Jennifer Strohmeyer of Virtually Vegan Mama found herself in recently, when another blogger took Strohmeyer’s recipe ideas for her own blog, and even got the same freelancing gig at the same website where Strohmeyer contributes.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. We’ve had lots of discussions here about adapting recipes. Everyone modifies everyone else’s recipes, it seems. Maybe Strohmeyer was imagining things?

I think not. Let me tell you what happened.

But first, a little background on Strohmeyer. She started her blog in mid-January (full discloser: Strohmeyer is a former client), sending photos to Food Buzz and [Read more…] about Blogger Stalks and Copies Another Food Blogger

5 Tips for A Successful Book Launch

July 5, 2011 by diannejacob

Signing copies of the revised edition of Will Write for Food, at Omnivore Books in San Francisco, last July. (Photo by Heather Lunan)

Your food-based book’s coming out, and it’s time to line up all the events that lead to good sales. What are the most important events to plan for a book launch?

Australian Blogger Katrina Meynink emailed me with this question. Her book, Kitchen Coquette, is coming out later this year. Here’s my list:

1. Target bloggers who are likely to review your book. Your publisher has put aside copies to be sent to media, which includes bloggers. So target the authors of food-focused blogs in your home town, bloggers who like to review cookbooks like yours, and others who might qualify. Come up with a long list to [Read more…] about 5 Tips for A Successful Book Launch

Is Ruth Reichl Selling Out at Gilt Taste?

June 28, 2011 by diannejacob 40 Comments

Earlier this year, former Gourmet Editor-in-Chief Ruth Reichl began her consulting gig (rumored to be worth $250,000 annually) at Gilt Taste, a high end web food store that’s paying her to advise on food writing on its website.

Gilt Taste is a new kind of media for Reichl, one that blurs the line between advertising and editorial. That’s a sea change from her days at Gourmet, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. To my surprise, she welcomed the switch.

“The notion of the wall between advertising and editorial,” she begins in an interview with Eater, “If you’re dependent on sales and you only have things you are really proud of, there’s no need for that wall and there’s no reason to be embarrassed by saying a product is great and this is why it’s great.”

Really? My eyes widened. So she’s assigning advertorial now, where a company pays to get an enthusiastic article that looks and smells like regular journalism? And her big name freelancers are going for this? The former magazine editor in me got ready to protest.

No, no, and no. It’s so much tamer than that. Some of the stories have links to products Gilt Taste sells. That’s it. Links.

(Here are two examples. For a recipe by New York Times regular freelancer Melissa Clark on steak and potatoes, the words “boneless ribeye steaks” are hot, and they link to a catalog item for $127.95 for four [Read more…] about Is Ruth Reichl Selling Out at Gilt Taste?

Food Blogs Should Inspire and Surprise, says Aran Goyoaga of Cannelle Et Vanille

June 22, 2011 by diannejacob 70 Comments

A romantic image typical of the style of Cannelle Et Vanille (Photo used with permission of Aran Goyoaga)

I first discovered Cannelle Et Vanille two years ago, when I methodically went through every single blog listed on the The London Time’s list of “50 of the World’s Best Food Blogs.” Aran Goyoaga’s blog was second on the list, and she had only been blogging for a year.

Her sun-lit, romantic photos of desserts and fruit drew me in, as did the stories about her family, travels, and baking. I learned that Goyoaga had been a pastry chef for a Ritz-Carlton, then started blogging and taught herself photography.

Since that prestigious list catapulted her into the public eye, Goyoaga’s blog has attracted the attention of magazines in Europe and the US, as well as Gwyneth Paltrow‘s Goop newsletter, which praised the blog’s gluten-free theme, expert recipes and gorgeous photography. Last fall, seven publishers vied to publish Goyoaga’s upcoming cookbook. Little, Brown & Company will publish the book in fall, 2012.

I caught up with Goyoaga right before BlogHer Food, where she was a guest speaker:

Aran Goyoaga of Canelle Et Vanille (photo by Txomin Goyoago)

Q. You’ve been blogging since 2008, less than three years, and have attained so much success. I’m sure many new bloggers want to know how you did it.

A. At first I want to say it’s for the photography, but before that I had a following because of the recipes. I was a trained professional chef who left her career to take care of her children at home. I was trying to merge professional pastry chef techniques at home. Then I became very interested in photography. We’re all very visual people, and people come to my blog to see how I photograph.

Also my blog has a nostalgic tone to it, because food has always been a connection to my family. I left everyone to come to the US. My grandfather had a bakery and the family gathered there. When I left the Basque country I had an MBA, but nostalgia for food drew me back, and my blog has that tone and sentiment. People like to read about my background, my childhood, and how I relate to food. I have this romantic idea of food — growing your own food and being close to nature. Dad’s side of the family was farmers, so they probably don’t romanticize it.

We all like to feel close to home, we like to be nurtured, we all think about our families and upbringing. Maybe it’s the time we live in, where we want comfort and home-cooked meals.

Q. Do you think it’s an advantage to have worked as a professional pastry chef and graduated from culinary school, when it comes to developing recipes?

A. No. Culinary school gives you a lot of technique, but you don’t necessarily need that to develop recipes. You can learn that from reading a book, watching TV or watching people cook. Culinary school opened a lot of doors and I was able to find work in (restaurant) kitchens. I worked with French and German chefs. I already knew [Read more…] about Food Blogs Should Inspire and Surprise, says Aran Goyoaga of Cannelle Et Vanille

What I Learned about Food Writing at IACP

June 14, 2011 by diannejacob

Around My French Table won this year’s IACP award for Best Cookbook of 2011.

Now that you’ve read about my social life at the International Association of Culinary Professionals conference in Austin, you should know that I learned something too. Here are highlights from some of the sessions I attended:

1. Writing. At a session on The Craft of Food Writing featuring speakers Antonia Allegra, head of The Symposium for Professional Food Writers at the Greenbrier; The Washington Post‘s Food Editor Joe Yonan; and cookbook author Dorie Greenspan, Allegra handed out a list of the job titles for food writers, including

culinary anthropologist
culinary historian
food scientist
food market economy writer
indexer
industry researcher
public relations writer
television script writer, and
video food writer.

Yonan said he runs 52 freelance pieces a year, and gets pitched 30 queries a day. When it comes to first person narrative, pitches that focuses on how food tastes makes him crazy. “Get me out of the inside of your mouth,” he implored. “Write about how food has turned you into what you’ve become. Food writing often involves memory and nostalgia, and food that means something to you, in crucial times in your life.”

He recommended the book Writing with Style: Conversations on the Art of Writing to sharpen writing skills. “More than anything, your goal is clarity.”

Greenspan spoke about recipes as “what we do to pass along tradition, keep customs alive, transmit what we discover, and preserve culinary information.” She said our one responsibility to readers is to be accurate, “no matter how boring that might be.” In the headnote, she tells about taste, texture, and perhaps a technique. She teaches about an ingredient or a custom. She likes to tell a story. “Place a recipe in a culture, tradition, country, or ritual. Associate it with a person or an experience.

Finally, Greenspan said, the best thing we can do is “encourage the cook to make (the recipe) part of his or her own story, to understand how to adapt it, and how they can then own the food. Recipes can be a glimpse into a place they dream of going.”

Only 20 % of content came from the blog.

2. Blog-to-Book. In an “Experts are In” session with blogger Hank Shaw and Greenspan, Shaw, a former news reporter, spoke of a “relentless level of professionalism” on his blog. “The only successful blogs are when you open a vein,” he said. “People want to read you.” For his new book, Hunt, Gather, Cook: Finding the Forgotten Feast, 80 percent of the material is original.

As to when they post, “I always post on either Sunday or Monday,” says Hank. “Most people read blogs at work, they want something fresh when they get in.” Never blog on Saturdays, he advises. And overall, he says it’s better to write less often than more often and badly. Greenspan, on the other hand, posts when inspiration strikes her, often triggered by a photograph. She referred to her blog as a monster. “It’s like having a dragon in your house that’s always hungry.”

The authors saw a trend coming and jumped on it, with sales of 1.2 million copies.

3. Cookbooks. Who says the cookbook is dead? Rux Martin, senior executive editor of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, said in a session called “The Ever-Expanding Cookbook” that, despite rumors to the contrary, the printed cookbook is alive and well. She had her best year ever in 2010. One of the books she edited, Hello Cupcake!, sold 1.2 million copies. What’s New Cupcake! has sold 600,000…so far.

Back from Austin, Y’all!

June 8, 2011 by diannejacob

Just me and a steer outside the opening IACP reception. I’ve already been corrected after calling it a “cow.” (If you took this photo with my camera, please remind me.)

I’m just back from Austin, Texas, land of 1600 food trucks, endless barbecue, hipster farmer’s markets, and 100 degree temperatures that weren’t supposed to start until July. I was there to attend the International Conference of Culinary Professionals (IACP) annual conference, and to spend a few days afterwards with a friend.

My booth at the book fair was next to Jacques Pepin’s. This guy brought every Pepin book in his library for Pepin to sign, and Pepin did it!

The IACP annual conference is one of my favorites, and I’ve only missed one in the last decade or so. At this year’s conference, my only official task was to sell my book at the culinary book expo. I’m happy to report that Will Write for Food sold out.

Here are a few observations and confessions:

1. At the annual awards, every single winner of the Bert Green Awards for Food Journalism was a man, in a female-dominated field of food writers for publications and the web. (I’ve made the same observation before with the Beard awards.)

I corralled Saveur magazine’s Deputy Editor Beth Kracklauer in the foyer of the historic theater afterwards, to get her thoughts. The poor woman was trying to savor her two Saveur awards, and there I was, harshing her high. Though judging is blind (meaning bylines are removed), most of the finalists were men too. Kracklauer wondered if this trend has something to do with who gets story assignments in the first place. We vowed to talk about it more.

2. Views differed about attending sessions. Everyone had a different strategy about diligently showing up versus networking, sightseeing, running around the city eating, drinking or biking. At the start of the last group of sessions, one guy joked about whether he should go to his first one. That seemed a little extreme! Then there were secondary arguments about whether to go to sessions because you should go, versus sessions that you thought were fun.

3. Lots of people were talking about my recent post about conference anxiety and some tried to gauge whether this conference was similar to BlogHer Food in that respect. The BlogHer crowd is younger, but the usual cliques were apparent. I’ve decided that popular and successful people like to hang out together because they understand each other. That is my latest theory.

From left at the Ate.Cafe: Amelia’s granddaughter Delfina; Amelia’s former assistant, blogger Nealey Dozier; Amelia Saltsman; Deborah Madison; Deb’s friend Emily; Joy Canovsky from the Sustainable Food Center (SFC); Amelia’s daughter Rebecca from the SFC; and me. Photo by Ralph Saltsman.

As for my own popularity, before the conference, cookbook author Amelia Saltsman invited me join her at a dinner of family and friends. To my delight, Deborah Madison, a longtime friend, came too. The three of us met and befriended each other at the Greenbrier Professional Symposium for Food Writers 12 years ago. Amelia’s daughter and son-in-law run the restaurant Ate.Cafe, and they spoiled us with course after course of exquisite tapas.

Cookbook author Martha Hopkins also contacted me beforehand because we had not met and we’re going to teach a class together soon. We went out for appetizers and drinks at Paggi House with the always hilarious food stylist Denise Vivaldo, discussing our upcoming class in Los Angeles on cookbooks while feasting on exceptional mussels and fries, beef tenderloin skewers, and fried calamari. The three of us will join forces to help you make your dream project a reality. Hope to see you in L.A!

4. The best part about attending conferences is [Read more…] about Back from Austin, Y’all!