Dianne Jacob, Will Write For Food

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

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5 Tips on How to Get Big Name Book Endorsements

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Endorsements give your book credibility and can boost sales. They provide third-party validation that your book is worthwhile, and as a result they are so much more powerful than any publicity that comes directly from you.

Yet many writers are bashful about asking for them, or they ask the wrong people. Here’s how to make the most of the opportunity:

1. Think about endorsements at the proposal stage.

As a coach, I like to get the process going at the book proposal stage, even though doing so sometimes strikes fear in the writer’s heart. “How can I ask someone famous to endorse my book when I haven’t even written it yet?” they counter.

No problem. Just ask if they will agree to review your book for a possible endorsement, when it’s ready. That makes it easier to say yes, because they’re not committing to writing a positive blurb from now. And it gives your proposal more weight to have these commitments up front.

While writing my proposal for Will Write for Food I emailed cookbook author Deborah Madison (met her at the Greenbrier), restaurant reviewer Michael Bauer (I had interviewed him for my sample chapter on restaurant reviewing), and literary agent Lisa Ekus (I knew her professionally). I explained that I was writing the book and would be honored to include their names in the proposal as potential endorsers. I explained why I thought they were a good match for the book. All agreed.

Another kind of endorsement is the foreword. This is a larger commitment, where someone writes an essay inside the book, instead of a sentence or paragraph. Often publishers pay [Read more…] about 5 Tips on How to Get Big Name Book Endorsements

In Love with Reinvention

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At a March writing workshop with food bloggers in Liz Schmitt’s San Diego home (Photo courtesy of Averie Sunshine of Averie Cooks)

Reinvention keeps me in love with my career. It gives me the ability to shape my work into what interests me. So far I’ve had lots of inventions, since graduating from journalism school decades ago. I’ve been a

  • newspaper reporter and editor
  • magazine editor
  • interactive book editor
  • freelance writer
  • website designer
  • book author
  • book collaborator
  • manuscript editor
  • blogger
  • teacher
  • speaker.

And I’m just getting started. It’s a privilege to work this way, and I know it. Not everyone gets to go off in new directions.

But you probably do it too as a food writer. Your career might include cooking teacher, caterer, photographer, food stylist, and writer-of-other-content-that-actually-pays-decently (a broad category). Or maybe it’s the other way around: you have a day job, and food writing is [Read more…] about In Love with Reinvention

Self-published Cookbook Author Sells 300,000+ Copies

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What is it like to sell more than 300,000 copies of your self-published cookbook? It’s rare. Extremely rare.

But Martha Hopkins did it, starting when she was 25 years old and didn’t know any better. Her 1997 erotic and visually stunning cookbook, InterCourses, is still selling, especially as a wedding gift.

Martha will be speaking on self-publishing and marketing (see her fantastic website) at a March 27 full-day class in New York, Creating and Selling Your Dream Cookbook, along with food stylist and cookbook author Denise Vivaldo, photographer Jamie Tiampo, and myself. I was so impressed with her success that I thought I should share it, as a preview of what she’ll cover in the class:

Q. You were so young. How did you hit upon this subject of aphrodisiacs?

A. Honestly, my business partner and I went through a whole slew of ideas over the phone. We thought about an Oaxacan cookbook because I spent a summer there, and then we thought about aphrodisiacs. Food and sex! Sounds like fun, I thought.

We picked aphrodisiacs that tasted good and would look good in photos, like asparagus and [Read more…] about Self-published Cookbook Author Sells 300,000+ Copies

Trouble for Two Recipe Adapters

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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 [Read more…] about Trouble for Two Recipe Adapters

When is a Book Successful?

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A former student, Cheryl Sternman Rule, whose first cookbook, Ripe, comes out next month, asked, “How do I know when my book is successful?”

Good question. I told her she had to define it for herself, that everyone thinks something different, and some never feel success, no matter how many copies they sell or awards they win. She decided her book would be successful when she sells past the first print run.

Fair enough. I thought about my definition. While I’ve won two awards for Will Write for Food since it came out in 2005, I think it’s successful because people are still buying it.Then I wondered what other authors, publishers and agents would say.

One of the authors I asked was Michael Ruhlman. First he said, “I believe a cookbook is successful if it inspires someone to cook; if it advances our understanding of food or our skill in the kitchen. For the cookbook writer, it’s successful if convinces a publisher to give you money to do another one!”

Then he was so taken by the subject that he asked his Twitter followers what they thought, and created an excellent simultaneous post about cookbook success. It was fun to work together on our posts.

Now, let’s see what the others have to say:

“When the publisher asks you to write another?” — Paula Wolfort, cookbook author

“First, reviews: if the book receives no attention online, in print or in broadcast media, then it has obviously failed to reach its audience. For sales, if the author is a relative unknown, 15,000 to 20,000 copies sold in the first year would constitute a success in my book. Obviously, if the author is someone who has written other cooking titles or who has an ongoing presence in print or other media, the benchmark of success would be higher. —Rux Martin, senior executive editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

“I asked my first editor that, and she said, ‘When you’ve made back your advance!’ — David Lebovitz, cookbook author

“There are several measures of success: Critical success, as exemplified by many good reviews. Popular success, as evidenced by strong sales, documented by best-seller lists. Financial success, wherein a publisher’s advance earns out and royalties flow. This last ties into the estimation [Read more…] about When is a Book Successful?

A Tip for Writing and Editing Recipes in MS-Word

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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 [Read more…] about A Tip for Writing and Editing Recipes in MS-Word

Cooking Informs Writing, But Storytelling is King, says Award-Winning Critic Jonathan Kauffman

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Critic Jonathan Kauffman’s huge brain let him store info about dining without taking any notes. (Photo courtesy smokedsalmon, FreeDigitalPhotos.net.)

Ever had dinner with a restaurant reviewer? Usually I’ve been on the other side, so when I got the invitation I jumped at the chance to see a multiple-award winning writer and critic in action.

Jonathan Kauffman, restaurant reviewer for San Francisco Weekly, invited my husband and me to dinner at AQ, a sleek new restaurant serving what Trendologist Kara Neilsen calls “modern cuisine meets foraging.” Jonathan and I had exchanged tweets and emails, but had never met.

I began the evening with a faux pas. Jonathan had made a reservation in a false name, which I forgot and said his name when I introduced him to my spouse. We looked around to see if anyone noticed, but no one seemed to care. He also had a credit card in a false name.

Professional critics have to be careful about being recognized. Jonathan says he manages his online presence to ensure there are no photos of him online. (I checked and he’s right: you can’t find his face in an image search. Strangely, there are lots of photos of [Read more…] about Cooking Informs Writing, But Storytelling is King, says Award-Winning Critic Jonathan Kauffman