Dianne Jacob, Will Write For Food

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

Food Blogging

Self-publishing Success with a Paleo Cookbook

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Melissa Joulwan started out selling only on Amazon, but sales are so good she’s publishing the books herself and sending them to a distributor.

You may have heard of the latest craze, the Paleo diet. Cookbooks on this subject are selling like crazy since they started appearing in 2010.

Austin, Texas-based Melissa Joulwan started a paleo diet three years ago. Both she and her photographer, husband David Humphreys, worked in ad agencies for 20 years and have a background in marketing, social media, and web development. She quit her job this year, after the success of her cookbook Well Fed: Paleo Recipes For People Who Love to Eat.

Q. How long were you on the diet before deciding to write a cookbook?

A. I started eating paleo three years ago, and I started posting recipes on my website two years ago. It was more of “what I ate last night.” Once I started writing that you could substitute [Read more…] about Self-publishing Success with a Paleo Cookbook

Promoting Your Cookbook with a Virtual Potluck

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Debbie Koenig hosted a potluck for her book, selling out on Amazon in a day. (Photo by Bennington Photographers)

Your cookbook’s coming out and you’d like lots of bloggers to cover it. How about an event where all their posts appear on the same day and drive sales?

Debbie Koenig coordinated a potluck party for her first book, Parents Need to Eat Too: Nap-Friendly Recipes, One-Handed Meals, and Time-Saving Kitchen Tricks for New Parents (Morrow, 2012). A book marketing executive turned food, diet, and parenting writer, Koenig sold out Amazon in one day, when bloggers reviewed her book and posted recipes.

In this guest post (the first on my three-year-old blog), Koenig explains how a virtual potluck for bloggers works, and why hers succeeded.

By Debbie Koenig

I first heard the term “virtual potluck” three years ago, when Monica Bhide was preparing for the publication of her cookbook Modern Spice. Monica hosted the potluck as a one-night-only, online gathering of food bloggers, all cooking from her book and

[Read more…] about Promoting Your Cookbook with a Virtual Potluck

Q&A: Homesick Texan on Calling Herself a Writer

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Lisa Fain in her Manhattan kitchen. (Photo by Jan Cobb.)

People hardly ever recognize Lisa Fain by name. But once she tells them her blog and book name, Homesick Texan, she’s blown her cover, suddenly a superstar.

Fain is a seventh-generation Texan who lives in New York City, hence the motivation for starting her blog. She is also the author of The Homesick Texan Cookbook, published last fall, and her writing has appeared in Saveur, Edible Austin and on SeriousEats.com. Her blog was named one of the top 50 food blogs in the world by the Times of London and the Best Regional Food Blog by Saveur.

During a recent conversation, she said she starts writing every day at 5 a.m. I wanted to know more:

Q. Tell me how your writing career led to the blog.

A. I graduated with a degree in English in 1991, and there were no jobs for anybody. I interned at the Houston Press and worked at Houston Metropolitan magazine as an editorial assistant. Then I worked for a textbook publisher for a while.

I always wanted to live in New York, and I moved here to write [Read more…] about Q&A: Homesick Texan on Calling Herself a Writer

Is Free Content in Exchange for “Exposure” Over?

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I have a theory I need you to confirm. I’m thinking that the days of giving away free content are waning.

I’m talking about when a website or media person wants to repurpose a blog post or asks you for free content in exchange for “exposure” rather than cash. As a result, you’re supposed to get more traffic and prestige.

If you’re not sure what I mean, there are dozens of websites that ask for free recipes, and here’s a website that gets bloggers to post content for free.

I’m not saying it’s wrong. It seems to make sense to provide free content when:

  • You already published the blog post and a website wants to recirculate it
  • You want to be published outside your blog to grow your platform
  • You perceive the site to be prestigious.

(Where it’s not so cool, however, is when someone [Read more…] about Is Free Content in Exchange for “Exposure” Over?

Do Newer Recipe Writers Put the Pros Out of Work?

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Amy Reiley started a wildfire on an IACP blog post recently, when she said hobby food bloggers who don’t test recipes thoroughly and don’t charge enough are sidelining professionals like herself.

Here’s a sample:

“…We, the professional journalists, researchers, home economists, recipe developers, food stylists, and photographers are getting aced out of much needed work in our chosen field by stay-at-home moms and accountants with a cooking hobby.”

Enraged food writers — mostly bloggers — piled on in the comments, which led to closed comments and a new post trying to explain the old one, which led to more irritated comments. In other words, two excellent reads.

But this argument is nothing new. The old guard always competes with newer, hungrier people with less experience who charge less. Reilly thinks it’s not just the old guard that gets hurt, but [Read more…] about Do Newer Recipe Writers Put the Pros Out of Work?

New FTC Rules on Writing Reviews, Affiliations, and Sponsored Posts

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There’s nothing like poring over a heavily-footnoted article in the New York Bar Association newsletter. Several times.

What does this have to do with food writing? Glad you asked.

Food writer Rebecca Lang, whose husband is an attorney, sent me an article he gave her called, “The FTC’s Revised Endorsement Guides Impact How Companies Can Advertise Through Social Media.” It outlines endorsement guidelines for bloggers from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

I’m so glad she did, because I had not seen this interpretation on accepting goods, money, or affiliations (where you get a percentage of sales) in exchange for a post, mention or a link. It’s good timing for food bloggers who want to “monetize” their blogs, a growing concern according to a recent Foodista survey.

I wrote my original post on disclosure in 2009, but back then the rules were rather vague. Now lawyer Laura Sack has written about the updated FTC guidelines, which make sense as best practices. So if you’re a blogger who writes reviews, participates in an affiliate program, or gets paid to mention a product, here’s what it says:

1. The FTC can fine both the blogger and the company for not disclosing [Read more…] about New FTC Rules on Writing Reviews, Affiliations, and Sponsored Posts

Tired of Recipes? 7 Other Subjects to Post Instead

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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 [Read more…] about Tired of Recipes? 7 Other Subjects to Post Instead