Dianne Jacob, Will Write For Food

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

Food Blogging

Should Food Bloggers Write Sponsored Posts?

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An urgent email from a p.r. person offered me payment of $50 per post if I would write 9 to 15 posts about a bakery chain over the next three months.

Obviously, she had never looked at my blog, because I don’t qualify. And anyway, I wouldn’t do it.

The question remained, however: Should food bloggers write sponsored posts, and under what circumstances?

In the email, the p.r. person took it upon herself to suggest what I might post about:

  1. Sharing recipes from the bakery
  2. Talking about what breaking bread means to you
  3. Sharing your thoughts on going to the bakery
  4. Linking to video assets of cooking /baking lessons.

(And if I wrote the maximum of 5 posts per month, that would be 15 posts @$50 each = $750.)

The p.r. person also wanted me to drive traffic to the bakery’s website on Facebook and participate in a Twitter party. I’d get a few free meals from the bakery. I’d also get a guaranteed minimum payment of [Read more…] about Should Food Bloggers Write Sponsored Posts?

5 Ways to Write Posts On a Schedule

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Do you write a new blog post only when inspiration strikes, or only when you have  “something to say? ”

I’ll bet that if you answered yes to either, you don’t post very often, or with any regularity.

Waiting for inspiration can be a trap. What if no inspiration strikes, or does not strike with any regularity? When it does strike, you might be busy. You may not get to your computer to develop it, or you might forget. You might write down your idea and then not come back to it. The result: you post nothing, or you post infrequently.

Waiting to have something to say works the same way. What if you don’t have anything to say for several days? Or you fail to develop the “something” when you did think of it.

Did you notice the key word? It’s “waiting.” Waiting is a waste of time. What matters is “doing.”

Blogging regularly takes forethought and a strategy, particularly if you’re a recipe poster. With a little planning, you can improve your blogging quantity. Here are 5 tips on how to post regularly:

1. Establish a schedule and stick to it. What is the right amount? Posting at least once a week is realistic. If you’re more ambitious or have more time, go for more. I post twice a week, and if I hadn’t made that decision, I’d probably post a lot less.

Whatever you decide, be sure it’s an amount that you can handle, every week, no matter what. Don’t start out with guns blazing and then fade out from exhaustion when you can’t keep it up. Be honest about what you can handle, and you’ll be more likely to succeed.

2. Pencil it in. This is an old trick. If you block out the time in your calendar, you’re more likely to get the work done. Figure out what times are best for you. Maybe you only blog at night after the kids go to bed. Maybe you’re best in the morning, before reading email. Figure out how much time you need. Don’t schedule an hour when you need three.

3. Focus. When the time comes, put your bum in the chair and don’t get up until you’ve got a draft. Don’t check email or social media or answer the phone. If you’re still drawing a blank, spend 15 minutes (set a timer so you don’t get sucked in) scanning the net, reading news items or blog posts that might inspire you. If you have the luxury, come back to your draft for a final edit before posting. You’ll always find something to improve.

4. Make a list of upcoming blog topics. It’s a sure-fire way to have “something to say.” Make it long and varied, such as a book review, an event, an essay, and a recipe. List some subjects you can write at any time, and some that require planning. Think of some short posts, a minimum of 200 words. The more you mix it up, and the longer your list, the easier it will be to pick what suits you. If you can’t come up with topics, try keywords. Or write down ideas for a series.

Stick with topics that excite you or that you know a lot about, rather than what you think you should write about.

5. Take photos to inspire you. You might decide to write about a cookie exchange, a dish you found on a trip, or a restaurant meal, all because you took photos at the time that are good enough for a blog post. Use events in your daily life to springboard into a post.

I’m not going to tell you to stockpile posts, because I can’t figure out how to do it. I remember David Lebovitz astonishing the crowd at the first BlogHer Food when he admitted he had dozens of posts in various stages of development. I can only aspire.

Got more tips on how to be a regular blogger? I’d love to know.

Is Food Blogging Too Much Work?

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Last night I gave a 2-hour talk at 18 Reasons, a hip San Francisco space in the Mission District for D-I-Y types, on how to start a food blog. Some people did not seem to like the answers I gave to the question, “How do I get people to read my blog?”

They included:

Let Your Story and Identity Shine Through, says Cookbook Publisher

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Kirsty Melville, president and publisher of the book division of Andrews-McMeel Publishing, based in Kansas City, MO.

When you submit a cookbook proposal to a publisher, what are your chances?

At Andrews-McMeel in Kansas City, MO, only 10 percent of the books its publishes are cookbooks. That’s 20 cookbooks a year.

Of those 20, perhaps half the books spring from ideas generated internally.

How many proposals compete for the remaining 10 spots? About 5,000 per year, estimates president and publisher of Andrews-McMeel’s book division, Kirsty Melville, who started the cookbook division in 2007.

That makes your chances about  one in 500.

Wait, don’t give up. Melville is always looking for new authors. If you’ve been to the International Food Blogger Conference (IFBC), or the Greenbrier Symposium for Professional Food Writers in the past year, you might have met her.

“I’m proactive, more entrepreneurial,” she explains. “I like to meet and talk to people.” Her attendance at the first IFBC conference in 2009 led to publishing the Foodista Best of the Food Blogs Cookbook earlier this year.

The cookbook department may be new, but it’s already launched best-sellers (Cake Wrecks and Bon Appetit Desserts) and national award-winners (My New Orleans: The Cookbookby chef John Besh; and The Art and Soul of Baking, a Sur Le Table book by Cindy Mushet). Recently Melville won an auction for Top Chef star Kevin Gillespie’s next two cookbooks, showing the publisher’s new clout in attracting star power.

What does it take to be published by Andrews-McMeel? “Being a good writer and [Read more…] about Let Your Story and Identity Shine Through, says Cookbook Publisher

What Makes a Recipe Headnote So Good You Want to Rush into the Kitchen?

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My last bookstore talk for 2010, at A Great Good Place for Books, Oakland, CA. Two stellar headnotes were all I needed to try out new recipes for the crowd. (Photo by Owen Rubin.)

For my last 2010 local bookstore talk based on the new edition of Will Write for Food, I worried that no one would show. I had already done two signings in San Francisco (one at Omnivore and another at Book Passage). So I made up a flyer and handed it out at my aerobics class with a note: There will be cake.

Sure enough, about a dozen fellow classmates and their friends showed up, plus friends, neighbors, former students, my sister-in-law and a local blogger I hadn’t met yet. Funny how just the word “cake” produces results.

I was up late two nights before, baking two enormous cakes I had been wanting to try. Why would I choose recipes I had never made before for this event? Because I trusted the authors and their headnotes. I loved their [Read more…] about What Makes a Recipe Headnote So Good You Want to Rush into the Kitchen?

Food Writer Settles $4 Million Lawsuit

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It started with a limo ride to an event he was covering...

You have to laugh. The whole idea that any food writer might have $4 million dollars…well, you know.

But the lawsuit wasn’t very funny at all to John Mitzewich, except at first, when he thought it was a joke, like the Seinfeld episode where Jerry and George steal a limo.

Mitzewich writes for About.com as the American Food expert. The New York Times owns About.com, a fact that gives Mitzewich excellent press credentials.

A few years ago, Mitzewich accepted an invite to  attend Toast to the Coast, a food and wine event in Atlantic City. He took a red-eye to Philadelphia, where a limo driver was  supposed to pick him up and drive him to the event. Except when he arrived, he couldn’t find a guy in a uniform holding up a card with his name on it. Instead, Mitzewich found was a guy holding up a card with the name of the managing editor of Wine Enthusiast.

John Mitzewich

Mitzewich knew that he was the only invitee flying into Philadelphia. Everyone else, including the Wine Enthusiast editor, was flying into New York. So he took the limo, and off they went. Mitzewich wrote a nice story about the event, and everyone seemed happy.

Mitzewich, also a video blogger on You Tube and on his own blog, Food Wishes, filmed the limo driver and the limo with a good-natured voiceover, and put the video on his blog. (Don’t look for it because it’s no longer there.)

Soon afterwards, Mitzewich received a letter from the limo company, alleging he stole the limo and asking him to pay $385 for the ride, plus $4 million for defamation of character, interference with the limo contract, and invasion of privacy. He took down the video.

Two years later, after hiring an attorney, Mitzewich settled. He had told the limo company, over and over, that he did nothing wrong, and they weren’t ever going to get a dime. And they didn’t. So here’s what they agreed to: Mitzewich will run an ad for the limo company on his blog for six months. So far, the limo company has not sent the materials.

5 Lessons About Stealing Recipes and Web Justice

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Blogger Monica Guadio

If you were under a rock the last few days, you missed the excitement about Cooks Source, an online and print magazine busted for stealing recipes and taken down by bloggers, online news stories, Twitterers, Facebook posters, and hackers.

It started when blogger Monica Gaudio learned that a piece on apples she wrote for Gode Cokery appeared in Cooks Source magazine with her byline. She contacted editor Judith Griggs in a pointed email. Here’s where the editor made a fatal mistake (aside from stealing the recipe in the first place): She wrote an arrogant, insulting, condescending reply (scroll down to read it).

Lesson No. 1: If you’re a jerk editor who’s going to say something you’ll regret, do it over the phone.

Gaudio, outraged, told the story on her blog November 3, and printed Griggs’ outrageous comments, which include such gems as “But honestly Monica, the web is considered ‘public domain and you should be happy we just didn’t ‘lift’ your whole [Read more…] about 5 Lessons About Stealing Recipes and Web Justice