Dianne Jacob, Will Write For Food
Useful Tips, Interviews, and Stories to Inspire Food Writers and Bloggers
A guest post by Jill Nussinow
Most people who self publish a cookbook don’t even sell 300 copies of their book. You don’t have to be one of those people. I’ve always thought of my cookbooks as a business. I plan to sell many copies over many years.
If you think that self-publishing might be too much work, stop reading now, and go the traditional route. But you’ll find that [Read more…] about Why Self Publishing a Cookbook is the Way to Go
A guest post by Sara Bir
I’ve written three cookbooks. The second two I did with traditional publishers, but the first one I self-published. Would I self-publish a cookbook again? That was the question I faced last year when I decided to do an expanded version of The Pocket Pawpaw Cookbook, my first book.
Pawpaws are a little-known fruit that grow in less than a third of the country and aren’t sold at grocery stores. They are in season for two months a year, max. I live in Ohio, where they grow abundantly, and I’m totally besotted with them.
So of course I thought this under-the-radar food deserved its own cookbook. But a pawpaw cookbook doesn’t exactly spark a bidding war among conventional publishers.
Still, I decided a slender cookbook devoted to pawpaws was a great idea for [Read more…] about Why I Won’t Self-Publish a Cookbook Again
In January, 2020, my husband asked me what were my top goals for the year. Instinctively, I said, “I want to write a cookbook.” At the time, I didn’t know that would mean a work-for-hire cookbook.
A few weeks later, I received a cookbook offer from Callisto Media. The editor wanted a cookbook on world curries made easy, using an electric pressure cooker. Here was a topic that fit my interests and aligned with the recipes on my blog.
I had heard about Callisto from [Read more…] about Is a Work-for-Hire Cookbook Worth It?
A guest post by Jamie Schler
We chose a photo of the Meringue-Topped Rice Pudding with Apples because it is visually striking and filled the cover space. I named the book Isolation Baking because that was the name of my Twitter project that led to the book, and it was familiar to people. The subtitle “Recipes from my (post) confinement kitchen” signaled that the cookbook wasn’t limited to the period of Covid confinement.
My first e-cookbook came about by accident. And so did giving it away for free. Nevertheless, my free e-cookbook has been a big success and led to some other positive events.
Here’s the backstory: As the world went into lockdown I began sharing recipes on Twitter under the hashtag #IsolationBaking. After panic-shopping, people found themselves with lots of ingredients they didn’t know what to do with, and lots of meals to cook.
They were also looking for a distraction. Social media had become a lifeline for human contact. I started thinking about what I had to offer this huge community now hanging out online.
The answer was recipes. I wanted to reconnect with [Read more…] about Why My Free E-Cookbook Turned Out Better Than I Ever Imagined
What if you want to get just one really great recipe out into the world? How do you get it published? Kevin Pang figured it out. He and the owners of Parachute restaurant in Chicago published one recipe as an illustrated mini cookbook. Called The Parachute Bing Bread Book, they created it through a successful Kickstarter campaign. And Pang has plans for more mini cookbooks, with chefs.
The 32-page cookbook covers a recipe for just one menu item that has a cult following. The recipe for bing bread is 5,000 words.
Now, obviously, this bing bread is no ordinary [Read more…] about A New Model for a Mini Cookbook?
A guest post by Susie Norris
I sent off the proposal for my third cookbook with a hopeful heart. I had a good agent, a new IACP Digital Media Award for FoodMarketGypsy.com, my culinary travel blog, and thousands of Twitter followers. Creating a self-published cookbook was not on my mind.
But the news was bad: traditional publishers now found my platform too modest. After a lifetime of baking and teaching the classics, I knew I had [Read more…] about Build a Platform with a Self-Published Cookbook
A Guest Post by Anna Brones
As a writer, I’m always thinking of new projects, which is why I started an indie food zine. Even when I don’t have something concrete in mind, ideas end up marinating in the back of my brain. That’s how Comestible came to be.
Comestible is a bi-annual publication I started self publishing in 2016. I never know exactly what to call it, but it’s somewhere between a zine, a periodical, a journal, and a magazine. It’s 64 pages long and illustrated in black and white. It features stories and artwork about food, the places food comes from and the people who produce it. Comestible also uses food as a lens for looking at other larger issues, like gender, economics, and sustainability. [Read more…] about Why I Started an Indie Food Zine
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