Dianne Jacob, Will Write For Food

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

cookbook writing

Canadian Author Sold Millions of Cookbooks

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Cookbook Author Anne Lindsay, now retired and my hero.

After a long day of work, I want to make a quick, easy meal that tastes great. And one that’s light and healthy.

That’s a tall order, isn’t it? Those of us who have written and tested recipes know.

Just three cookbooks I’ve used in the last decade fit the bill. Until recently, I took these books for granted. I didn’t think about the author as a professional in our field. I was too busy cooking, grateful to be a home cook using good recipes that worked.

Earlier this year I went to Canada for a food blogging conference. I decided to find this cookbook author whose no-fail recipes I used for years. Her name is no secret to Canadians: Anne Lindsay. The weathered and stained cookbooks on my kitchen bookshelf — gifts from my sister in Vancouver — are

  • Lighthearted Everyday Cooking (1991)
  • Anne Lindsay’s Light Kitchen (1994)
  • The Lighthearted Cookbook: Recipes for Healthy Heart Cooking (1998)

She wrote these cookbooks with health organization partners: The Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, The United Way of Canada, and the Canadian Heart Foundation. (You’ll learn in a minute why this was a brilliant [Read more…] about Canadian Author Sold Millions of Cookbooks

10 More Links for Food Bloggers and Writers

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Just thought I’d get your attention. These are pastries from Tartine Bakery in San Francisco.

A while ago I decided to start sharing links from my quarterly newsletter.

The post was so successful, ricocheting around Twitter and Facebook, that I’ve decided to post a list after each newsletter comes out.

So, in the meantime, sign up for the Will Write for Food newsletter. You’ll get only four emails per year, with the next one at the end of September. It’s filled with useful info for food [Read more…] about 10 More Links for Food Bloggers and Writers

Use Active Verbs to Enliven Recipes

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Cooking is about action, and that should come across vigorously in your recipe writing.

Last week I aroused passions about passive voice in recipes, not only here in the comments but on Facebook and Twitter.

My point was that cooking is an activity, so we need direct language that shows action. Active verbs are the ticket, an effective and efficient way to show movement.

In these examples below, you won’t find a whiff of passive voice. There is also no use of “you,” which some readers found objectionable. Others pointed out that active verbs are imperative, where the writer commands readers to action by implication. (Haven’t you always wanted to command?)

I plucked these examples from my bookshelf. Note how many verbs writers crams into a paragraph. It’s like watching a movie, sports event or ballet:

1. Julia Child

Scoop (peppers) into mixing bowl. Spread both sides of the bread with [Read more…] about Use Active Verbs to Enliven Recipes

What's With Passive Instruction in Recipes?

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Passive voice would mean writing something like “the melon slices, quartered figs and goat cheese are added to the salad.” Why isn’t the person doing the action identified? After all, it will be you.

In every writing class or book about writing, it says: Avoid passive voice. (Passive voice is when you don’t identify the person or thing doing the action. It’s considered lazy and imprecise, everything that recipe writing is not.)

I do my best to remove it when I edit. Yet I read dozens of published recipe instructions like this in [Read more…] about What's With Passive Instruction in Recipes?

Should You Write a Single Subject Cookbook?

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Author Andrea Slonecker must really, really like pretzels and eggs for years — and she’s up for it.

A guest post by Andrea Slonecker

Andrea Slonecker is a food writer and cooking teacher in Portland, Oregon. Find out more on her website.

I once heard that the best way to learn about something in detail is to write a book about it. That is the essence of a single subject cookbook. I learned this by writing Pretzel Making at Home (Chronicle Books, April 2013), and another book on eggs that’s in the editing phase.

Enthusiastic cooks, it seems, take to single subject subjects as well, when they want to know all about a food or dish. Here are the pros and cons of writing them:

The Upside: You Really Get into the Subject Matter

For authors, the opportunity to write a single-subject cookbook is a dream come true, providing the resources (time plus funding) to dig deeply into the subject and reveal all its potential. Total immersion in the subject makes the author a go-to expert, which opens the door for [Read more…] about Should You Write a Single Subject Cookbook?

Is it Time for Metrics in US Recipes? A Q&A with Ten Speed’s Melissa Moore

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Let’s say you want to write a cookbook, and you live in the USA. Should you write recipes that include metric measurements (liters and grams) in additional to imperial (cups and pounds)? That’s a good question, and one that’s being asked more often these days.

First, let’s admit that the US is way behind in the metrics arena. It should not come as a surprise that, to quote Dave Barry: “The metric system is not going to catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet.” We are one of only three countries that have not yet embraced the metric system, along with Burma and Liberia.

Second, many bakers are adamant about measuring dry ingredients by weight for accuracy, and more baking books sold in the US list them.

And third, a daily US newspaper has taken to including metric measurements in some recipes, as some kind of experient.

To get some clarity on the issue, I turned to Melissa Moore, an editor at Ten Speed Press specializing in cookbooks, about the state of metric measurements today:

Q. Is metric measurement in cookbooks getting more popular in the US?

A. There has been somewhat of a shift. More people have a digital scale in their homes [Read more…] about Is it Time for Metrics in US Recipes? A Q&A with Ten Speed’s Melissa Moore

Kickstarter Campaign Reaches Nearly $100,000 to Pre-Sell Cookbooks

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(Disclosure: After working on this post, I bought this cookbook. I love foraging and viewing beautiful images of plants, and these two women impressed me. If you wish to do the same, act now, as time is running out.)

Herbalist Dina Falconi teaches people about plants, herbs and foraging in the wild, and has done so for about 30 years. Now that foraging for edible plants is trendy, she decided the time is right for a crowd funded cookbook. As the writer of Earthly Bodies & Heavenly Hair, a recipe book for body care products published in 1998 from a small press, Falconi knew about the process.

Her book idea took shape about three years ago, when Wendy Hollender, a professional illustrator, moved to Falconi’s New York neighborhood. Falconi asked Hollender if she wanted to ilustrate a cookbook on foraging and feasting. “With her skills, I could direct her art to be [Read more…] about Kickstarter Campaign Reaches Nearly $100,000 to Pre-Sell Cookbooks