Dianne Jacob, Will Write For Food

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

food writing

5 Tips on Defining and Building Your Blog's Audience

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When you first start a blog, you just want to get your thoughts out into the world. Eventually you wonder: Who should read this, and why?

It’s time to find out more about your readers and commenters. Or be strategic: Whom do you want as your audience, and can you attract those readers?

Once you know who they are and what they like, targeted readers can be a source of inspiration for future posts, help you shape your posts, and help you build a bigger audience (by RTing your posts on Twitter, for example). Here are five tips on how to assess and build your readership:

1. Analyze your readers by using demographic criteria relevant to your blog posts. The more you know about your audience, the more you can write to them directly. Puzzle out such demographic details as:

Wrestling with Angels: How an Award-Winning Food Writer Crafts an Essay

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You may not have heard of Natalie MacLean.

Yet she has won six Bert Greene Awards for Food Journalism, five awards from the Association of Food Journalists, four James Beard Awards, and two awards for best writer from Les Dames Escoffier and the Louis Roederer International Wine Writing Award.

At the 2003 World Food Media Awards, MacLean beat out 1,000 other writers to win the award. And don’t even get me started on how many awards her first book (Red, White, and Drunk All Over) won, including World’s Best Drink Writer from Le Cordon Bleu World Food Media Awards. (She’s working on a second book of more travel adventures, to be published in 2012.)

Natalie MacLean is the writer to beat. And chances are, you won’t be successful.

Here’s a little background: She studied English literature at Oxford University and earned a Masters in Business Administration in Ontario, Canada. While on maternity leave from a high-tech marketing position, Maclean started writing freelance articles about wine for magazines, and then sent them out as emails, the start of a wine newsletter. Today, her free e-newsletter has a circulation of more than 100,000, and she has written for more than 60 publications.

We met years ago when she endorsed my book, Will Write for Food, on her website. After she won the MFK Fisher Award for Excellence in Culinary Writing from Les Dames Escoffier, I called MacLean at home in Ottawa, Canada, to interview her about food writing technique:

Q: What is it like to write from Ottawa, not exactly known as the food and wine capital of North America? Do you travel all the time, or do you find that you can drink and write just fine from home, thank you?

A: Ottawa is terrific for the work ethic because nothing happens here. There are very few road tours by wine councils and vintners. When they do a cross-country tour, Ottawa is not on their list. I live a [Read more…] about Wrestling with Angels: How an Award-Winning Food Writer Crafts an Essay

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?

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

It's the "Mixture" Quiz! Answer These Questions Correctly and Feel Superior Immediately!

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A "mixture" of beets? Nope. (Photo by Owen Rubin.)

I’ve been editing a cookbook this past week. Doing so always leads to a new blog post where I need to vent.

This time the food writer is too fond of  the word “mixture.” (What, you thought my favorite over-used word was “delicious?”) So, in an homage to cookbook editor Judith Jones, I’ve been deleting as many “mixtures” as possible and inserting more specific words.

Instead of my usual venting this time, I invented a little game for you to play. It’s my very first “Mixture” Quiz!  (Vigorous applause from our studio audience.) I hope you’ll play. Choose an answer to each question below. Correct answers follow.

Let me know how many of the following seven questions you got right, and whether you think I’m wrong about any of them or have some new ideas for me. There is no reward for correct answers,  just a feeling of superiority. Good luck!

Questions:

1. Combine the evaporated milk, garlic powder, and the Italian seasoning. Bring the _____ to a boil.

a) milk  b) sauce  c) mixture d) Get rid of second sentence and write “and bring to a boil.”

2. Combine the mashed garbanzo beans, garlic salt, and egg. Divide the ____ into 8 patties.

a) beans  b) Edit second sentence to read “Divide into 8 [Read more…] about It's the "Mixture" Quiz! Answer These Questions Correctly and Feel Superior Immediately!

3 Thanksgiving Cookbook Authors Dish on Their Craft

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It’s an exciting time of year to be the author of a Thanksgiving cookbook. I spoke to three veterans about what kind of media they do to boost book sales, what they like about being an expert, and what they’ll be serving on Turkey Day. They are:
1. How far ahead do you plan your writing and promotional events for Thanksgiving?
 

Diane Morgan

Diane: Magazines come the earliest with articles typically due by the middle of May. I am often asked to write stories in the early spring for the coming year’s publication. Newspapers are typically thinking about Thanksgiving stories in July, though pitching in June isn’t unheard of.

For my own website, I plan my blog featured recipes with coordinating video in August. This year, I was a judge on the Food Network Thanksgiving Challenge. That request came early last March. Interviews for Turkey Day stories happen in September or October. Radio interviews come right after Halloween. I was just on Martha Stewart Living radio talking about easy holiday appetizers.

Kristine: During my long tenure as food editor at Bon Appetit magazine, we started working on our Thanksgiving issue about six months before it was published. I created the recipes for my Thanksgiving book a year before publication. I did a book signing and demo at Williams-Sonoma at the end of October. With my blog, I work a week or two ahead, so I am planning and creating in the season when [Read more…] about 3 Thanksgiving Cookbook Authors Dish on Their Craft