Dianne Jacob, Will Write For Food

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

Simply Recipes

Elise Bauer Sells Simply Recipes Food Blog

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Elise Bauer started her food blog in 2003. It is now the “highest indexing cooking site for women aged 21-49,” according to comScore.

After a 13-year run, Elise Bauer, one of the most successful food bloggers in the world, has sold her blog and business Simply Recipes. Fexy Media, a digital media investment firm that also owns Serious Eats, bought the site for an undisclosed amount.

Fexy Media announced the news in a press release, and Bauer followed up with [Read more…] about Elise Bauer Sells Simply Recipes Food Blog

Whole Lotta Lifting Going On

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Increasingly, recipe writers are finding their own content appearing somewhere else.

Part of the problem is how ridiculously simple it is to lift work verbatim. On the net, just copy and paste. Some online companies write code that does it. In print, just retype a recipe verbatim, and present it as yours.

Here’s what Gwen from Bunky Cooks said in the comments of a previous post here in Will Write for Food:

“I was amazed at the number of people who came up to me after I spoke on a panel on ethics at IFBC in New Orleans last year. They said they had no idea that there were ethics they should be adhering to when writing their blogs.

“Isn’t some of this just common sense? Aren’t we responsible for our words and actions just as you would be in a job or at school? Why do some people think the internet is a place where everything is free and anything is yours just for the taking?”

Good questions. At least she and I got the opportunity to educate. I also spoke on an ethics panel for IFBC last year, and talked for 50 minutes on the subject last weekend at Food Blog South in Birmingham, AL.

Here are some new developments from last week where both individuals and companies are involved:

1. Recipes ripped off as an e-book. Elise Bauer got Amazon to shut down a page where someone in Bangkok scraped the content of Simply Recipes into an e-book and sold it on Kindle. A reader of her site [Read more…] about Whole Lotta Lifting Going On

Blogging Pro Not Afraid to Delete Comments

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Me and Elise Bauer in the dining room at Club Med Ixtapa

Me and Elise Bauer of Simply Recipes, in the dining room at Club Med Ixtapa.

Last week in Mexico at the Club Med Food Blogger Camp, Elise Bauer of Simply Recipes spoke about the history of her mega-successful blog and particularly, her philosophy about blog comments.

At first I was surprised she had so much to say  about comments. Then I was grateful, because I don’t always know how to handle them, particularly the snarky ones that irritate people. Elise’s no-nonsense policy showed just one of the reasons why her blog is so [Read more…] about Blogging Pro Not Afraid to Delete Comments

The Thrill of BlogHer Food

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P1100134 BlogHer Food in San Francisco was one long day of group hug. It started at the networking breakfast at 8 a.m. and ended at the after-party thrown by Jaden Hair of Steamy Kitchen, Ree Drummond of The Pioneer Woman Cooks and Elise Bauer of Simply Recipes beginning at 8 p.m.

Here you can see just part  of the crowd, everyone talking at once in deafening volume, in the hallway in front of the bookseller.

Read about the party… I mean conference, on these early posts from Carrots ‘N Cake and Kath Eats Real Food. Well, girls just want to have fun. And we did.

Sponsors, who subsidized the cost of the event, prevailed between the sessions. Hunky Chef Rocco DiSpirito hawked Bertolli frozen meals over a grouimagesp lunch while they actually served us the frozen pasta as entrees. (Hello?!) Celebrity chef and Citizen Cake owner Elizabeth Faulkner demoed with Scharffen-Berger during a break, and booth people plied us with cans of chicken stock and spray Pillsbury frosting for a cupcake challenge. A classy cocktail party on the rooftop sponsored by Campbell’s Soup Co. capped off the official part of the day. I was so excited about seeing bloggers in person after reading their work online and Twittering and Facebooking with them, I almost didn’t mind.

And oh yeah, we went to sessions on such topics as the blogger’s voice (where I was a panelist), best practices, and new opportunities. More on what I learned later. First I need to lie down.

Did you go or write a post about the day? Have a comment? Let me know.

P.S. Updates: More reports on the conference from Simply Recipes.