Dianne Jacob's Blog, page 7

Why Food Bloggers Don’t Just “Stick to Recipes”

By Vicky Cohen and Ruth Fox of MayIHaveThatRecipe.com

We get it. Many people who search for recipes online want food bloggers to stick to recipes. They don’t want a backstory, tips on how to make the dish — none of that “nonsense.”

We’ve all seen the tweets:

“Why does every recipe have to have a mini-essay preceding it? #justgivemetherecipe” 

“If you blog an 8-page life story about a recipe that you have instead of getting straight to the point, then you deserve to be judo chopped in the neck and I will forever pray that a swarm of bees follow you around for the rest of your life. #justgivemetherecipe”

Apparently, no one has the time or patience to scroll for 30 seconds (unless they’re scrolling through their Facebook or Instagram feed), to find what they came for.

For food bloggers like us, it’s annoying. Sometimes it’s infuriating. Because it’s clear that most people have no clue how much thought and work goes into each and every one of our posts. These readers don’t give us enough credit. They don’t wonder if those backstories and tips might be there for a reason.

Chances are, those of us who write those long, annoying posts have little interest in sharing anything other than our recipes with readers. Actually, our lives would be easier if we could just develop a recipe, take a photo, and post it on our blog.  

So why don’t we food bloggers just stick to recipes, and cut out all the “nonsense?” 
1. Food blog posts are a ton of work.

Food blogging means more than cooking something, snapping a couple of pictures and posting them on a website and social media. Every single recipe at MayIHaveThatRecipe.com goes through a long process before being published.

Tagliatelle with Mushroom Ragu and Swiss Chard. Photo courtesy of MayIHaveThatRecipe.com.

For our blog, each recipe has to be researched and well thought out (we’ll get into that in a minute). It has to be tested (often quite a few times), measured, written down, and photographed. It also has to be shared on social media channels (sometimes that can be a full-time job!).  Why? 

2. We make a living from our food blog.

Both of us, Vicky and Ruth, work full time. We gave up our cushy, decent-paying jobs to research, create, prepare, photograph, write and share recipes, so our readers can have them for free. And since we want to keep giving them out for free, we need to find ways to make money.

One of the main sources of revenue for full-time food bloggers is advertisements. Yes, we’re talking about those pesky ads that pop up everywhere, and we are not particularly fond of them. But unfortunately, that’s the way it works (much like TV shows and other media, where viewers have to pay extra for premium channels to avoid ads).

Advertisements become a true source of revenue for full-time food bloggers through increased traffic. That means that the more views their website gets, the more income. How does a website reach high traffic? Mainly by snatching a spot on the first page of Google.

And for that to happen, food bloggers have to play by Google’s rules. One of them is that we should write long posts. But even so, the rules are ever-changing, maddening, bang-your-head-against-the-wall rules. They are also known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO). 

3. The rule of SEO: Comprehensive, useful content

Simply put, this means those of us who make a living from blogging have to write about the recipe. We have to share tips. It’s because we have to show that what we’re writing is worthy of the first page of Google results.

No matter how simple the recipe is, that’s the formula.  Because Google values content (AKA lengthy posts).

Before even thinking about creating a recipe, food bloggers must be strategic. They ask themselves:

How many people are searching for this recipe?
What words are they using to find it?
What questions are they asking about it?

Vegan Meyer Lemon Bars. This post also covers a “moral dilemma:” finding their recipe on someone else’s website. Photo courtesy of MayIHaveThatRecipe.com.

After gathering this information, creating the recipe, photographing it and writing about it, we put it all together in a nice little package and post it on our website. Every single word is there for a reason, from the title on the top, to the bullet points in the middle, to the call to action at the bottom. 

And, we already have a solution

We food bloggers have already handled readers who want us to stick to recipes. At the top of every post, a little button says “Jump to recipe.” If people don’t want to read and scroll, they can click on it.

So that is why we don’t just stick to recipes. We hope readers will cut food bloggers some slack. We think they do, but every once in a while, tweets like these sends us into a rant. All we’re trying to do is make a living. Just like everyone else. 

* * *

Vicky Cohen and Ruth Fox are sisters raised in Barcelona by Syrian-Lebanese Jewish parents. The sisters now live in the U.S. They are the Chief Foodie Officers of May I Have That Recipe, an 8-year old vegan and vegetarian food blog that offers recipes from around the world. They are the authors of the cookbook Tahini and Tumeric: 101 Middle Eastern Classics – Made Irresistibly Vegan. Follow them on Instagram.

(Disclosure: This post contains an affiliate link.)

The post Why Food Bloggers Don’t Just “Stick to Recipes” appeared first on Dianne Jacob, Will Write For Food.

25 Irresistible Links for Food Writers and Bloggers

It’s hard to keep up with all the posts that speak to our lives as writers, bloggers, food lovers and cooks. There are so many irresistible links for food writers and bloggers. And not just fun posts but useful, inspiring pieces that make you think.   

So I keep up for you. I scour social media, Facebook groups, newsletters and other media to find what  interests me and I hope by extension, you. Usually I put them in my twice monthly newsletter. But if you haven’t subscribed yet, today I’m putting them in my blog so you can see what you’re missing.

Don’t worry if you don’t have time to read all the links. Maybe one or two will inspire you, you’ll find them relatable, they’ll give you a business or book idea, or you’ll look at something in a new way. If you like what you see below, please subscribe.

You will see testimonials from fans, including David Lebovitz, who named it one of his favorite newsletters. Once you sign up and confirm you subscription, you’ll receive a copy of my free e-book, “The 15 Biggest Errors to Avoid When Writing Recipes.”

And now, here are 25 irresistible links for food writers and bloggers: 

Black Food Historians You Should Know. Educate yourself about these respected scholars and their work.
And if you want to become a food historian, read How I Got My Job: Researching the History of American Food at the Smithsonian.
Jennie Iverson, the ‘Ski Town Brunch’ author, earns $1 million with cookbook franchise. She found a niche and went for it.
So You Want to be a Journalist. Excellent advice from the late David Carr of the New York Times, one of my favorite writers and speakers.
. I’ll miss reading the cookbook reviews for this tournament, even though the pairings of one book against another could be outlandish. Maybe that was the point.
Meanwhile, these folks have come up with an alternative to the piglet — their own.
The Chaos at Condé Nast. Juicy artlcle about the outrageous good old days, working as an editor or writer for glossy magazines, with expense accounts and no accountability. (Watch for paywall.)
Why a New Cookbook About Baking While Angry Is Making People So Mad. Here’s balanced reporting on the story from Slate.
When Your Agent Isn’t a Good Fit. Advice from two authors on how to avoid the situation in the first place.
The Dutch Oven, Redesigned for Gen Y. “Mid-century nostalgia meets sleek futurism.”
The Making of Drinking French. David Lebovitz writes about creating his latest cookbook, which included choosing the font and apologizing to friends for not being available.
Local Bookstores Have A New Weapon In The Fight With Amazon. A new online alternative generates income for independent bookstores.
Move over cheese boards, ‘pancake boards’ are the new food trend for entertaining. First it was cheese boards, then sheet pans. And let’s apply common sense: Pancakes will get cold, while charcuterie and cheese benefit from being left out.
The fake ‘kitchen hacks’ with billions of views. Some outrageous video recipes are not as they seem. Surprise!
The New Trophies of Domesticity. Some young Americans covet expensive kitchen equipment when they feel they need sophistication.
When fonts fight, Times New Roman conquers. But I’m a Helvetica girl myself, unless submitting a manuscript.
Flour, Butter, Science, Eggs: Recipes as Science Communication. An analysis of what’s important to recipe writers.
Influencers posting artsy photos of ‘adult Lunchables’ are blowing up among millennials with small living spaces and a passion for meat and cheese. World’s longest headline, right? And I thought it was pancakes on boards now.
“No one suspected me”: Women food critics dish on dining out for a living. Women restaurant writers open up about sexism.
@nytimescookingcomments. A hilarious Instagram account based on comments on the New York Times cooking app.
The Process: Tejal Rao, “A Delicious Link to Oaxaca in South Los Angeles.” An interview with a popular restaurant critic based in L.A.
Can You Make a Living in Food Writing and Cookbooks? Betty Ann Quirino tackles this question.
Own the Recipes of Georgia O’Keeffe. Sotheby’s is auctioning off the artist’s handwritten cards. (Watch for paywall.)
Generations of Handwritten Mexican Cookbooks Are Now Online. The largest known collection of Mexican Cookbooks.
The Recipe to Bob’s Red Mill’s Supreme Recipes. Who’s behind the recipes that appear on their packages?

LIke what you see? Please sign up! Thank you. 

The post 25 Irresistible Links for Food Writers and Bloggers appeared first on Dianne Jacob, Will Write For Food.

Pitch It Until it Sells

A guest post by Kristen Hartke

I’m always surprised when writers ask me for tips about being a “successful” freelance writer. That’s because, like most writers, I live in a world where rejection is the norm. I do, however, have my work published somewhat regularly. It could be due to my stubborn unwillingness to accept rejection. No matter what story I come up with, my motto is to pitch it until it sells.

Writing and sending pitches can be lonely hard work. As a freelancer, I’ve learned to manage how much time I spend on pitches. Most of all, I keep in mind that editors are deluged by mountains of pitches on a daily basis. If I make their lives easier with a clear concept that’s not too wordy, then I have a good chance of getting that pitch accepted.

Studies show that many writers simply give up on a pitch after the first rejection. That’s a missed opportunity. If I dreamed it, then I can sell it —sometimes to the same editor who initially turned it down.

I’ve narrowed down my pitching process to “The Three Rs: Repeat, Remind, Reframe.” They address my stubborn belief that I can pitch it until it sells:
1. Repeat.

A few years back, I designated one day a week as my Pitch Day, and it’s probably one of the best decisions I ever made. Routines can be hard to establish when you work alone and don’t have regular deadlines (although, hellooooooo editors of the world, I’d love a regular deadline!).

On my weekly Pitch Day, I may send out just one or as many as half a dozen. Maybe all I’m doing is checking up on old pitches that haven’t yet received a response. Repeating these tasks, week in and week out, helps me toward my goal of booking assignments that will get published and pay my bills.

2. Remind.

Because editors are busy, they may not remember my pitch out of the hundreds they get each week. Even though, obviously, my pitch was spectacularly brilliant. So it’s my job to check in when I haven’t gotten a response — but gently. Adding an all caps “TIME SENSITIVE” or “PLEASE RESPOND” to the subject line is really not going to advance anyone’s cause with a busy editor.

It’s as simple as sending a quick note after a week or two: “Hi, just wanted to check in on the pitch below and see if it might be a fit for you?” And, yes, sometimes I might have to send that exact same note for several weeks, or even months, before I get a response. But it’s surprising how often I get a pitch accepted as long as six months after it was initially submitted. So don’t give up if you don’t hear back. Persistence can pay off.

3. Reframe.

Yes, sometimes the pitch gets turned down. Rejection is hard. But I’ve put time into crafting that pitch and I can’t afford to walk away.

So I begin to reframe. Even if the last interaction was “no thanks,” I see that as perfect opportunity to turn things around. I’ll respond with a “thank you” and then point to a recent piece of data or a demographic audience that might help the editor take a second look.

Or, if I think the editor might receive the pitch favorably at a different time of year, I’ll set it aside for several months and then send it right back to the same editor, sometimes just with a different subject line but otherwise unchanged. It’s not unusual, however, for the editor who first rejected the pitch to later accept it after I’ve presented it again. Sometimes they don’t even remember the original pitch!

Or I’ll simply pitch it somewhere else. After all, since I’m going to pitch it until it sells, there must be other editors who could want the story. I’m just getting started.

So think positive! Editors don’t want to say no. We just have to give them a reason to say yes. Go ahead: push back politely, be persistent, and make the sale. And if one editor says no, pitch it until it sells, elsewhere.

* * *

Kristen Hartke is a food writer based in Washington, DC. Her work appears in a wide variety of publications, including the Washington Post, NPR’s The Salt, and Heated, which can be found on her website.

(Photo by Mikaela Wiedenhoff on Unsplash)

The post Pitch It Until it Sells appeared first on Dianne Jacob, Will Write For Food.

Build a Platform with a Self-Published 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 something to say — and maybe they did too — but letting me say it was no longer the priority.

The path to publishing now required me to make a choice:

build my platform with a professional social media team (which still required spending my time in tech classes, social-media scrolling, engaging with my audience, and lots of money)
or just write the cookbook, A Baker’s Passport, and publish it myself. The platform would come later.

Great advice came from an IACP webinar where authors Kathy Strahs and Emily Kaiser Thelin chronicled their independent publishing process very clearly. I hired Dianne, who coached me to refine my goals (and who edited the final manuscript – she’s a polymath!)

I worked with Reedsy.com, a cool platform for freelance writers and designers where authors choose designers and editors based on their style. It was so refreshing to have a choice! There I found designer Cecile Kaufman, who produced the book cover and elegant design that I so appreciate, and several helpful copy editors.

I published on Kindle Direct Publishing, Amazon’s platform for on-demand books, so I don’t have a huge pile attracting rodents in my basement.

Here’s what I learned about publishing a cookbook and building a platform afterwards:
1. You’ll need a budget.

A simple spreadsheet to anticipate costs (book designer, editors, photography, marketing, travel, publicity, etc.) will help you face the financial commitment involved in self-publishing a cookbook.

Some authors choose a Kickstarter-like plan to generate the funds they need. I relied on my old-fashioned day job as a grant writer, because I didn’t want to owe anybody money out of the gate. The spreadsheet grew and grew and became my marketing plan, task list, and balance sheet.

But I went over budget. Color photography was the biggest wild card for me. It drove my book costs up, and yet, the book now gets regular praise because of the many color photos. I chalked this up to the price of happiness.

2. Hire a good editor, copy editor and testers.

Doing research at Dalloyau pastries in Paris. (Photo by Susie Norris.)

In the beginning, self-published authors had only optional commitment to the literary standards imposed by the publishing business. A good editor will help you avoid this pitfall. They help you focus on what is clear to the reader, help you avoid repetition, or hammer the passive tense out of your prose (as Dianne so kindly did for me).

Once you complete the manuscript, it will be full of seemingly invisible typos and recipe glitches. You will need help fixing them.

Plus, you or your testers should make every recipe at least three times. Make sure this line in your budget is fat, as the cost of ingredients add up!

3. Plan for lots of promotion.

With a self-published cookbook, no shortcuts exist for the considerable work to get the book reviewed, marketed, and promoted online and at events. You’ll probably need to travel and get some help from a publicist who specializes in food, like Trina Kaye.

The good news is that promoting your book will increase your platform. You have to be out there, making sales, engaging with readers, and doing so will bring more attention to your book.

4. There will be tech emergencies.

When you hit a wall with technology (the files won’t load; the photos won’t resize), you have to be the fixer. The best solutions for me were FixRunner.com and Yoast.com. Both specialize in WordPress services but allow you to chat with a real fixer who actually knows solutions and ultimately gets you over the technological hurdles. I thank customer service techies, whoever they were.

5. Yes, you can build a platform with a self-published cookbook.

My happy ending felt planned, earned, and also full of surprises (like an invitation to a press junket about the culinary treasures of Greece…score!) Here’s what else happened:

My email list and blog followers tripled.
A Baker’s Passport got over 20 positive media hits and good juice from my fellow food bloggers, which built my portfolio and helped me build a YouTube channel.
I did book signings at chocolate salons, farmers’ markets, and kitchen shops – all the places I love.
I have content galore to feature in blogging, posting, and refining my concept for the next book.

A Baker’s Passport is selling steadily, but I’m still on the hustle. The best part is that my close friends, the ones who bought the book just to be nice, tell me that they really use it and like it and thank me for those classic recipes. My heart swells. My platform is bigger, better, and just the right size for me. 

* * *

Susie Norris is a pasry chef, educator and food-focused traveller. She taught baking at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts and ran an award-winning artisan chocolate business in Los Angeles for  a decade. Her books include A Baker’s Passport, Chocolate Bliss, and Hand-crafted Candy Bars with Susan Heeger. See more at her award-winning website, FoodMarketGypsy.com. 

(Disclosure: This post contains affliate links.)

The post Build a Platform with a Self-Published Cookbook appeared first on Dianne Jacob, Will Write For Food.

How SEO Rules for Food Blogs Can Make Them Less Effective

I’ve been thinking about the growing power of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts and their advice. Hiring them has been a powerful way for food bloggers to learn the SEO rules for food blogs and increase their readership.

I’m all for that. I try for good SEO in my posts as well.

But do the changes these experts advise also increase the quality of a blog post? Can you have both great SEO and a great post?

Maybe. 

Here are 3 SEO rules for food blogs that affect a food blog’s quality: 
1. Fix the big blocks of grey text your readers see on their phones.

True, you should do that. But not all solutions work.

My least favorite idea is that you should break up your text with gimmicks. Throwing capital letters and four exclamation points in the middle of your paragraph does not improve your writing. And all caps makes you look like you’re shouting. 

2. To become a recipe database, your blog needs lots of recipes, including “vegan” and “gluten free.”

These days many food bloggers want readers to see their sites as recipe databases rather than individual blogs. So categories of food become more important. It’s fine if your recipes naturally qualify for everything from keto to plant-based foods, but not if you force it.

Here’s an example. I read something like this on a food blog: “If you are gluten free, substitute the bread called for in this sandwich with gluten-free bread.”

Now the blogger can list this recipe under both the gluten-free and sandwich categories.  

But her gluten-free readers already know how to substitute regular bread with gluten free bread. They’ve been doing it for years. So how did this note help the reader?

A recipe needs more than a simple swap (gluten-free bread for regular; leave out the meat for vegan) to be of any real benefit.

3. And the biggest of the SEO rules for food blogs: Write long posts. 

As the experts tell us, Google likes long blog posts. 

I’m fine with that. But many food bloggers standardize their content before putting the recipe at the end. Their long blog posts are starting to all look the same. I see this formula over and over:

The description of the dish, which goes above the lead photo
The key ingredients, with explanations about them
Narrative about how to make the dish
A list of ways to customize the dish
Links to similar recipes
And finally, the recipe.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t need this much discussion on how to make simple dishes like vegetable soup, pancakes or salsa. And much of the content seems obvious, generic or forced.

It’s not that I just want to “get to the recipe,” but I miss the days when there was some voice or original content. And I don’t understand how these blogs stand out from each other when they follow the same SEO formulas.

So that’s my take on the new class of food blogs. If you feel I am hopelessly naive, or I don’t understand this new corporate wave of food blogging, tell me.

* * *

You might also like:

An Expert’s Tips for Optimizing Recipe SEO
5 Killer SEO Tips for Food Bloggers

The post How SEO Rules for Food Blogs Can Make Them Less Effective appeared first on Dianne Jacob, Will Write For Food.

I was Burned Out on Food Blogging. Then I Started a Fashion Project

A guest post by Maggie Zhu

I started Omnivore’s Cookbook in 2013 as a hobby. It turned it into a full-time job in 2016. After that, I started to feel burned out on food blogging. It took longer and longer to recover. Being alone in the kitchen made me lonely. The need to produce uniform, predictable content to please my readers made me unhappy.

Now the blog is about modern Chinese cooking and Asian-inspired fusion recipes. But it didn’t start that way. My first blog post was for Tuna Pasta with Arrabiata Sauce. My early recipes included random dishes ranging from poorly-conceived fusion to Taco Bell copycats.

Burned out on Food Blogging

One year into blogging, a reader told me he was only interested in my Chinese recipes. He said he’d go to Food Network if he wanted to learn how to make pasta. Soon I focused on Chinese recipes. My blog finally started to grow when I narrowed my scope to that niche. But the problem was (and is) that I love food from many cultures. And the fact that I’m constrained to just Chinese cooking made me burned out on food blogging. 

Adding to that were the common problems related to blogging: the need to keep up with social media, having to pump out content at an insane rate, spending more time than I’d like cleaning up and washing dishes alone in my kitchen… You know the drill. It started to take longer and longer to recover from burnout. 

When the Tipping Point Came

It arrived at the end of 2017, when I was invited on an influencer trip to Indonesia. I thought I’d be traveling with a bunch of food bloggers, shooting food every day. Instead, the crowd included lifestyle bloggers, fashion bloggers, travel bloggers, YouTubers, and photographers from different countries. 

On this trip, I learned so much. I saw how others shot and talked about the same topics from totally different angles. I interacted with bloggers whom I’d never met but who shared my interest in creativity. It felt like a high to work together, exploring new things and exchanging ideas — definitely more fun than dealing with dirty dishes alone in my kitchen. It blew my mind that it’s possible to promote a restaurant by sitting there looking cool without showing the food at all!

Fashion bloggers gave me lots of  advice as I shot outfits for them. At that time, the only clothes I’d bought since moving to the U.S. two years prior were some black t-shirts from H&M and sports bras from Costco. While everybody else brought two large suitcases so they could look different every day, I brought a single carry-on bag for a 10-day trip.

Naturally, I shared my pictures on Instagram — not just my outfits, but also the beautiful lifestyle and architecture photos I’d learned how to take on the trip. To my dismay, the feedback from my readers was negative. Nobody cared. Just like nobody cares when you ramble on about your car hitting a garbage can on the way to the drugstore in your recipe blog post. 

An Indonesia lifestyle photo that did not generate a good response. (Photo by Maggie Zhu.)

The biggest takeaway was when I realized that that I looked better when I didn’t smile in front of the camera. I had never been a selfie person. I hated to have my photo taken growing up and I always felt more comfortable behind the camera. But somehow my opinion shifted after that trip. I felt more open-minded and confident, especially after putting on different clothes that fit my personal style.

When I got home, I bought brands of clothes recommended by my new friends. Then I decided that maybe I should get my photo taken, now that I looked more attractive. 

Soon after I met fashion, travel and lifestyle bloggers in Indonesia, I started my Instagram fashion account. This is an early photo.

Finally, I decided to start another Instagram account to share fashion and lifestyle photos. I just wanted to do something different and have fun like I did in Indonesia, without losing my food audience, which was a full-time business by then. 

Fashion Improved My Food Blog 

The first problem I encountered was that I had no time to do both of these projects. 

My fashion Instagram was not as easy as I’d expected. It’s not just about putting on some clothes and taking a picture. It takes time to follow the trends, build relationships with brands and PR agencies, source clothing, learn about styling, scout out shooting locations, put together mood boards, and more. Just like how food bloggers always seem to spend more time cleaning than actually cooking.

Having two projects forced me to get organized and to stop doing things that did not grow my food blog. I started batch cooking to speed up the process. I spent less time on photography, wrote shorter posts, and wasted less time on social media. My goal was to get the food blogging part done quickly so I could have fun shooting fashion photos.

I applied what I learned from fashion photography and applied it to food photos. (Photo by Maggie Zhu.)

Shooting fashion improved my food photography. It uses different rules from those of food photography, but it trained my eye for color, style, texture, branding, and lighting. Soon I applied some of the same principles to improve my food blog photos. The funny thing was that my blog grew faster in 2018, after I started my fashion side gig. 

Teamwork Made My Blog Better

I also made more friends, and we ended up working together. The biggest difference between fashion and food blogging is teamwork. When creating fashion content, you always have to work with someone who will take photos of you. So I reached out to people through Instagram to find shooting partners. Then we set up coffee dates and shot together.

Creating fashion content forced me to work with photographers, stylists, models, agencies, and brands. It trained me to get more comfortable with a team. I learned that working as a team doesn’t mean only working with virtual assistants, outsourcing basic blog work, and paying as little as possible. I could create a better product and have more ideas when working with peers who are smart and care about their craft.

The connections energized me. I finally started to blend into American culture, after living in the U.S. for almost three years. It felt good to get out of the house. In a way, having new friends improved my food blog, because I got to know people with different lifestyles who cooked and ate differently from me.

More importantly, I felt less burned out on food blogging. On the contrary, it felt nice to work in the kitchen again. Of course, doing my fashion side gig helped. Now I could work on something different and let my creative energy flow through another channel.

No Longer Burned out on Food Blogging

Meanwhile, my schedule became busier as my food blog and fashion account grew. I finally reached a point where I needed more help. So I posted an ad on Craigslist to hire a pastry chef who could help me develop baking recipes to diversify my content, and maybe also help me cook. 

The result was surprisingly good. In less than three days, I received resumes from many talented chefs. In less than two weeks, I’d found my perfect candidate: Lilja, who cooks professionally at Momofuku Kawi.

Working as a team in the kitchen has been even better than I expected. Now I have one more pair of hands to help me prep and clean up. Lilja doubles as my hand model when I shoot photos. She also does research, so we can develop recipes faster. We chat while cooking, which makes the process more fun. We bounce ideas back and forth, share feedback, and test the recipes more times before publishing.

I feel less overwhelmed after a day of cooking. Now I can spend more energy on writing and other things that grow my business. I haven’t felt burned out on food blogging even once since we started working as a team.

A new kind of recipe for my blog mixes East and West: Soft Cinnamon Rolls with Sesame. (Photo by Maggie Zhu)

Working together, we’ve created some cool dishes such as Soft Cinnamon Rolls with Sesame, Scallion Biscuits & Char Siu Gravy, and Thanksgiving Leftover Turkey Dumplings.

More importantly, I now have a new responsibility: to grow my blog so I can take care of employees, the people I care about. I want to make more money, not to buy another pair of shoes, but to pay my team better because they are talented hardworking people who deserve a raise.

* * *

Born and raised in Beijing and now living in New York, Maggie is the blogger behind Omnivore’s Cookbook, where she shares Chinese cooking, Asian-inspired recipes, and her adventures in the US. Her blog won the 2019 Saveur Award for Most Inspired Weeknight Dinners and was a finalist for Best Photography.

The post I was Burned Out on Food Blogging. Then I Started a Fashion Project appeared first on Dianne Jacob, Will Write For Food.

My 10 Best Blog Posts of the Decade

This year I celebrated ten years of blogging, and I wrote about what has changed. Now that it’s the end of the decade, you might also like to read my best blog posts of the last 10 years. 

For me, what defines “best” is all about the engagement. I like posts that generate a conversation. Even an argument, sometimes! 

So here are 5 with the most comments:

New FTC Rules on Writing Reviews, Affiliations, and Sponsored Posts (266)
Adapting a Recipe Doesn’t Make it Yours (263)
Is Food Blogging Too Much Work? (237)
Are You Making These 3 Mistakes on Your About Page? (206)
5 Notes to Self for Coping with Conference Anxiety (203)

Of course, Google Analytics wouldn’t agree with this list. It doesn’t care about comments, but views. 

So here are the 5 posts that got the most views:

100 Verbs for Recipes, from Julia Child (96)
Adapting a Recipe Doesn’t Make it Yours (263)
What’s With Passive Instruction in Recipes (73)
New FTC Rules For Endorsing Products Online (14)
So Many Ways to Organize a Cookbook (20)

It’s odd, isn’t it? The most views doesn’t equal the most comments, except in one case.

I wonder if you noticed that one of the best blog posts appeared in both lists. That makes the winner of Best Post of the Decade Adapting a Recipe Doesn’t Make it Yours. (Look through the comments. Legendary cookbook author Paula Wolfort wrote the first one! Lots of big names chimed in. Those were the days.)

And we’re still arguing about who “owns” a recipe today. Everyone has an opinion. We still have views like “recipes don’t belong to anyone,” “everything’s been done and nothing’s original,” and “if I change a few ingredients I can claim it as mine.”

I wonder if we’ll ever solve this issue? I think not. Sharing recipes gives us pleasure. Since we can’t copyright recipes, most of us don’t worry much about copying them. Except the people whose recipes have been shared too much, of course, or shared in a way that makes them unhappy. I’ve written about that too. Here’s a post that got lots of traction:

Should Bloggers be Praised for Recipes They Don’t Write? (197)

So what is the lesson here? Maybe it’s that we love to present recipes to others, regardless of their origin or changes. Some food writers go through a thorough recipe development process, and others change the recipe a bit. Regardless, both sides still have to write it out, photograph the dish, publish it, and deal with promotion and comments, if we’re talking about food bloggers. Everyone else has to get their recipes published on websites, in articles and as cookbooks. It’s a lot of effort. And the best way to protect yourself is to still to credit the recipe that inspired you.

Above all, what inspires me is the whole gamut of food writing and its dozens of subjects, be they recipes, ethics, food history, essays or politics. It’s been a fascinating 10 years, writing posts on dozens of topics. So thanks for reading and commenting, whether it’s your first time or you’ve been here before. In short, I’m grateful for the chance to interact.

From my top ten best blog posts, I could conclude that the major issues for food writers in the last decade are: writing a “good” recipe, the ethics of endorsing products, and how to get self promotion right. Do these issues resonate for you? What do you think are the main concerns of food writers in the last decade? 

The post My 10 Best Blog Posts of the Decade appeared first on Dianne Jacob, Will Write For Food.

Submit Your Writing to a New Food Writing Anthology

There’s a big new game in town, and you can play. Before, Best Food Writing, an anthology compiled by freelance writer Holly Hughes, came out every year. You would submit your writing, and she decided what to accept. That run ended in 2017. 

It’s probably because a new The Best American Food Writing debuted in 2018, published by Mariner Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The senior Editor is Silvia Killingsworth, who finds and culls the best work for whoever becomes the guest editor. Killingsworth has written for the New Yorker and was an editor at The Awl and The Hairpin.

The inaugural guest editor for 2018 was the legendary Ruth Reichl. Despite this uptick in talent, The Best American Food Writing 2018 didn’t sell well — I saw the paperback on a clearance table in a bookstore recently. 

To be fair, I don’t think the other series ever did that well either. We food writers just loved the idea that our work would be included. (Including me! My essay made it into the last year of Best Food Writing.)

A New Annual Series

This year the guest editor for the new anthology was Samin Nosrat, author of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat and star of a Netflix series. She’s a big success story now, so it made sense that she would follow Reichl, but she had her own criteria. In the introduction, she “wanted to make a bold statement by exclusively choosing works by people whom the food world has historically undervalued and marginalized: people of color, queer folks, and women.” Most of the selections do so, even though she read them blind (with no author or publication name listed), narrowing down 100 pieces to about 40. 

And she gave this definition: “I’ve always believed that good food writing is simply good writing: compelling, intelligent, at times lyrical, and driven by narrative and voice.”  

This year’s anthology “skewed towards women, people of color, and queer people,” said guest editor Samin Nosrat in her introduction.

“Good food writing evokes the senses. It makes us consider divergent viewpoints. It makes us hungry and motivates us to go out into the world in search of new experiences. It charms and angers us, breaks our hearts, and gives us hope. And perhaps more importantly, it creates empathy within us.” 

What They Want for 2020

So now you know what Nosrat looked for, but what about next year? We don’t know whom the guest editor will be and what this person will value.

But if you’d like your work to be considered, remember that Killingsworth is the gatekeeper. She’s the one who selects the pieces initially and distills them into 100 selections for the guest editor to consider.

So, as a hint, here’s her definition of food writing, from the current anthology: “But of course food writing isn’t all about preferences and taste and whether a restaurant is any good. It’s also about journalism — probing the larger world for truths, asking where our food comes from, who cultivates it, and who prepares it — as well as cultural criticism.

“And then there’s pure storytelling: histories of hunger and chronicles of joy or pain. A catalog of all the complex thoughts a young woman can have at the sight of an egg. Food writing is just another way of looking at the world, and there is no one true form of it, despite what the scolds may say.” 

I emailed Killingsworth to see if she had any further advice or additional information. Here’s what she said:

“I’m looking for a pretty big pool of submissions for the long list, which I put together as the series editor. I will collect 100-125 pieces over the course of the year, from which the guest editor will choose ~25 or so that end up in the final collection.

“The criteria are quite broad, because we want a real range of submissions and finalists. The only official requirements are that the pieces have been published in 2019 in a North American publication (Canada counts!).

“I’m always keeping an eye out for submissions from unlikely places—there are a lot of ‘establishment’ publications, which are both reliable and obvious as sources for some of the best writing out there, but because we’re very well aware that good writing can happen outside the anointed walls of traditional media, we’re especially open to submissions from online food publications, or publications that aren’t even strictly speaking about food. Newspapers, journals, and reviews are all eligible.

“There’s also no hard and fast rule about what ‘food writing’ is—it could be a restaurant review, a few lines of meditation on a new cookbook, or a diary or a memoir. Overall we are looking for a mix, so the more range from a greater diversity of sources, the better.
 
“My personal criteria for ‘good writing’ is also quite broad: clean, readable, and hard to put down. These can all be subjective, of course, but that’s why it helps to have another opinion in the form of a a guest editor. I’m trying to collect as good a pool as I can for the long list, and the guest editor has the hard job.”
 
How to Submit Your Writing

You can wait to see if she discovers your work, but why not be more direct and just submit it? Send your best 2019 submissions to Silvia DOT Killingsworth AT gmail.com. The deadline is December 31, 2019. Good luck!

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(Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.)

The post Submit Your Writing to a New Food Writing Anthology appeared first on Dianne Jacob, Will Write For Food.

After Food Blogging, Gluten-Free Girl’s Shauna Ahern says “Enough”

Shauna Ahern gave up her blog, Gluten-Free Girl, in 2017. She made a good go of it for 12 years and her blog lives on online. Now, instead of food blogging, she works full-time as head writer at ChefsSteps. Her husband Danny stays home with her two kids, and everyone gets health insurance.

That was part of the decision to close the blog and get a job: Worrying about money. 

Her new book of essays is Enough: Notes From a Woman Who Has Finally Found It. She writes about growing up in a dysfunctional home, the trials of food blogging and self employment, meeting Danny, dealing with his alcoholism, starting a family, living without much money, starting a flour business, and her health issues. And most of all, it’s about finally accepting what she has and who she is. 

She came up with the idea of a book of essays four years ago. There were two years of fiddling with the book proposal. She got a book deal and wrote the book within the year. “I was writing it for years in my head,” she said.

Here’s Shauna on food blogging and why she moved on:
Q. Why did you stop food blogging?

A. The internet changed so profoundly over those 12 years. I ended up spending so much time on it. At first food blogs looked terrible, and we were all writers and artists, sharing our passions. Then blogging changed, where I had to make good photographs, and it became a place of trends, urgency and panic. 

As each new platform began, we were all supposed to flock like lemmings. It became about marketing and I never wanted to be a marketer. It was a full-time job and then it became about money and do we have enough and what do people want Gluten-free Girl to be. That’s when I had to leave, when it wasn’t Gluten-free Girl anymore. It was a persona. 

Shauna Ahern in 2005, after starting her Gluten-Free Girl blog.

Also because hundreds of thousands of people were writing to me, asking for advice. I stopped answering people who would send me a 3-page list of their symptoms. Then they were asking for advice because their son wasn’t fitting in at school. I had to be the purveyor of wisdom. That’s a bad pattern that I don’t feel comfortable doing that anymore. I was giving all of myself away.

There’s a great life beyond blogging, where you don’t have to think about SEO and whether you’re an influencer.

Q. You say in the book that you never made much money from the blog. Why did you not take ads?

A. We created our own ad network. We were stubborn, and I couldn’t imagine a McDonalds ad on our site. And we couldn’t get an ad network to promise that the food ads would only be for gluten-free foods.

Q. In Enough, you wrote that you felt lonely, as a blogger. What did you mean?

A. I never felt like I fit in. I don’t mind long hours alone, but I want to be writing books. But I was spending all my time on the computer with a small child, and there was not much time for community or interactions. I was working so hard for something I didn’t want to be a part of.

Q. There is a long essay about your failed gluten-free flour business. I felt the frustration and desperation in it. Is it a cautionary tale for other bloggers who want to start a food business?

A. I didn’t write it to say ‘don’t do what I did.’ It’s more of a cautionary tale for moving away from what you love to do: ‘We’ll do this thing which will be a step towards having more money and we can finally relax.’

Q. Is there anything you miss about blogging?

A. I loved the community that sprang up around Gluten-Free Girl. I still have lots of readers on Instagram, Facebook and my newsletter. And I have people who have stuck around for 12 years. It just shifted form.

Q. Why did you decide to leave the blog up?

A. There’s still a lot of great recipes, and there are still people searching for gluten-free recipes. It’s like a painting now, on a museum wall. It’s a reminder not to do that again. I would not make it go away. That would be like pretending it didn’t exist.

Q. Speaking of pretending, you write that you couldn’t blog about what was really going on in your life. How much of food blogging and social media is like that: people showing only their best selves and pretending?

A. I think most of it is. It’s so tied to career and fame and your persona. When Gluten-Free Girl felt like pretending, that’s why I had to quit it.

Shauna and her husband Danny. She never wrote about his alcoholism and the ultimatum she gave him until now, when this book of essays came out, with Danny’s permission.

I still love Instagram because people are sharing their authentic selves as a microblog. My push is to do what I couldn’t really do with the blog. A month before the book came in I wrote a bunch of vulnerable posts and got such a great response.

Q. You’re being so fierce and authentic on social media. Why can’t everyone do that?

A. Women have been acculturated to be nice. Social media just intensified it, the whole idea that we can’t make waves. Being afraid that they’re not going to fit in. It feels like there’s been some loosening and some smashing apart. It’s the secrets and the pretending that kills us.

Q. Who are you on social media, now that you are not a food blogger?

A. I’m Shauna M. Ahern. That’s my handle on Instagram. I’m a writer.

Q. Your Twitter handle is still @glutenfreegirl and your audience is huge. Why do you think people have stayed with you, even though the blog is done?

A. Social media is both good and bad, but now we have a place to talk about mental health. So people can find a community and feel like they’re not so alone. 

Q. Will you always be Gluten-Free Girl?

A. No.

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You might also like these posts about Shauna:

Gluten-Free Girl Says Blogs Don’t Matter Anymore (2016)
Gluten-Free Girl’s Marketing Mastery (2011)

(Disclaimer: This post contains an affiiate link.)

The post After Food Blogging, Gluten-Free Girl’s Shauna Ahern says “Enough” appeared first on Dianne Jacob, Will Write For Food.

25 Irresistible Links for Food Writers and Bloggers

I bet you try as best you can to keep up with all the useful and thought-provoking Internet links for food writers and bloggers. But sometimes you get busy or tired and you miss some terrific stuff.

No problem. I collect the best ones and send them out to readers free, on the first and 15th of the month. You’ll get links to reviews of the latest cookbooks (lots right now because it’s gift season); articles about cooking, eating and trends; thoughtful pieces about our industry and heroes; tips on writing and social media; a few controversial opinions; and lots more. 

Sound good? I thought so.

Here’s a sample of juicy links for food writers and bloggers from recent food writing newsletters:

OFM Awards 2019: Lifetime achievement – Claudia Roden. Roden started writing about Middle Eastern Food in the 60s, and Yotam Ottolenghi is her fan.
Irish Butter Kerrygold Has Conquered America’s Kitchens. Kind of a puff piece, but worth reading because it’s now America’s second-best selling butter.
How America Lost Dinner. “Women now devote a little more than half the average time per day to cooking compared with 1965.” And more adults live with roommates and eat alone.
Hey, Look! Nonna and Her Pasta Are on YouTube. Italy’s grandmas are video stars. (Possible NYT paywall.)
12 Women Who Are Changing the Food World. And quite a few food writers made it onto this list.
Relentless research, fevered rewrites, endless edits ~ plus a coat and tie. Notes on the editing process of Robert Caro. Not about food but about brilliant edits, writing and observations.
A Letter to Sheila Lukins, a Matriarch of American Home Cooking. It’s a love letter to a famous American cookbook author. (Possible New Yorker paywall.)
The Best Cookbooks For New Home Cooks, According To 8 Professional Chefs. Some surprises, some to be expected.
A Spice Company Spent $92,000 on Pro-Impeachment Facebook Ads in a Week. Penzeys Spices has opinions. (Possible NYT paywall.)
It’s Fall Cookbook Time! Publishers are swinging for the fences. Publishers offered Kitchen Arts & Letters bookstore in New York more than 600 books for the fall season.
Watch the late Molly O’Neill in action, interviewing people for her book, One Big Table. Following the movie clip there’s a discussion about her by those who knew her.
Our Favorite Fall Cookbooks. Yes, another list, this time from Garden & Gun.
And then there’s this one from the UK: .
How To Create a Food Video without much experience. A free training from the Food Video Academy.
Physical books still outsell e-books — and here’s why.  Apparently the reason why is quite shallow, and we are all guilty. 
Ina Garten’s ‘Posole” with Yellow Peppers and Sour Cream is a Monstrosity Against Mexico’s 500-year old dish. Says the author, “Adding black beans and lime juice to things do not automatically make it ‘Mexican.’”
Maybe the Secret to Writing is Not Writing? Fallow periods can be just what writers need, says the author.
What It’s Really Like to Eat Your Way Around the Globe. (Possible paywall.) Two weeks and six continents later, Besha Rodell got the story.
67 Best Food Books of All Time. I don’t really know who these people are, but I can’t resist a “best of” list.
Tuna Noodle Casserole: It Only Sounds Disgusting. Here’s how to write a recipe and stand out from the crowd.
Things Chefs Do That You Should Not Do. Why chefs need a collaborator when writing recipes, by one who has been there.
The Saddest Leafy Green. Seems like the kale craze is over.
Food52, the recipes + cookware site founded by a former New York Times food columnist, is gobbled up. Not exactly. That’s a bit of a hyperbolic headline. A media investment and production company bought a majority stake for $83 million. The co-founders will stay on. Pretty sweet, though, right?
To David Chang, the ‘ethnic’ food aisle is racist. Others say it’s convenient.(Possible paywall.) It’s gotta go, he says. Others disagree.
Online, no one knows you’re poor. Former food blogger Shauna James Ahern (formerly Gluten-Free Girl) shares what she did not feel she could say online.

So much good stuff here. How can you resist? Right. You can’t. Head over to my newsletter sign-up page, which features testimonials from some of the biggest names in our business, and sign up. As a thank you, I’ll send you my rant on “The 15 Biggest Errors to Avoid When Writing Recipes.”

Thank you! 

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