Cookbook Love Podcast

Episode 59: Maybe You Could Write A Cookbook?

Today I discuss an article in the NYT about a blogger whose first publishing contract involved a short deadline, no advance, and a non-disclosure agreement. When I first read the article I felt like they were making the case that writing a cookbook isn’t “worth it”. What I realized was their model for measuring the “worth” was monetary - how much money was spent/earned. In this episode, I talk about the value of writing a cookbook beyond monetary measurement: the value to self, your business, & o

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Cookbook Love Podcast. Today I’m excited to talk to you about cookbooks from “a place”. This episode is inspired by a recent cookbook purchase about a restaurant The Noma Guide to Fermentation.  In Episode 50, I interviewed the co-founder of Cookbook Village Wendy Guerrin, and in that episode, Wendy talked about her love of vintage restaurant cookbooks.  This really got me thinking: many of my favorite books in my collection are cookbooks about “a p

Do you struggle with regular content creation? Do you start strong with a good idea for a book, blog, or newsletter, but then fizzle out and lack consistency in the producing of the blog posts, or newsletters? Marketing yourself and your business requires a strategy to build relationships with your audience. Be it your future customers, current clients, possible publishers, or your ideal reader, they need to get to know you and have a relationship with you and perhaps buy from you or publish your book.

Writing a cookbook demands a lot of time and energy. You work hard, you write your manuscript, and then after months of editing, design, and production your book lands in your hand. There's not much else like it in the world, with the exception of delivering a baby. Some people even refer to writing a book as a gestation time and then say they've given "birth" to a book. This episode contains the three things I wish someone had told me before I wrote my cookbook.

Last year I attended a workshop taught by Joy Butler. of Guide Through The Legal Jungle Blog. Joy talked about principles of copyright protection for recipes. Recipe copyright protection involves all of us who write, use, and interact with recipes and cookbooks: recipe writers, cookbook authors, and cookbook users or cookbook clubs. Listen in to the show as we discuss how the law affects these three different groups, and how we can protect our recipes as writers and restaurant or bakery owners. 

Welcome to year two of the Cookbook Love Podcast. Thanks for everyone who tunes in on a regular basis as we celebrate cookbook readers, buyers, writers, collectors, and clubs. Todays’ episode is all about masterminds: what is one and why might you join one. Plus there’s still time to enter the Celebrate the Cookbook Love Podcast Contest and have a chance to win a package of 5 cookbooks: one of my cookbooks, a Summer 2019 cookbook, a vintage cookbook, a self-published cookbook, & a classic American cookb

Welcome to the end of year one of the Cookbook Love Podcast! It’s been a great year of learning and growing as a podcaster. My original goal was to celebrate Cookbook Love and we have done just that with interviews related to cookbook reading, buying, writing, collecting, and clubbing!  Today we celebrate with a look back at the top 10 most downloaded episodes for the podcast and a contest to celebrate our 52nd episode. And I hope I have shared more cookbook love with you all.

Today I’m excited to share an interview with cookbook collector, reader, and author, Ally Lazare. Ally as a young child loved to feel her way around in the kitchen because she was allowed to experiment with food and cooking. As a result, she fell in love with the science, process, artistry, and creativeness of cooking and baking. So, in the midst of maternity leave, and a shift to a plant-based way of eating, Ally decided to document and share her plant-based journey in Ally's Kitchen: Comfort Food!

Today I interview Wendy Guerin who is the co-founder of an online cookbook store called Cookbook Village. In business for over 10 years, Cookbook Village specializes in collectible cookbooks from Junior League and community cookbooks to autographed and restaurant cookbooks. In our interview, Wendy and I discuss her impetus to start on online cookbook store, her love of restaurant and autographed cookbooks, the top 10 collectible cookbooks of all time and their process for buying books for their store. 

Today we have an interview with cookbook collector Linda Soper-Kolton. Linda is a health coach, vegan chef, and runs the culinary program at the Catskill Animal Sanctuary. She is the author of Compassionate Cuisine, a book written for the benefit of the animal sanctuary. Linda attributes her love of cookbooks to the talented people who write cookbooks and feels that pursuing recipes, photographs, and stories never get old.

Today I share an interview with founder of 90 x Goal Planner, ALoN David. ALoN arrived in America without business leads or business ideas. But he did have ambition & a dream to make something of his life. So while going to school, ALoN decided to get a job for $5.25/ hour. So, instead of waking up each day complaining of his situation, ALoN decided to set a goal to keep him focused on his dreams. There weren’t goal-planners out there, so ALoN created his own to turn a minimum-wage job into an opportuni

One of the objections people often have to writing a cookbook is the cost (or money). Truth be told, as a traditionally published cookbook author, I incurred very few direct costs when I wrote my cookbooks. In fact, publishers paid me an advance and royalties when my advance earned out. And, my students who self-publish their books did incur costs of publishing, so today I’ll talk about those costs. We also talk about costs during the pre-publication phase of writing, optional costs, and software costs.

Today I want to talk about cookbook endsheets. Endsheets, also know as endpapers, or ends, are the pages at the beginning and of a hardcover book that are used to glue the inside pages (known as the book block) to the hardcover of the book.  Decorated end sheets are a relatively inexpensive enhancement to a cookbook. They have the ability to deliver helpful and useful information to the cookbook user, as well as a way to decorate and illustrate the cookbook.

Sherry is a fellow Registered Dietitian and lives in Marietta, Georgia. She is an avid cookbook collector, reader, and user, and if my memory serves me correctly, she is the first podcast guest that limits her cookbook collection to a specific number of books due to shelf space. That said, Sherry loves cookbooks, obviously, and to collect cookbooks when she travels internationally and in the US. Sherry has also inherited cookbooks and she now has an interest in collecting vintage cookbooks as well.