I brought Gary Logsdon from Amazing Food Made Easy on the show to talk about where he sees blogging going.
In this episode, we talk about what the publishing process looks like, how to write a book proposal, and the various reasons for publishing a cookbook.
Publishing cookbooks is a natural extension of what food bloggers do. We already know how to write recipes, photograph dishes, and teach our craft.
But the book publishing process can be a big, scary unknown for a lot of people. I've published 14 cookbooks and I still don't fully understand it. So today, we're going to shed light on the whole process.
Sally Ekus is a Literary Agent and co-owner of The Lisa Ekus Group, which is a full service culinary agency. She specializes in representing food bloggers and influencers, health and wellness bloggers, YouTubers, and more. She's the perfect person to help us step through the publishing process!
Quality doesn't matter. Too many food bloggers focus on increasing their quality and it's holding them back. I'm going to tell you why and what you should be focused on to maximize your productivity.
One of the things we strive for as food bloggers is to get better at everything we do. Most of us, when we get started aren't good photographers, are not good recipe writers, we don't know how our blog works and we don't know how to design a website.
We're learning all of this as we go so it's only natural that we keep trying to get better and better at what we're doing. And at the beginning, this is really important. However, at some point, it starts becoming counterproductive.
You can only get so good at some of these tasks before you're going to plateau, and a lot of people can get frustrated then. I want to explain to you why it's okay to plateau, why you should probably stop before you hit the max of your limits and how you can really focus your energy on things that are going to make more of a difference.
A lot of food bloggers know about lead magnets and how important they can be to growing your email list. There's a lot of different types of lead magnets. One that a lot of people don't think about is doing an email course.
Email courses are amazing lead magnets. I want to talk about a few of the different reasons why. And how they can build a rapport with people that are new to you and new to your website.
First, I want to give you an example of how a lead magnet email course can work. I've done these 3 different times and all 3 have ended up being very successful. A good example is my Sous Vide Quick Start course. It's specifically designed for people who are new. My whole blog is based on sous vide, and a lot of my visitors have never used sous vide before.
And the easiest way to capture those new people is to put together a course that's going to step them through exactly what they need to know. It's a simple email course. It's 7 lessons. It's mainly text. And it got amazing results.
Video is even better if you have the time to do that and it takes them from somebody who doesn't know anything about sous vide and at the end there's somebody who at least feels comfortable enough using their sous vide machine to make chicken, steak, pork, and a few other things.
I'm removing the doubt and uncertainty from their minds, and I'm also establishing myself as an expert and that I know what I'm talking about. A lot of these people end up sticking around my site, reading articles, subscribing to my newsletter, and turning into fans who eventually buy my cookbooks and other courses.
Once you decide to write a traditionally published cookbook, you need to find someone to publish it. The first step is usually to find an agent and to do that, you're going to need a cookbook proposal.
There's a lot of different things that go into it and you want to make a really good impression. In a recent podcast interview, I talked to Sally Ekus, who's a literary agent. She's helped publish hundreds of different cookbooks, so she knows what goes into a good proposal, both from the agent side, but also what the publishers are looking for.
She's going to step us through some of the different things you need to know to make sure your cookbook proposal really stands out.
A lot of food bloggers eventually turn their eyes towards putting out a cookbook. There's a lot that goes into it that's the same as creating a food blog. You have to create recipes, take good photographs, put it all together, and make sure you do it in a way that's going to resonate with your readers. So there is a lot of overlap.
Once you decided to do it, there are many different ways you can go about it, whether it's self publishing or trying to go through a traditional publisher. But self publishing and traditional publishing, while they do have a lot of overlap, there's a lot of differences between the two of them. And understanding what those differences are can help you better make that decision for your own circumstances.
In a recent podcast interview, I was talking to Sally Ekus from the Lisa Ekus Group. She's a literary agent and she's helped put out hundreds of different cookbooks. It's pretty amazing the amount of food bloggers and cookbook authors she's worked with.
So she has a unique insight on what it takes to self publish or traditionally publish. So I wanted to share some of the things we talked about so you can make a more informed decision on your own.
Brands can be very important to the success of many different food bloggers. However, it can be really hard to start a conversation with them. Kami is here to help you figure out the best way to talk to these brands and break down those barriers.
In a recent Makin' Bacon podcast episode, I interviewed Kami Kilgore from Everything Food Conference. She's been organizing one of the largest food blogger conferences out there for about 5 years now. She offered a lot of tips for how you can best approach brands and sponsors who are at the conference so you can maximize your odds of success with them. I wanted to share with you part of that interview.
In this episode, we are going to talk about what you can do to get the most out of conferences, how to approach and work with brands, and the importance of critically looking at the bad to move forward with the good.
There's no one I've met that went into food blogging already knowing all the answers. Whether it's food photography, SEO, or creating YouTube videos, there is always more to learn. And blogging conferences are a great way to learn from people like you, but who have already gone through the process.
But a lot of bloggers are introverts, and the prospect of attending a conference can be really intimidating. I know it was for me the first several times. And today's guest is the perfect person to help you get the most out of a conference.
As many of you know, I'm a huge fan of creating products and services to really increase the value you're offering to your fans. But what does that actually mean? In a recent podcast episode, I talked to Kate Hansen, the creator and inventor of the Ergo Spout.
She talks about the spectrum of products that you can create and where food bloggers should start on the spectrum, because not every type of product is as easy to make as another one. They all have benefits and negatives and knowing what they are can really help you choose where you should start.
