307: Will Write for Food - How to Make Money by Writing about Food with Dianne Jacob

Hello. Hello, this is Bjork. Welcome to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. Today we are chatting with a podcast guest that we've had before, Diane Jacob, and she's going to be talking all about writing and how that connects to the food world. She actually wrote the book on writing in the food world. It's called Will Write for Food. There's a new edition coming out. We're going to be talking about that and also some of the trends around things like substack or social media, how that ties into blogging, cookbooks, the advantage of doing a cookbook, the hard things with doing cookbooks, all about writing and all about food and all about building a platform online. And Diane Jacob has been talking about that, writing about that, and coaching people through that for a really long time. So she has a lot of insights and expertise in that area. So excited to talk to her. One thing I will say we're giving away three copies. We'll say three copies of her cookbook. Excuse me, not her cookbook, her actual book. Will Write for Food about cookbooks. At least a section of it. And all that you need to do is go to foodbloggerpro.com podcast, find this episode, and leave a note with something that was a takeaway, something that you were interested in, maybe something that you learned or a good reminder that you had. From this interview with Diane, we will pick three people from that list and we will ship them a book, a copy of the new edition of Will Write for Food that Diane is publishing. So let's go ahead and jump into the interview. Diane, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. It's great to be back.

Yeah. Really fun to reflect. We were talking when we met at a conference way back when, and it's fun to be in an industry long enough where you kind of have these friends that you can connect with through the years. A lot of times, people will come and people will go, but then you kind of have these anchors, and you know that, hey, this is what they do. This is what they love, and you are one of those people. So good to have you back on the podcast. For those who haven't listened to the podcast that you were on before and maybe aren't familiar with your story, Dan, can you do a kind of a quick recap of who you are and what you're about? Sure.

Well, I'm primarily known as the author of this book, which just came out in its fourth edition. We'll write for Food and the sub. We have a new subtitle. It says, pursue your passion and bring home the dough. Writing recipes, cookbooks, blogs, and more.

Love it.

So that's. I mean, that book has been a huge help to people who want to write cookbooks, want to learn how to write recipes, want to become freelance writer, start a blog. And I also coach people in all of those areas and do a lot of speaking and teach classes and all that.

It's like the. That tagline that. The name of the book and the tagline is, like, perfect for this podcast. So it's going to be an awesome interview, because people who listen to this, that's what they're interested in. They want to figure out, how do I create an income from this thing that I love? Whether it be cookbook, blog, you know, recipe development. You can go down the list. If you had to pick from the interviews you've done, from the coaching you've done, from the, you know, shoulders you've rubbed up against, where does it seem like the shortest path to success is? Or is there one when it comes to, you know, bringing home the dough as it relates to writing or creating content around food?

Well, I suppose there are some miracle success stories of people who have grown an enormous following and then get a big book deal, but there's very few of those. I don't know that there's a short path. I mean, people think your path to success was short with pinch of yum. But, yeah, it took. How many years do you think it took to be successful?

Yeah, I think probably three to. I think it depends on, like, what your definition of success is, but three to five years of working on it, both Lindsay and I, I think that's the other thing that people forget is it was both of us working on it, Lindsay probably more than me, but it was like both of our side hustles. And I think some people look at it and they're like, oh, this was. They try and compare their path as a single creator on their own to, you know, people who maybe have multiple people working on it. So, yeah, three to five years, probably.

Yeah, that sounds right. And I think it was. I think it was a little easier than now because the field was less crowded.

Yep. Yep.

Now more than ever is. I think it's harder. Everyone seems shouting for attention at the same time.

On the Internet, do you feel like. So one of the things that I think is always true is there's a space that there's maybe a lot going on and it's crowded and it's noisy, but there's always going to be that space where there's not as much going on and it's not as noisy much. Like 10 years ago, blogging or publishing recipes online was that. Do you get a sense for where that might be right now when it comes to creating food content online? Or is it too hard to. Is it too hard to predict that? And it's easier to look back and be like, well, of course blogging made sense. And then for everybody who was doing some other thing, you know, door to door food delivery, they're like, well, maybe that wasn't the best, like, business to be starting at the time.

It seems like there's a lot of underground coaching going on, helping people find. Not employees necessarily, but people to help them in lots of different ways. Like there's all these. And then it becomes like, not so underground. Like, there's several new people who are teaching bloggers how to self publish their book, for example.

Yeah. Yep.

And there are, there's. There are Facebook groups with. Where people. All people do all day, it seems, is post photos of recipes that. Photos of dishes that are available for sale. I still don't really understand how it works. Like, they post photos of donuts and then I guess if you like that, you pay a hundred dollars and you come up with your own doughnut recipe.

Oh, interesting.

I haven't heard of this photography.

So the idea is almost like photography first, photography as the product. Yeah.

Yes.

Hey, I created this beautiful arrangement or this beautiful dish. I photographed it. You can buy this for 100 bucks and. And then you can just kind of create a recipe that essentially looks like this. Is that the idea?

Yes, it's backwards. Because we. All this time we've been creating the recipe and then you can't find a photo that looks like it.

Yes.

They're starting with the, with the photo and saying, here, make up the recipe. Yeah, I think that's how it works. So that's kind of.

That's really interesting.

So there are all these different entrepreneurial things going on that come to the surface to help everyone do their job. I remember thinking about their fun hobby.

Yes. Yeah. I remember thinking about this with a photographer that we knew and he had a business and his business was essentially taking photographs, like senior pictures, maybe. It was like sports teams, things like that. And suddenly everybody's getting a digital camera and they're like, I don't need, you know, I know the basic pose is I don't need to pay however much. It was 300 bucks to do a session. I can just go out with my kid and take some photographs and then we can use those because I already have a camera that I paid 500 bucks for. And you see that business start to decline. I remember thinking, there's still an opportunity here. It's not like the opportunity in photography goes away. It's just that you have to think differently about how you're then serving people or the product that you're creating. And what's interesting, every anytime that there is a market starts to get really competitive, if you're trying to fit yourself into that area, that thing that people are doing, it's going to be hard. But what's happened is now there's this entire new market that you can serve. And if you kind of think of it as like a pyramid, if, like the base of the pyramid gets really wide, you can kind of stack on top of that and say, like, okay, great, there's all of these people, let's say it's food or recipe sites. What do they need that I can now create something for that then serves those people, whether it be taking photographs that you sell and then somebody else creates a recipe around it. But there's still lots of opportunity. You just have to be kind of creative in how you approach that and how you think about it. So as you work with people, do you see that shift starting to take place or is it still possible to, like, on the, let's say, on the cookbook side of things, hey, you can grow an audience, you can get a following, you can get a really good cookbook deal. Or are you seeing like, hey, these are people who have maybe had to. You kind of have to serve 5, 6 years of hustle and content creation and audience building before you can get to the point where you can justifiably go to a publisher and say, hey, you should pay me to create a cookbook.

You do have to put in the time because publishers want. They want someone with a platform most of the time, and they want someone who knows what they're doing as a recipe writer, also doing the same thing that everybody can find for free online by doing a Google search.

And that the thing that they're doing is building an audience, essentially.

Building an audience, not just building an audience, because I think that it's harder for the general food, general food blogger to get a cookbook deal. Because if they're just doing like American comfort food, sure, there's so much of that available online for free. It's like, what are you doing that could, yes, could create a cookbook that people are willing to pay $35 for? So I don't think it's just about the audience. You have to be doing something with the recipes that gets the attention of the publisher, of the agent or the editor.

Interesting. And that would be with your platform as a whole. Are you seeing that with your platform?

Yeah.

And your, you are the sugar free or reduced sugar person or like you are the keto person or so you're getting specific in who you're serving and creating content for.

I think it's harder for all the people who are like, I love food and don't really want to make their blogs about anything in particular. Just I think that's. It's harder to get a book deal in those situations. But what you could get in those situations is I was actually in a store recently which was new for me.

Yes. All of these strange new things that are happening. I was giving my parents a hug and. So you're going into a store?

Yeah, I went into a store and it was one of those super curated stores like Anthropologie and they had, they had all these books that all had a similar theme. And it seemed to me that all these books, maybe the publisher had had the idea for the book and then they found a blogger and said, hey, do you want to do this book? So there was one called Moon Easy Recipes for Peaceful Sleep. And there was Sunday Suppers. Go To Recipes for a Special Weekend Meal. Foil packed dinners. 100 delicious quick prep Recipes for the Grill and Oven Summer A Cookbook Inspired Recipes for Lazy Days and Magical Nights and lemons and limes. 75 bright and zesty Ways to Enjoy Cooking with Citrus. So.

So it's almost like these are publishers coming to creators who they know can do recipe development, photography and saying, we have an idea. And this actually happened. I remember early days of Yum where somebody reached out to us and they were like, hey, we really want to do like a Mini Donut Baked Mini Donuts Cookbook. It's like what? Like very specific one donut recipe on Pinch of Yam. But I'm sure the idea is they can probably relatively affordably hire somebody who can do the photography, who can do the recipe development, who can do the writing. Is it possible to get a deal like that and still make it worth it from a dollar amount? Or do you have any insight into how much you'd be able to make from those types of relationships?

I mean, I think when you have a general blog, you're gonna, that's the kind of deal you're gonna be offered because nobody really, I mean, Ina Garten doesn't need someone to do a soup to nuts cook to compete with hers. Generally speaking, she's doing fine. So you're more likely to be offered some kind of, you know, idea where they're just the same recipes you can find anywhere else a lot of the time, but they're packaged in this way that makes people go, oh, wow, foil wrap cooking. I'd like to do more of that. And so you have to decide if a lot of the time these publishers want you to just drop everything and go insane developing all the recipes and shooting all the photos in a very short amount of time. And they don't offer that much money. But you have to decide, is this experience worth it? So I can see what it's like to do a cookbook. Do I still want to have my own cookbook? And, you know, if my cookbook was baked mini donuts and then I have to promote it, do I want to be known as the baked mini donut expert for the next three years because I have to promote this book? Or is some. Or would it be better for me to just say no? Yeah, I think Lindsay wanted to be known as the expert in mini donuts.

Big yeah. Right, right. And the other consideration is, if I'm going to be producing 75 of these recipes, what would it look like if I just created 75 of these recipes on my site? And you can't do like exact calculations on that, but you can kind of get to the point where you're thinking about, okay, like, if this, if this deal probably not a great deal from a cookbook perspective because they maybe want you to use your audience to promote it. But also it seems like a lot of times in a situation like that, the cookbook is like, hey, we're going to put this on an end cap at like a cookware store. And it's kind of, it's going to be like the equivalent of like a pack of gum or Snickers, where like you're checking out and on the way out you're like, oh, that's kind of like a new creative thing. Maybe I should buy that. Yeah. Versus if it's like your cookbook, then you're selling it to your audience. People are interested in it because of who you are. Right. So, yeah, it makes a lot of sense, the kind of the considerations that go into it, both from a branding perspective, but also from a business finance perspective. Does it make sense to dedicate all this time and energy to it? Do you have a. This is a really hard question because there's no concrete answer to it. But when it comes to cookbooks, how much can you expect to make? And like, what, what does that, how do you, how do you make that more of a lucrative thing as a creator? What does that look like?

I think most people do not go into writing a cookbook because they're going to make a lot of money. Most people are not going to make a lot of money. So. And if that's why you want to do it, it's going to be really hard for you to get a cookbook.

Deal to justify it. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, you have to go in it because, you know, you've decided that this is your next step and this would be a good credibility product for you to have and the market is right for you to be the author of this particular book. Those are really the reasons. I mean, you hear about stories and every once in a while they happen. For example, I have a new client who shall remain nameless, who is basically an influencer who has built a very, a big platform putting recipes into her Instagram posts.

Sure.

And she just got a six figure deal. And then they said, okay, you know, you're doing all the photography and you're writing the book.

Yep.

You know, we'll see in a year. She's like.

Which is a lot of work.

Yeah, yeah. And she doesn't know how. She'd never done this work. Right. So. So we're gonna, I'm gonna help her figure it out. That's pretty rare that that happens.

Yeah, I've heard that in the, in the, kind of, in the general business world as well, from people who write books where they're like, hey, I'm not doing this as like a financial decision necessarily. It's more of a strategic decision. One of like, I want to go in this direction. I want to have credibility. And there's something about credibility of media that people are more accustomed to. Books, tv. I remember the first time I've told this story a couple times where we're on the local morning news and There was probably 75 people watching. Right. So it's like morning news in Minnesota at like 7am and but like there's a couple friends who are randomly watching and then our family, some family friends watch and they're like, you guys are legit. Right. Like, we had been doing what we're doing for so long and I feel like a cookbook does a similar thing where when, when we moved in, this was the one house ago, not the house we're in now, but that we moved in the neighborhood and we were telling some people what we did and we're trying to explain it. We're like, well, what do we call it? You know, Lindsay and I always have this conversation. She's like, well, we have this blog and it's like people don't really know how to respond, where they're like, oh, like, it's almost like apologetic, like, yeah, shoot. Like, I. I hope that, you know, you find work eventually. But I feel like if you say, oh, I've published a cookbook, there's something about that that legitimizes you as a creator for whatever reason. And I think that ripples in really significant ways. The other piece that I think is important to consider, which you kind of hinted at, was. And Lindsay talks about this, but almost like legacy and the difference between like our grandkids looking at posts that Lindsay's, you know, posted on Instagram and a blog versus opening Lindsay's cookbook that she created. And that just feels different. It feels different to have something you open that you can tangibly hold, that you can wrap in wrapping paper and give to somebody. And I think as creators, that's one of the considerations we have. It's not always financial. It's. It's also, what am I doing in the world and how am I contributing? And I know for a lot of digital creators can be like, the only thing I'm doing is like putting pixels on the Internet. And a lot of times, you know, especially if you're like a designer or developer, in four or five years, that all goes away and there's just kind of a cycle to it. So I think the physical ness of it is really important. But also you kind of have to have a digital presence in order for it to work. Are you seeing any cookbook deals where somebody has no presence online and they're still able to get cookbook deals? Or is it a non negotiable that you have to have a following?

I think you have to have some following, but I think publishers are also very aspirational about what they just like bloggers are aspirational about where they want to get. Publishers are aspirational. Like, if you ask them, they'll say, well, we'd really like to find somebody who has half a million followers or half a million hits on their blog. Well, of course you would. You know, you'd like to find the next Otolenghi also and the next Ina Garten. That doesn't mean that they won't publish people who are not at that level. And they're very funny about it. It's always a very weird conversation when you try and pin someone down about, well, what is the right number and this and that. Because their model is the same as venture capitalists, where you invest in a whole bunch of companies and if one of them turns out to be one twentieth the size of Google, then you don't care if the rest of them fail or don't sell much or whatever. So publishing is the same way. They always want to have to pay all their bills and, and their bonuses all come from the heavy hitters. And then there's everybody else.

Yeah. In, in Adventure, you see where if something doesn't catch, then they're not going to give attention to it. So, yes, it falls off, you're kind of forgotten and it just kind of sits there. But if you become the shining star, all the resources, all the focus, all the marketing, like, you get all of that. Yeah, but it's, it's, it's not like attention is given equally to all.

Oh, no.

Venture. And it sounds like in publishing as well.

No, because if they've given someone, you know, one and a half million dollar advance, then they've got to pay. They've got to devote resources to that person because you want them to earn that money back and more.

Yeah, yeah.

Whereas if you've given somebody $15,000, it's much less of a risk and you're like, oh, whatever, you know. Yeah, you can do all your own publicity.

Right. So out of those cookbooks, that's one option. And I think people kind of have a general sense, like, hey, you know, I could maybe do a cookbook early on, but if I'm doing it early on, chances are the arrangement is more like, hey, I'm being hired almost as like freelancer to recipe, develop, photograph, write. It's not necessarily, sometimes it's probably both and like also being hired for my audience. As you grow and scale your following, you also have more leverage to market so there's more value for a publisher. So you can maybe have a bigger advance and then, you know, more negotiating power.

Yeah.

So that's one option is kind of the cookbook option, but in that tagline for your book will write for food, which, while I'm thinking of it, comes out officially the next. Is this version three of the book.

Or this is the fourth edition, believe it or not.

Fourth.

Yeah.

That's incredible. And you showed me the copy of it and it's like packed full of information. And I've read edition Three. And even that was packed full of information and so excited to see this next edition coming out.

Thank you.

But there's a few different tagline in that tagline. There's a few different things that you had mentioned. How are you seeing other food writers and food creators earning income? We talk about blogging. That's one piece of it. But can you speak to some of the other ways that people can be thinking about income generation around food and food writing?

Well, I think first, first of all, writing as a profession is not led by business people. That is like the understatement of the year. Right? I mean, people write because they have something to say and they want to be creative. It's like painting. Okay, sure. And so that's where all the food writing stuff was for a long time. There. There were some, some people who could manage to get a full time job, like restaurant critics, but for everybody else it was more of a hobby. And this big shift in maybe the last 10 years has been by people with an entrepreneurial mindset. And the ones who are succeeding, the ones who have six figure incomes, I think are not just creative people, they're entrepreneurs and they understand how to have a business. And their business is selling recipes. And I think bloggers actually have created this. I mean, they're not even called bloggers anymore. I mean, like you and Lindsay are not bloggers. You're sort of Internet entrepreneurs in the food space.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But blogging isn't the right word.

Right. And food blogger Pro isn't a great name for what we talk about, which is like. Yeah, something we've mentioned a few different times, but it reaches so far beyond just blogging. Exactly, yeah, Tracking.

So it's really, it's, it's a business. And I think, you know, that's really new in the writing world that you could have a business that makes money. But I still think most writers don't really have that mindset because so much of food writing before was about writing for free. And even as bloggers, you put all this free content on the Internet. So the shift has been that people are still writing for free, but they figured out how to monetize it.

Yes, right, yeah. Because you're publishing content, it's free, as it always was. The thing that has changed is the ability to create income around free content with ads or sponsored content or affiliate or whatever it might be.

It's a providence of almost entirely white women, because white women had the luxury of creating content either for free or for very little money. And so that has been one of the shifts that's really interesting to me is that the Internet created a space now for different kinds of people to just kill it on Instagram. On the Internet, like, you know, walks. I mean, and they're not. They're not married, they're not women who depend on someone else for income, you know, walks of life. Just one cookbook. Those are amazingly huge sites by Asian Americans who circumvented all the gatekeepers and built a huge business.

Yes.

And that's a different. A different model, but they're still giving away free content, which is what writers have always done, it seems, or been very badly paid for content.

Sure.

Because the assumption was, well, you're doing this, you know, you're reviewing a restaurant for fun, and you get to eat the meal. So, you know, I'm going to pay you $40 or, you know, if you'd like to write for me, write whatever you want, and then I'm going to pay you nothing. Or 25.

Yeah, right.

You know, so that, I mean, that is still happening, but at least there is this corner of our industry where. Where people have figured out. Where people are entrepreneurial and figured out how to be successful.

Yeah. It's one of the great things about the Internet. Right. Anybody can start whatever they want. A blog, an Instagram account, TikTok can start creating content. And it's kind of democratized the ability to do that. And to your point, less gatekeepers. Although I would. There's probably still. I would say there's still those certain gates or gatekeepers that exist but are just in publishing. Yeah, yeah. Or wherever it might be, whether it be, you know, sponsored content or advertising or, who knows, you know, but still exist, just in different ways. But it changed significantly and really encouraging to be able to see that. One of the things that you had talked about was this idea of this marriage of entrepreneurial mindset with creative mindset. And what if somebody is just creative? There's a lot of those people and they have this incredible ability, but they don't necessarily have the ability to package that up in a way that translates into dollars. So is that kind of a hopeless situation for those people?

Oh, no.

Do they. What do they do? How do they approach that?

Well, first of all, if they're enjoying being creative, a lot of people are very satisfied having a hobby where they, you know, they're on Instagram as a hobby or they're on TikTok as a hobby. And. And that's fine. And.

Yes, exactly. As you would we're guitar player. If you like playing guitar.

Yeah.

You go home, you play 45 minutes an hour. You love it. You're in a band, but you're not. Like, how do we make as much money as possible from this show tonight? It's like, no, I just want to, like, play for a live audience.

Exactly. So.

Right.

So I think all creative pursuits are the same in that way. And then at some point, sometimes people decide that they want more than that, but a lot of people don't. A lot of people are perfectly happy to do something on the side and for fun.

Yep. Yep. Yeah, it's interesting. I think of, like, failures. Yeah. Well, finish that thought. Yeah.

No, it's not. It's not a sign of failure. It's. It's your hobby.

Yes. I love that. And I think sometimes I think about, like, what would this podcast be like if Lindsey was doing it? Because you talk about kind of the entrepreneurial side of a business and then the creative side of the business. If this was Lindsay, this podcast would look very different. And she'd be talking about creative. She'd be talking about recipe development. She'd be talking about writing and photography. But because my interests, like, bend towards entrepreneurial finance, business building, it's kind of where we naturally talk. And I think, therefore, podcast listeners would maybe kind of bend in that way as well, but without the creative things that Lindsey's doing. Like. Like, if I'm 2xing 0, like, it's still going to be 0. And. But what Lindsay, what Lindsey's doing is, like, putting something there that allows there to be growth, which is the biggest luxury that somebody who likes business can have is somebody who creates the raw material and assets that then you can say, okay, great. How do we be strategic with ads for this? And that's, like, a relatively easy job compared to creating really good content in the world. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts for. So, in one category, hey, if you are doing this and you are satisfied in the pursuit of this as a creative endeavor, that's a win, and you can stop there, and that can be your thing, and that's awesome. And end of story, there's also going to be a camp of people who are, like, great, all of those things, and I want to figure out how to be entrepreneurial and how to grow this, but maybe they don't feel like that's a muscle they want to build or, like, a skill that they have and want to pursue. So in situations like that, what would your advice be? Or what do you even see with some of the people you work and coach in regards to how they can partner with somebody or maybe coach, be coached by somebody. You know, you do some of that. What's your advice for the creatives who don't necessarily want to be the entrepreneurial person but want to be building an entrepreneurial thing?

Well, you know, for example, there are a lot of freelance writers who want to be paid more and get into bigger publications and for some reason they don't seem to be bloggers. It seems like there's two different groups, right?

Yep.

And those people are hard, they're hardcore writers. But they still, it's still a side hustle for most of them because it's just, it's almost impossible to make a living full time writing articles.

Yeah.

So, you know, for example, I have. There was a student years ago, came to me who wanted to start freelancing. So we started in small publications and that didn't pay any money. Then she got into the Washington Post, then she got into a national magazine. Then, you know, so it built and built and she got paid better, but she still has a full time job and this is on the side. So some things the model is just not really there to make a lot of money. So I would say the model is there with blogging and being an influencer. I don't really understand how influencers make money other than sponsored. Sponsored content, I guess really the main way, right?

Yeah. And I think there's some ads, right. I think there's some platforms that are starting to like Snapchat's experimenting with paying creators who have, you know, a snap that goes. Snap. I don't even know. Is that what they're called? I don't use Snapchat at all but. Or like YouTube, you can run ads against it and earn ad income obviously. But yeah, I think for the most part the understanding is like if you have a following on a social platform, you are either creating an income from sponsored content or you have some product that you're selling. Kind of the ultimate example being like the Jenner Kardashian families, but also the ultimate. But also maybe it's like, you know, you have, I'm trying to think like maybe it's somebody who has a huge food following and you create a cookware line or we've interviewed some bloggers who start to create like their own, have their own olive oil that they're branding and things like that. So yeah, I feel like sponsored content and then for a select percentage it's their own product. Which is obviously a new level of involvement.

Yeah, true. Okay, so there are Internet ways to get income from ads or sponsors, but then there's like the freelance writing, which leads to. Most of the time you're not going to be compensated for the amount of time you put in for a story. But then some of those people have been able to get work as content creators. That's the term content creators, which is very vague to me. But basically it means working for corporations, doing some kind of food writing, like white papers, research, writing recipes, working with them as the person who hires influencers or doing their social media. There's all that kind of work, too. That can be very lucrative.

Yeah. Do you see anybody or do you know of any food writers who have created, like a Substack account, so like a paid newsletter subscription that are kind of doing that as their. As their main form of income? It's something that. It would be the opposite of what we had talked about before, where it's like writing for free. Now it's like only writing to be paid for it. And can you explain how that works for people who aren't familiar with what that is?

Okay, so Substack is a company where you can have a newsletter that's free. It starts. It's. It's always free. But then there is a paid option. And so if. If there's a paid option, then you have to produce more content that is only for paying subscribers. So the person at the top of that food chain right now is Alison. Remember Alison Roman? She was a recipe writer for the New York Times and Bon Appetit and all that. And then there was this huge takedown where she kind of got canceled. But she. I get her free Substack newsletter, and it's terrific. She's absolutely hilarious. She doesn't take her till too seriously. You know, she's had a lot of therapy. And she talks about that she's still alive, which is good, because it was really horrific. So she's at the top. And she does a paid. She has the paid version and a free version, and she also does a video that goes with her recipe. And then there are. I think Alicia Kennedy is maybe number two. And she's, you know, a big thinker, I guess, is what I call her. She writes essays about veganism, about, you know, the corporate food business, thinking deep thoughts. And she has to come up with a lot of deep thoughts because she recently interviewed me, and she had three interviews that week plus whatever she was writing. So it has become. I think she probably makes around 50,000 a year just from her newsletter. And then there's whatever else she has going on on the side. She got asked to teach a class recently. She's working on a book about veganism. So that's how she's making her living.

Yeah, it feels I'd be. I'm going to throw something out there and I want to hear your thoughts on Seems like as people are contemplating who do I want to be in the world online and do I want this to be my full time thing or not? There's a few different variables in that equation. I'm going to name off a few and I'd be interested to hear if there's any others that you would add to it. One would be am I trying to do this as like my career or am I okay with it being a hobby? Another one would be do I want that? Do I want to be the building a thing like Pinch of Yam? Do I want to be building a blog or a following or do I want to be building a career as a writer? And it doesn't matter if, you know, I'm front and center and people are following me or I just get to write and that's what I want to do. Similar to that, like guitar playing, I just want to put my fingers to a keyboard and express my thoughts and ideas about something. Doesn't matter if I'm a follower, have a following or not. And once you know that, figuring out where is then the best place to do this full time, not full time. Do I just want to work on the thing that I'm passionate about or do I want to build a brand, a blog, a following? Then where is that avenue in terms of the best place to fully live out that desire or that goal? Is there anything you would add to that as people kind of contemplate how they want to work within the world and the world of food?

Well, I would say that you have tremendous privilege just to entertain those options.

Yeah.

Because you know, if you're a single mother you can think about all these things that you would like to do. But yes, the bottom line is you have to bring in X amount of money while raising your child with almost.

No bandwidth or margin.

Yeah. And I have worked with people in those situations where they're juggling lots of different things and you know, maybe they have a catering business on the side or and they're just trying to figure out how to make it work to bring in the income and all these disparate things that they do don't really Add up to enough money, but they love doing them.

Yeah.

You know, I worked with somebody one time who, you know, she hired me for. I have a five hour minimum. She hired me for five hours. She spent all five hours working on one piece because she really wanted to write this one piece of writing an essay with a recipe at the end. And, you know, she was running a food pantry on the side. She was, she had a grown kid and two young kids. I don't know. She had like 20 things going on simultaneously and none of them were bringing in enough income. So that's what I'm saying about the privilege of being able to choose things regardless of how much money they bring in. I, I think we need to be more aware of, of that. First of all, that, that you're really fortunate that you even get to have those conversations.

Have that conversation. Or to be. Yeah. Or to be thinking about that. Yeah. And a follow up question to that would be if somebody does find themselves in that position, to use a really basic example, single parent raising their kids, working like period. For most people, that's going to be maxed out. What does that look like? Is it tabling the thing or the thing meaning like your passion or your goal or is it like setting realistic expectations?

Yeah.

What does that look like if you are in that situation?

Well, it's kind of soul crushing to table it, like. And I feel like sometimes I'm a part of that because sometimes someone has just started and they want to write a book and they have no. I said, well, okay, a book means that you have. It means that you have to be a writer to write a book. Okay. That's how it works. So, so what evidence do you have for a publisher that you are a writer?

Twitter bio.

And they don't have any, but they still want to write a book. So, you know, I think sometimes it is a little soul crushing for someone like me to say, well, this is not step one. You have to build towards this point. Because people are always contacting me and saying, I want to write a book.

Yeah.

And that has nothing to do with whether they're ready to write a book or whether they will be perceived by a publisher as someone who can write a book. They're not the same thing. I mean, someone could be teaching kids how to cook and have done that for several years, but they have no. And they could probably write a book about how to teach kids to cook and be in the kitchen more. But if they have no social media platform and they've never published a recipe Publisher is going to be like, well, how do we know that you can pull this off?

Yeah. The greatest predictor of future behavior is past behavior.

Exactly.

If you don't have a strong history of past behavior that's aligned with what you're pitching somebody on, it's gonna be. It's gonna be hard for them to sign off on it.

Exactly. And so you kind of have to be the person who wrote the book before you even write the book, because that way you're, like, the most obvious person for the job.

Yeah.

So, like, if you're an influencer who puts recipes in every Instagram post and you build a big following, you seem like someone who could produce a book based on that.

Right.

So that's a good risk for a publisher. So. Yeah, you still have to. I mean, you still have to have your dreams, but you have to be realistic about. Whether someone else thinks you can pull it off.

Yeah. Yeah. And I would say one of the phrases or concepts that I've talked about on the podcast before is that people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in 10 years. And I think that as. As you think about your dream or your goal or your, you know, the thing that you would love to be in the world, I would encourage people to think about working on it as much as possible in the moment, but also to not have this compression, compressed aspiration in terms of, like, I want to be at this point in six months. Not that that's a bad thing, but. Yeah, but to your point about the reality of what margin looks like and. And privilege around being able to daydream, like, what do I want to be in the world? You know, to. To hold both truths at the same time. Hey, now is like a really difficult time, and I don't have a lot of margin. And realistically, due to the effort that it does take to manifest this thing within the world, might not be realistic, but like you said, doesn't mean table it. Maybe it just looks different. And instead of thinking about it as, like, am I going to do this in the next three months? Maybe it's the next three years. Or instead of thinking about one year, maybe it's 10 years. And I think there's some things you can do that kind of sharpen the tools in your tool belt. So when the time does come, if you do have more of that margin, or as seasons change and maybe kids aren't in school and then they are in school or whatever it might be, everybody situate there's thousands of different situations to consider, but even little things like listening to a podcast or on a drive or maybe when you're doing the dishes, it's all kind of sharpening the tools in your tool belt. So my encouragement to people who do have that goal or aspiration would be to not let go of it, but also to be gentle with yourself in terms of the realistic amount of traction that you can get with limited margin and capacity. So I appreciate your thoughts around that. An important reminder and the reality for a lot of people always.

Yes, it really is true. People do think that you can get somewhere right away. And that's normal to think that, I guess.

Yeah.

But most of the time it's just not true. I mean, another woman contacted me and she had also no social media following and had never published anything in writing, but she was determined to write a cookbook and she insisted that she hire me immediately to work on the proposal. And I kept telling her, well, I don't want to take your money, I don't want to waste your time, but.

Not a good fit.

You know, you got to do this other work first. And people, I think some people really don't like hearing you got to do this other work first. And I don't like hearing it either. But it doesn't diminish the fact that sometimes you have to go in a certain order.

Yeah, yeah. And I think a good reminder, you know, as we come to the end here, as people think about working towards the thing that they enjoy doing most in the world, whether as a hobby or as a profession, both of those things being, you know, important considerations and different for people, depending on what their goals and hopes and dreams are. But to think about it with a long term mindset and to think about showing up. We talk about this all the time on the podcast, but this idea of a tiny bit better every day, forever showing up, doing the work in the margin that you can do it in. And for some people, that's more than others. But to not have this expectation that it's going to pay off really quickly. And one of the ways you can do that is by continually learning. People who listen to this podcast know it, but using that as a segue into one more time talking about your book, Diane, for those who listen to this podcast, it's going to be a great fit for them and talk about sharpening the tools in your tool belt. One of the ways that you do that is by learning. And I think your book would be a great way for people to learn we want to. We're going to do a giveaway. So we're going to do this with Food Blogger Pro, and we can kind of handle the logistics of it. But before I talk about that, can you talk about where people can find it and order it?

Well, you can. I mean, it's for sale March, May 25th. You can find it anywhere. You can buy it from an independent bookstore. I would appreciate that. And it's got a lot. It's got a ton of content between how to write recipes, how to get published, how to be self published, how to make money. It's got a lot on photography, social media. So you name it, it's pretty much in there. Except there was a chapter on fiction writing once I got. I ended up getting.

Oh, really? Yeah, yeah.

There's actually a lot. There's actually a whole category of food writing in fiction. There are murder mysteries like the caterer's the main character, and there's lots of recipes. They're called cozies. But anyway, yes, you can get it just about anywhere. And you can also come to my website and sign up for my free newsletter about food writing, which comes out twice a month. And what else? Oh, yeah, I have a blog about food writing. Tons of content that's been going since 2009. So it's all@dianej.com d I a n n e j.com cool.

And we'll link to that in the show notes as well. And then what we'll do for this is we'll do a. After this podcast goes live for two weeks, if you've listened to this podcast, you can go to foodbloggerpro.com podcast, find this episode and leave a comment with one takeaway that you had from this episode, one thing that was interesting, something you learned, maybe something you're going to do a little bit different. After hearing Diane talk about some of this stuff, we will pick three of those at random and send a copy of the book to them as a thank you, Diane, for coming on. So be sure to do that foodblockerpro.com podcast for everybody who's listening. Dan, great to connect again. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

Thank you. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And you guys are still knocking it out of the park years later.

Thanks. Yeah, we really appreciate it.

Okay.

Yeah, take care. Thanks, Dan. That's a wrap for this episode. Thank you, Diane, for coming on again. It's been great to stay connected with you through the years and great to stay connected with you, podcast listener through this podcast that we do every week. It's a privilege, it's an honor to be in your earbuds. And our hope, as we often talk about, is that we can help you get a tiny bit better every day. Forever. That's why we exist. Just a reminder, if you are interested in checking out Diane's book, you can either buy it or that's what I'd say. You can go buy it and then also leave a comment on this podcast episode foodbloggerpro.com podcast and one takeaway that you had something that was interesting, something that you learned. Maybe it was just something that you were reminded of that's important. And we will pick three of those and ship a copy of Dan's new edition of Will Write for Food to you and we'll close it two weeks after this podcast goes live. So if you're listening to this a month, two months down the line, you've missed your chance. And that is our plug for you to listen to these podcasts in real time, which you can do. Check out this transition by subscribing to the Food Blogger Pro podcast in your favorite podcast app. And you can listen to these when they come out in real time. And then you'll have your chance to win things like a free book. But don't wait. Don't wait to see if you won the free book. You can order a copy and then if you also win, then you can give a copy away to your friend. Or you can just keep it and give it as a gift to somebody who likes writing and likes food. And maybe it will be an eye opening read for them. That's a wrap for this episode. Make it a great week. Thanks.