How to Write a Cookbook - Community Education Series

And tonight I'm here with Allison Kramer, whose blog is Manifest Vegan, and she's going to talk to us about how to write a cookbook. She's getting ready for the publication of her second cookbook, and she's going to share some of the things she's learned along the process of what it takes to actually get it up and going, and before you see that actual cookbook in your hands. So now I'm going to turn it on over to Allison, and she's going to give you the what-to and how to do it. Thanks, Alison.

Thanks, Dennis Littley. Hi everybody, I'm really glad to be here tonight. Again, my name is Alison Kramer. I have a blog, Manifest Vegan, which specializes in vegan and gluten-free recipes, and as Dennis mentioned, I am on my second cookbook, which is set to come out June 2013. It's kind of a sequel of my first one, but I'll give you a little background of my past and kind of how I got into this and everything. I have a fine arts degree actually, so I've always been interested in visual things, and I think that that's kind of what helped me launch my blog and get really creative with ideas with cooking and everything, but I don't have a culinary background, although I've loved cooking ever since I was a little kid, so that's something that's— I guess writing a cookbook has always been on my bucket list of things to do, and starting at a very young age, about 14, I got into veganizing organizing recipes, making vegan versions of my favorite comfort foods, and kind of cooking for my friends and everything like that. And so I went through training through, you know, college and everything in fine arts, but I had never lost the love of cooking. So when I got into— I guess out of art school and into the job field for the arts, I realized that even though I love painting and sculpting and all the other things that go along with art, I didn't really like working in the field so much. I really liked that I'm kind of an introvert, so I like to stay at home, work on my own with things. So I thought, hey, maybe this is a good time to kind of change career paths and start writing a cookbook. So, and I also had toyed with the idea of starting a bakery, but I came from Dayton, Ohio, and it's kind of not necessarily the most vegan-friendly place in the world, so I don't know if the market was right for that or not. Anyway, I scrapped the idea once I realized I really just wanted to be home writing and cooking. So I started my blog, Manifest Vegan, after I had researched a lot about how to write a cookbook, how to develop a platform, which is a word you'll hear a lot if you're writing cookbooks and proposing ideas and trying to find an agent. So once I started my blog, I was vegan at the time and I hadn't yet been diagnosed with celiac disease, and I knew I wanted to write a cookbook. I knew that I had to have a blog to do that. I figured it would take several years out for me to establish any type of platform. And for those of you who don't know, a platform is kind of— it's a way to think of your fan base, I guess, but also people that you can market your book to and kind of share your ideas with. In social media terms, it's your Facebook followers, your Twitter followers, how many people you interact with on Pinterest. All of those things equal up to your platform. Blog subscribers, of course, are very important. So I started working on growing that, and it gave me a really good way to test my ideas out to the public and see if anyone would bite on it. Turned out people did like my blog, which was great. And then I got diagnosed with celiac disease, which means I can't have gluten or eat gluten. That was a real bummer for me because I ate a lot of gluten as a vegan, mostly bread and beverages of the sort, beer and things like that. I really enjoyed it. So it was a really crushing experience for me not to have those staples in my life anymore, so I started really diving into recipe development for gluten-free, and I realized right away that there was really no place out there that catered to gluten-free vegans, or any books rather, and there was a need for that in the market, so I started really— I had a proposal already kind of going, an idea, an outline of the book, and I kind of changed that up to suit gluten-free recipes and everything like that, and I started making more recipes on Manifest Vegan, and they really took off. People were really interested in seeing the gluten-free vegan recipes that I was creating, mostly because there was a lot of vegan blogs out there, but there were very few gluten-free vegan blogs that weren't just strictly raw food based, which is still very popular. And so I started doing that, and about 2 years passed, And I had grown a substantial following. And I had been working on my proposal, turning it into gluten-free version, and really doing some more research. A book I would really recommend is Diane Jacob, Will Write for Food. Taught me a lot of great, great things. I took a lot of information from that book. Anyway, so I had my proposal pretty much written. And I was so excited, I did a blog post and said, hey, everybody, I'm writing a cookbook. This is going to be great. I'm really excited to share that I have the idea all fleshed out with you. And maybe 5 days later, I got an email from an editor at a publishing house, and she was like, I want to see your proposal. So I was like, oh, thank goodness I have this done. So she gave me a couple more days to kind of really tighten things up. And after that— I guess I should back up a little bit. Before that process, I had tried submitting directly to a publishing house on my own. And while they were very receptive and nice people, they weren't really into the idea. Like I said, at the time, gluten-free vegan was kind of out there. It still kind of is, but more so then. And I had also queried maybe around 20 agents, and I got either a rejection or just no answer at all from any of them. So fast forward back to the editor contacting me. Once I had an editor's attention who wanted to potentially see my book proposal and she liked the idea, Then it was really easy for me to get an agent. Maybe a couple weeks later, I signed with the Lisa Eckes Group. And immediately Sally Eckes, who's an amazing agent, just started shopping my proposal around. And I got a deal with Fairwinds Press. And I was really excited about that because I loved their books from the beginning, how they looked. One thing I was really interested in was being able to publish a book that had full-color photos with every recipe. That was really important to me because it was vegan food, it was gluten-free food, and I wanted to show people that it looked appetizing as well as, you know, just provide them recipes for how to do so. So Fairwinds was willing and happy to work with me on that. That was another reason I decided not to go with self-publishing because when I investigated it in the beginning, at the time self-publishing was pretty new, it would cost me around $55 per book just to produce the book, so I didn't think I would be able to sell it for much more than— I mean, who would buy that book, right? Besides my mother or whoever. So I didn't go that route. I went with traditional publishing, and it turned out really good. From there, I signed the contract, and I really got to work on my book. Like I said, I had been doing the book proposal for maybe 2 years before that, so a lot of the ideas were down. A lot of the recipes were finished and tested, but I also enlisted the help of maybe about 30 other people to test recipes. I got them from— they were readers of my blog and loyal, wonderful recipe testers, so they helped me out. And once that was done, I basically finished up the manuscript, sent it off to my developmental editor who was wonderful. She really helped me kind of find my voice. As my first cookbook, it was hard for me to kind of understand where to start with that. When you write a blog, it's a little different because you can just put whatever you want out there. Nobody really criticizes it, and you publish it, and it's done. Working with an editor has been one of the most amazing experiences of my life because I have someone critiquing my work, kind of putting me back into my art school mentality where I really thrived on producing something, having somebody say, "Oh no, this isn't good about this. Change this, change that," and then throwing it back to me, and then me really honing and honing that material until it's really great, in my eyes at least. And so then it went to copy edit, and then the design team was working on it the whole time. And after that, I'd say it was maybe 3 or 4 more months once everything was said and done after I had turned in the manuscript, and I got my proofs back, which was the first time I'd ever seen the book kind of fully laid out. It was a really great experience. And then after that, maybe 2 to 3 more months, and then it had hit the shelves, and I had to start really heavy-handedly marketing the book.

Okay, great. I have a question then. You were talking about recipe testing. How important do you think it was that you had these other people test your recipes for you, and how did you go about enlisting them?

It's so important. It's so important, and I learned that through the testing process. It's— basically, I don't— I can't sleep at night if I don't think a recipe that I put out there works. With the world because I know someone's, you know, I don't want them to think it's their fault or anything. I enlisted them by doing a call for testers on my blog, actually, and, you know, my readership was pretty good at the time, but not as good as it is now, and when I did it, I had over 300 responses within a week of people that were interested in testing my recipes, and I was like, whoa, this is great. I didn't pay them. It was volunteer. They would get their name mentioned in the book, and then They would have to test 25 recipes, and then they would also get a copy of the book when it was finished. And they were all really great, really enthusiastic. I set it up in a blog format, so I would post the recipes on a private blog, and then they would, you know, leave their comments if they made the recipe. It was a good way for me to keep track of who made what, what problems they had, and they could discuss with each other if they were having the same issues. It definitely helped me put in perspective that my kitchen is not necessarily run the same way as other people's kitchens, and that some people measure flours differently. All of those things were super important in developing this book, especially since I had to do— my book is international, so there's metric conversions for everything. And I had to weigh the flours, and I wanted to make sure that everybody was on the same page with that. And I think only the ones that really passed the test got into the book. And that's basically— it's not like that on my blog, necessarily. I don't have a crew of testers testing. That would be great, but I don't.

Did you have some recipes that you felt didn't cut the mustard then and you didn't put them in?

Absolutely. Definitely. I'd say I cut at least 7 recipes. That's not a lot, but out of 100, I mean, that's a good percentage of it. I either replaced them with other ones or kind of worked with the testers to see what the issues were. I think a lot of it— some of it was just based on taste. I thought it tasted good. Maybe one other guy thought it tasted good, and then some other people were like, "This is not good. I don't want to eat this, so I would cut that one out too. Other ones, just there was too many inconsistencies, so I didn't want to go with that. Baked goods are kind of difficult sometimes.

Did you have any problem getting all your testers to weigh the flour? Because I know I see that a lot. Like, I have a lot of international readers, and I try to convert things, and I know when I just do conversions, not everything converts a cup to the same amount of weight, so it's important to weigh things. Yeah.

Yeah, a few of them did. I didn't require it, so a few of them did because they were in different parts of the world, not using the cups and teaspoons and measurements like we do. So that was, that was good. The others, I didn't require it. And then I rigorously tested. I was so paranoid about it not working out. I had two kitchen scales going at the same time, and I was just rigorously testing, making sure that everything weighed out. And now I have a pretty good idea of how to convert. I don't usually use cups measurements anyway, so it was kind of backwards thinking for me. Once I started using the scale with gluten-free baking, it was so much easier.

Great.

Yeah.

What types of flours do you like to use for gluten-free baking, since we're on that subject?

My favorite is chickpea flour right now. This is my current fave. It's so versatile. I can use it for egg replacement. I can use it for adding You know, when you have like a really eggy type batter, or even a denser type batter like a pound cake or something, it works great with that. The thing is with gluten-free is you have to combine the flours most of the time, so I like to use that one as a base. I also like sorghum flour and superfine brown rice flour, which is just regular brown rice flour, but it's been milled an extra time or two, so it's very silky like wheat flour. I also like to use a little bit of starch in whatever I put just to give it a little bit of good body and a nice mouthfeel to it. So I usually use potato or corn, arrowroot. I've kind of been experimenting with those a lot lately. Buckwheat flour is also a big favorite of mine.

Great, thank you. Yeah, we do have a couple questions. I'll give you the first one. It's from Chef Mirelle. She wants to know if you took your own photos or did you have a professional photographer take them?

With my book, I do take all of my own photographs, so that was kind of negotiated in the contract with my cookbook deal. When I did my proposal, I let them know that I was interested, in fact adamant about taking my own photos, and it works out good for the publisher too because they don't have to find the photographer to do it that would match up with you and, you know, commission that out or price that out, however they would do that. Photographs can be pretty expensive, so I think it's a good deal when you can get the author to also take the photos for your book.

Well, let's touch on that for a minute then, since, you know, photographs are a really important part of a book. And like I said, if you can take your own, I think you're really going to save a lot of money, and that's going to equate to you having more money in your pocket too.

Yeah.

Alright, let's talk for a minute. What do you use to take your pictures with, and how do you set them up?

OK, I always— I've been using the same Rebel, Canon Rebel camera forever. I haven't committed to buying a new one yet because it's working really well for me. But I do spend quite a lot of money on lenses. My favorite right now is a 60mm f/2.8. I think it's around $400, but you can buy them used if you want to go there. And I think the most important thing is my tripod. The Manfrotto, and that was also around $300-$400. But you learn really fast once you invest in a cheap tripod and the whole thing topples over and you lose your lens and damage your camera that it's worth the amount you pay for it. This one stretches up really big and goes in all different directions, and it's very stable, so that's good. And I take all my photos in, in the room that I'm sitting in now, essentially, and it has really great natural light. And I always take it between the hours of Depending on the season, I guess. Right now, between noon and 4 o'clock is usually my safe hour. If I can't get to that during the week, then I do it on the weekends. I always use natural light and a mirror, a reflector. That's about it.

While we're talking about photos, Jennifer Jenner just wants to know, did you take the photos any differently for your book than you you would for your blog.

Yes and no. I learned a good rule, a good lesson, I guess, when I took the photos for my first book. For my blog, I was taking photos that were pretty close up, pretty cropped in, just naturally composed that way, and I always work on the natural rectangle of whatever my camera roll spits out. I don't usually go in and crop the photos, although sometimes I do. Well, for the layout of this book, my first book, I didn't quite have the best idea of how everything would go, so I had taken all the photos and then I didn't get with Art and Design until after I had turned in all the photos, so they ended up cropping them a lot smaller in to fit. I mean, it was no fault of theirs at all. So on my next book, I have learned to take the photos specifically to the dimensions of the book. Yes and no. I started off taking them like I would on my blog, hoping that they would turn out the same way, but in fact I needed to step back a little bit more and resize the photos for that.

What were the dimensions for the book? How different was it?

I'd say it shaved a good 3 inches off the top. Well, you know, comparatively, but it was like from the dimensions I had. It was, it was a substantial amount off the top. So if I was composing and I had that background or, you know, going, going in there, or the foreground for that matter, and the food was, say, in the middle, a lot of times it just got cropped off. So it was, you know, I mean, the photos still look fine as far as I'm concerned. I'm happy with them. But it was a, it was a lesson, that's for sure.

That's really something good to know. I think in consideration, they might not tell you that ahead of time, like, until you get to the art department. It's like, well, then it's too late unless you want to go back and make everything again, which I don't think you would do.

No, I didn't. We were actually moving to Philadelphia when this was going on, when I found out that the proportions were off, so it was kind of a panic attack situation for me. With my second book, that was the first question I asked, "What are the dimensions?" and, you know, they were the same as my other one, so it worked out really good, and I just got started right away with that. But yes, ask that.

Great. Okay, we have a question here from Anne Bocole, and she wants to know what is the consideration when making the decision to write a cookbook, that why would people buy another cookbook when there's recipes, all kinds and all types available for free on the web? And she says she happens to collect cookbooks, so she loves them.

Yeah, I think that's your answer right there. I'm a diehard cookbook fan. I don't think— I actually saw some statistic not too long ago that even though that the digital publishing world is seeing an increase in ebook sales, or Kindle sales, or however you want to go. The cookbook sales are still going strong because I think people really like the tactile feel of having a cookbook that they can scribble on, that they can spill whatever on, that they can take to bed with them and read like a novel. All those things are really important. And I think if you're a cookbook collector, you know innately why you feel that way. I sure do, and it's also, I don't know, there's just something so physical about it. It's definitely one of the collector things, I think. I don't know, I dig this.

No, I agree. I read constantly on my Kindle, but I don't own one cookbook on an ebook because I want to hold them in my hands. I want to lay them out on the counter. I want to messy them up if I want to and mark them up and write in them or put my little Post-it notes on them.

Definitely.

I guess you can do that on a Kindle, but I don't want to do— I want to see color pictures too. And I guess you got the color ones now, but that's the one vestige of books that I still cling to. I will read everything else on digital, but cookbooks, just more personal, I think.

Definitely. I even like seeing them lined up on my bookshelf, just being able to see all the spines and the titles and just know that all that knowledge has somehow grazed through my brain. It's all— it's important. It's I don't know. Yeah, I hope that it doesn't go anywhere anytime soon. But as far as— oh, I'm sorry, go ahead.

No, go ahead. You're fine.

As far as what she was saying is how do you convince that your idea, with all the free recipes and everything out there, one of the most important things is you need to find what makes you unique. There's some reason that you want to write this cookbook. There's something that I would assume that you want to offer to people that isn't already out there. You need to find that and you know, really exclaim out loud about that, sell that idea to the agent or the publisher or whoever it is. For instance, mine was vegan and gluten-free, and at the time there wasn't very many vegan and gluten-free books out there, so my— a lot of the publishers and my agent saw that as a needed void that needed to be filled. But nowadays there's a lot of vegan and gluten-free cookbooks out there, so I kind of have to get more creative with that type of thing. And there's no shortage of cookbooks coming out constantly, and it's because people love to cook and they love new ideas from new people, and there's always a spin that you can put on old recipes, or, you know.

Speaking of which, Chef Muriel also wanted to know, did you use recipes that were already on your blog, or did you develop all brand new recipes for this cookbook?

I did not use recipes. I think I have about 5 recipes in my book that were on my blog. The other ones were all original, not published before recipes. As far as developing them, I would say that a lot of them took— I didn't realize they would necessarily be going into the book. Like, I just used to cook a lot of food, and I always was developing recipes for years. So a lot of those made it into the book themselves that were naturally gluten-free, maybe veganized or whatever. Others I did come up with once I started really writing the proposal for it. So I didn't really start to develop— there was no point in time where I had signed the contract and then I had to hurry and develop recipes. They were all there, which I recommend everyone do that too, so you save yourself a lot of trouble. But yeah, only about 5 were from my blog.

Amanda Pfeiffer wants to know, she says she knows you've done single subject ebooks. Do you do ebooks as well?

I have done ebooks, yes. Yes.

And her question was, have you considered doing your other books as ebooks?

I have considered it, yes, but right now I just don't see the payoff being there as much. It might be something with my brain telling me that, you know, cookbooks in the published world, physical things that I can hold, somehow amount to more in my mind than if I write an ebook. Again, I think it has to do— a lot to do with the editor. If I could really find an editor that would be willing to work with me on that and turn it into a full-scope project, I would certainly consider it a lot more than I do right now. That's the best part of the publishing house in my mind is that I have a whole team of experts to work with that know the market really well and are also interested in working with me. But I know a lot of publishers are going into the ebook territory, so maybe I'll be diving into that sooner than later.

So they don't automatically just make it a book for Kindle or for one of the e-readers?

Yes, well, they do. A lot of them do. My book is available on Kindle and iBook and Nook and a few other digital mediums, but my next one will also be. So I don't know if every publisher offers that capability, but from what I've seen, most most cookbooks nowadays are available digitally, so yeah, that kind of just comes with it. And the ebook sales for my book have been, I mean, they're not bad, but they're not as strong as the hardcover, or the hard book.

Do you make as much off an ebook as you do off a hardcover book?

Actually, the royalties are way better. I don't recall offhand what mine are, but I mean, way better. You get a lot more percentage for the sales of the book than you do with the sales of hard copy books.

Really, so you make more with an ebook?

Yeah, but they're cheaper. So like my book sells for $21.95 at stores, on Amazon you can buy it for $13, and you can get the Kindle book for $9.99. So yes, in a way you get a higher royalty rate in return, once after you earn out your advance, of course. And then, but you know, I don't know, the sales are They're lower. A lot of people I know have told me they bought both. They bought the ebook and then they have the hard book too. Great.

I guess with a book that specialized in that, for people that suffer from celiac and then are actually vegans, it's got to be a must-have book.

I hope so. Really.

Okay. Looking to see if there were any other questions from readers right now. I think we caught up to them. I have a few others. Actually, we had one at the very beginning. Veronica Gantley had a 6-part question for you. Let's see if you've answered some of it, but we're going to start at the top. And her first question was, is there a certain font or layout that you use for a cookbook, or would it just be the same as writing a novel, or do you even have any input in that?

Um, okay, well, speaking from my personal experience, um, When I do my proposals, and I would assume any ebook that I would put out, well, any ebooks that I have put out, or any longer ebook that I would put out in the future, I use InDesign and make a template. I do my own graphic design on all that stuff, so I'm not the best at it, but it's free and I do it myself and I have control over it. So I just kind of go with what feels right. As far as my publisher is concerned with their books, they have a whole design team that they contract out, or they might be in-house, actually. And they kind of come up with the concept, the look and the feel, the tone of the book. And then after that, they consult with me. So I have a little bit of say in it. But one of the reasons I went with Fairwinds Press is because their books are gorgeous. And I was very excited to work with them in the first place. So I kind of sat back on that one and let them go for it. And it turned out great, in my opinion. On my next— I'm actually writing a third book right now. I'm working with a different publisher, and they have definitely said that we want you involved in the design process. So I'm not really sure where that'll go, but I definitely don't have to sit there on the computer and worry about fonts and things like that. That would be hard. That's another reason for self-publishing. You have to worry about all those things. And there's just so much that's involved in just writing and turning in a manuscript and photographs on time. And having recipes tested, and I just can't imagine putting a cookbook design on top of that. But if you like doing that, that's a good thing to do.

Yeah, yeah, I can't imagine having to do everything else on top of that. That's, that's why you want a good publishing house to pick up this, and plus they know that, that's their business. You know, they're not going to tell you what kind of flour to use, you're not going to tell them which font's going to look better in your book.

Right, right.

Well, we do actually have a couple more questions from the floor, and two of them are based on the same thing. Carista Bennett and Jennifer Jenner both wanted to know more about your proposal and what you included in your proposal.

Okay, I have some notes right here I'm going to reference. But okay, so my proposals, I've talked to a lot of experts about proposals, different agents, different authors, and everyone kind of has a different idea, but for the most For the most part, it's all standard. You can go on to any agent's website or most publishing houses that accept submissions directly, and they'll have an outline of what you should include in your proposal. For the most part, mine are about 50 to 60 pages long. They include an introduction of who I am, my platform, I guess, but you don't really label it that, marketability for the book, any titles that are similar and why yours is unique to that title. You need to include that. Most importantly, you need to have an entire outline of your cookbook done. They want to see basically that this is an idea that you have, that you've really put a lot of time and effort into, that you've thought about. So when I turn mine in, I do, I include one chapter of writing. So whether that's the introduction or my last one I turned in just chapter 1, which was, I don't know how many pages, a lot of words, it was just text, and I turned in chapter 1 and then I turned in about 24 recipes along with photos, the ones that had photos, and a good amount of information about my platform, my publicity, what I was planning on doing once the book if the book sold and was launched eventually, who my agent is. All those things are really important.

Okay, great. Ann Boccol asks again, from the beginning of conception to the time you got the book in your hand, how long did it take?

Okay, well, this one, for my first book, it's a little tricky because I would say like 7 years, but That's not really true, because again, I got diagnosed with celiac disease in the middle of it. So this one, I would say, took about 2 and a half years, maybe, total. But for my second book that's coming out, it was a much shorter time period. It was under a year, just because there was a faster turnaround, and they wanted to get the book out by spring. And I was ready to go. I had a lot of ideas cranking out. I write recipes. Compulsively, daily, I come up with new things, so I either put them in a notebook for this use or that use. But yeah, I would say around a year is pretty typical for that type of thing. Michael Ellis is asking, are there any specific reference materials you would suggest for business planning of writing a book, talking about costs, revenues, royalties, marketing plans, that sort of Like I said before, I'm not really sure of like business marketing, like if you want to sell a book to kind of help drive your business, or if you just have a business and you want to like, you know, you're a restaurant and you want to do a cookbook with your recipes for your restaurant in there. I'm not really sure what, you know, the return on investment would be with that. There's a lot of books out there. Again, I will recommend Will Write for Food. It really outlines kind of what to expect from everything, like, you know, doing book tours. There was a moment in time when book tours were kind of big and that, you know, you had to fork out a lot of money for that. But with the digital age, we have Google Hangouts and we have Skype. For people that want to do classes one-on-one, again, Google Hangouts. We have Facebook and Twitter and all these other means and emails. I think book tours are kind of dying out, so those costs could be obsolete in a few years or something. I'm not really sure. I think it just changes every year. The climate for publishing changes, and the climate for what you're going to have to spend changes. And again, you're going to have to consider how much of an advance you get, whether you want a big advance, whether you want a smaller one with a higher royalty, what you negotiate in the contract, if you're paying your agent. All those things are a lot to consider, and Will Write for Food really— I mean, I think it's the only authoritative book right now on the subject. Do you know if that's true, Dennis? I think it is. I don't know of any others.

I don't know of any others. I know Diane is just a wealth of information, and she has just got an answer for pretty much everything. I would go to her before I think I would go to anyone else.

Yeah, and she has a website. I think it's DianeJay.com. EB slash blog or something. It's great, check it out.

Alright, so we talked, you talked about the fact that you had tried, you queried some publishers, you sent out your things trying to get your first book launched, and you didn't meet with a lot of success until that one publisher actually reached out to you.

Right.

Okay, do you think that there's a specific way now, knowing what you know, that you would advise people to send a query out, or how would they go about it, or who should they send it to? Should they just look for an agent, or should they just try a publisher?

You know, I think it depends on what you're looking for. If you want a small publishing house, a lot of them accept queries, proposals directly, and that would be a great place to start. If you're looking for a higher advance, you might want to start putting more effort into doing agent searches and working on a query letter. I don't know if I would necessarily change anything. The one thing that I did know before I got into any of this was that rejection was a huge part of it. So I was fully prepared to hear the no word as much as I had to before I heard a yes. And the persistence paid off. Once I had gotten a bunch of rejection letters from the first group of agents that I queried, I just went right back to work on my proposal. So I would say there was maybe a 5-month gap between when I originally queried agents and when the editor came back, once I felt like this was ready to go out into the world. So if anything I could suggest to other people is don't rush it, because the time you invest in it now will pay off immensely down the road, and you'll save yourself so much work on top of it. But the most important thing is you'll have a really solid idea that you'll not only be able to sell to other people, but that you'll believe in yourself, and it'll just be a much more exciting experience. I started looking for agents on Publishers Marketplace. You can get, it's like a membership-based site, but you can get on there and see all the agents that are available that are taking proposals from authors or accepting new clients, offering training. There's a ton of different things on there. Make sure you query agents that are in your genre. Make sure they do cookbooks. That's really important. And you can also check in the acknowledgment sections of a lot of your favorite cookbooks and see who agented the authors and see if they have a presence online. Some of the agents don't have identity online easily. Like mine, you can go to Lisa Eckes's website, and there's tons of information. And they willingly accept proposals and are actively seeking new clients. Agent is doing a Twitter contest on March 11th, Sally Eckes. It's called Sign Me Sal, and so you basically tweet to her a pitch, a proposal, something small that you might get picked up as a client of theirs, which is cool. That wasn't available then. I would have definitely jumped on that. So there's a lot. I think more agents are being more creative with the ways that they're trying to reach out to people. Blogging has become really important too. So I think if you're out there producing work and you can prove that, whether it be with your Facebook fan numbers or your Google+ numbers or whatever you have, that's definitely something you have to have in place before you start querying agents or they're going to have a hard time selling you, so they're probably not going to sign you.

So that's all information you would include in your query letter then when you send it out, all your social media stats and your blog stats?

Now that's a good question. I guess in a way, there's a lot of great templates, like, you know, don't go off the template, use your own words, words and everything, but when you start to look up, you can see ideas of query letters. I think the most important thing with a query letter is you kind of have to treat it like a book jacket. You want to sell your book first off to the agent to make, like, you have one line to capture their attention, like 6 seconds of their time. You know, you have to make it good. So like, put it, somehow figure out how to put in the first 2 sentences like why they want you as a client, why they want to buy your book, why your book is the next big thing. And you have to know your audience. I wouldn't recommend going in there and saying, ah, this book will appeal to everybody, because that's simply not true. I don't care how much of a cookbook lover you are, there's definitely books out there that aren't going to appeal to you, and that people are going to see that. So you have to know your audience. I would get all those things in there. And then you can start talking about yourself a little bit, what you can bring to the table as an author, because that's really important. Being able— the saleability of your book kind of relies on your platform. And if you have other— you don't necessarily have to have your platform from a blog either. If you're a great culinary instructor or you have a TV show or anything, you're a professor at a university that is renowned for whatever, whatever it is, show that. Really get your bragging rights up there, but do it in a sane way, I guess is the best way to say it. Don't scare them off.

So you don't necessarily think you have to have a blog then to write a cookbook, or would it help? Do you think being a blogger had helped you?

Yeah, it's the only way I got a cookbook deal, that's for sure. Because I was, I mean, I have a fine arts training and I've been cooking for over 20 years, but nobody knows that, you know what I mean? So the blog was the way to kind of, it honed my writing chops, it also honed my recipe development skills, it also got me ready to face criticism if someone didn't like my recipe. It really improved my food photography skills. I didn't really know— if you go back on my blog and look at some of my earlier blog posts, the photos are really bad. And that's okay. And that's like part of it. I would recommend everyone have a blog just because, you know, the internet is— it's the internet. You gotta be on there. Whether you're selling a book or you have a car lot or whatever you have, I think it's important to be online. So yes, I would highly recommend that too. But, you know, if you have other Credentials, don't feel like you can't write a good book if you have a ton of culinary knowledge and you have the drive to do it and you only have 100 followers on Facebook, like that doesn't matter. Go out there and try to get yourself sold.

So just talking about Facebook and social media then, how great of a role do you think having a good social media following, do you think numbers really matter that much, do they look at numbers?

Yeah, they look at numbers, definitely. But they also look at the quality of your work. So interestingly enough, like, I think they definitely look at numbers, but when I first sold my cookbook proposal, I only had 1,000 Facebook fans or something like that, maybe 2,000 at the time. And now I have over 12,000, which, I mean, that's been in like 2 years, so it's grown. They definitely look at that because those numbers translate into sales. To publishers, and for you. So I like to interact with my Facebook fans and my Twitter followers and everybody because I want to see who's out there listening to me, who thinks, who are interested in my recipes. If they have any questions, I'm there, and that's also why I maintain my blog. My subscriber base is a little bit different than my Facebook followers, just different demographic in general, but you know, they're all still there, potential readers through potential people to ask questions, reach out to, and if anything else, potential book buyers. So I think it's really important.

Absolutely. Alright, we have another question here from Michael Ellis. He's, he's saying that his concept doesn't involve too much creating recipes, but rather seeking out and selecting and testing recipes for his specific audience. Do you think that has a possibility of being a cookbook?

Curating, I guess. Is that what he means, probably?

I think so.

Yeah, there's a lot of books out there like that, definitely. Again, I think it would help to have a platform stable so people— like if Tastespotting were to do that, they might have. I'm not sure. They might curate some of the best selections, submissions from their site and ask the people to contribute. I've actually contributed to a few books like that, that people have just found my recipes on my blog and asked me to contribute, and I happily do it if it's up my alley or whatever. And a lot of them do it for charity, but yeah, I think that's definitely a feasible idea if you can word it and sell it right.

Okay. Well, going back to your cookbook, I have to ask a question. What was the most stressful thing that you encountered writing it, or what was the What was the worst aspect of it that you might say?

There's a couple. I'd say at first the thing that I least expected was the testing, how rigorous it would be for me to get everything to be straight and for my testers to— they were great. They were really great. But it was really hard for me to wrap my head around that it wouldn't turn out the same way for everybody. A lot of them were great. They sent pictures and I'm like, this is so strange. Some of them looked exactly like mine. Some of them didn't. But that wasn't really the most stressful part. That was just the most eye-opening part for me. The most stressful was we had just moved to Philadelphia from Ohio, and we were staying in our beach house. And my publisher let me know that all my photos that I had submitted, all 130 of them, were incorrect. So I didn't have anything on me except my laptop. So that was like a 2-day freakout. Everything worked out fine. I just had to resubmit them. But that was horrible. That was really bad. I was really scared. Now I know to double-check everything a lot better. I was using Aperture at the time, and it was converting all my files into some other format, and it wasn't working. It was saying JPEG, but it wasn't. Something like that. It was just stupid mistake on my part, so I felt horrible. And that was pretty awful. But they were like, no big deal. And I don't know. It was a huge deal for me.

Alright, that was the most stressful, then what was the most rewarding part of your first cookbook?

Seeing the color proofs, when I first got the package delivered, it was when everything had been laid out, I had never seen everything together, so seeing the design team coming together and putting the— because when I turn in my doc, my manuscript, it's just a Word document, so, and then like little codes for the photos that I put in there. So when I saw it, it came to me in color proofs, just pages, you know, to do my edits and everything on. But seeing that, I was just like, "This is great. It's a real book. I can see the design. I can see like where the photos are going to go." There was little headnotes and tiny little recipe notes and nutrition facts, and it was just, it was a wonderful moment, even more so than when I finally got to hold the real book in my hand, I'd say, because I never had imagined how it would come together, and that was the first visualization I had.

Talking about nutrition facts, did you have to do all that or did they do that for you?

I did that. That was hard. I had to use a few different sources for it. I had some software that I had purchased and then some of the recipes. A lot of the software that you use doesn't have all the ingredients that are gluten-free or vegan, so I had to kind of find those elsewhere. There was a lot of math involved. And I'm not sure ultimately if it was helpful to the readers or not. I mean, I'm glad I did it for that one, but yeah, I had to do all of that. I think other publishers might do that for you. I don't know, but mine was— the thing that was great about my publisher is they were rigorous editors, wonderful editors. So even on the nutritional facts, she'd be like, "This seems a little low in fat," or "This seems a little high on the whatever scale." So I would double-check those, and that was really nice. Really fun. But it was a lot of work, a lot of math.

So when it's all said and done, then you're on your third book and things are looking great, and so are you ready to quit your day job then?

Are you making enough money off these book sales to say, "I can just be an author?" I can say now that I am making more money than when I was working full-time in my art job now, so I am happy about that. My husband's still the breadwinner, but I'm definitely like, coming in a close second there. I do this full-time. I wake up every morning. I have a routine. I do that. I wake up with my kids, get them ready for school, and then sit down and do whatever I have to do. And usually that lasts until 9:00 PM, until I crash out on the couch, and then do it all over again the next morning. I love it. I really do. So yes, this is my day job now. I wouldn't expect first-time authors, though, to think that if they're leaving a really plush corporate job and then they launch a book, book out there or get a contract that it's going to replace that income because it won't. Unless you're really famous or you have a really great platform, then it's possible that it could. But generally, we get modest advances as authors, and the royalties take a little while to come in, and that's all good in my mind because I'd be doing the work anyway. I like to think of it as a really long blog post that I'm getting paid for.

That's a good way to think about it. I think if you look at it in those terms, whatever you put into it is an investment, and it's something that's going to be an ongoing thing. I don't know how sales will hold up, but as more and more people are diagnosed with celiac, which seems— I mean, I teach at an all-girls school, and it's amazing how many of them now come to me and they have celiac. My niece just got diagnosed with it.

Really?

Yeah, and it's just— I don't know. We blame things on the environment, so we'll probably throw this one at it, too. The world's changing, and we're finding out the things that we have eaten for so long are not really good for us.

Or they've changed, so they're no longer good for us, or a variety of reasons. Yeah, it's interesting.

Your book could really be a mainstay in the future, and it's a good line for you to keep putting out new books because it's something more and more people are going to need. The one thing I always heard was, "Oh, God, it tastes terrible." There's a comedian out there that says, "I don't know what gluten is, but evidently, it's delicious." Yes.

I'm trying to— especially when you add vegan onto that, heads start exploding everywhere, like, "Oh, that's going to be the worst ever." My next book is on desserts, and I'm just going to completely—

Wow.

Yeah, go all out with that one. I'm really excited about it. Hopefully, I can change some people's people's preconceived notions of that.

You've changed some of mine. I've seen so many incredible items that I would never have believed in my wildest dreams could have been gluten-free or could have been vegan. When I visited— I was up at the Culinary Institute of America. I took my class up there last year. One of the projects they told me they had to do was they had to bake things. They had to bake them 3 ways. They had to make it regular. They had to make it without sugar, and they had to make it with an alternative, like dairy-free, vegan.

Wow.

They all had to taste the same.

That's cool. That's a fun experiment. That's definitely neat. That's really cool.

That kind of shows you where the mind's at of even the culinary people of the world. They know it's coming, and they've got to be prepared for it. It's definitely an ongoing topic that's, I think, going to be in the forefront for a long time. We had another question here. Someone just joined us late. Arkana Doshi, she wanted to know if there was any software that you used in setting your book up or for planning it or for anything that you might have done along the way.

Yeah, I used Creative Suite. I highly recommend it. I use everything Everything from InDesign to Illustrator to Photoshop, I use a lot of it, and Lightroom, of course, to develop my photos. Initially it's a big investment if it's Adobe InDesign or Adobe Creative Suite. I think it's 6 or something like that now, I'm not sure. But if you can't invest or you don't feel like investing all the money at once, they have a really great program called the Cloud program or the Cloud subscription or something. It's like $49 a month and you can get It's like you basically rent the software for a month and then pay every month to keep using it. And it's really great. I would recommend that, especially for book proposals. I don't know what I would do without that program with my book proposals. Because you can just put text in there. You can put photos in there. You can line it all up. And then you can turn it into a PDF right away. And it's perfect to send out. And you're going to want to— talk to the publishers or the agent about what type of proposal they want. Some of them might not like PDFs. I haven't come across any yet that don't like them, but others might prefer Word docs or something like that. So I would definitely get the Microsoft suite and InDesign if anything else that you can't get your hands on.

Yeah, definitely a good investment, and I think there is a student version out there, so if you are a student or know a student, you can save a considerable amount of money off that Creative Suite when you get it. They even have a student rate, I think, for the cloud also, but you have to really prove that you're in school, I think, to get it for the cloud. We have a question here from Lohai Oglu— I'm going to have a hard time with this one— Ogluola. She wants to know if you can explain the eBook process a little bit.

Okay. My eBook process is a lot like making a proposal. A lot, like it's basically making a proposal for me, except I don't have to include all the marketability and publicity information and my background and stuff in it. But basically I just start with a good handful of recipes, however many I want to put into it, and make sure that they're all well tested. Ah, with the ebooks, I've only enlisted the help of like 5 or 6 other testers because the amount of recipes have been smaller, but if I were to tackle a bigger project, I would obviously do the same thing I've done with my books and just offer a copy to them and thank them for their voluntary efforts, because that's basically what I can do right now. But you start out with InDesign, or I start out with InDesign, and I just kind of lay out the rough draft of the book, front page, any front material, the contents of the book, intro material, things like that, and then each page I put a photo on one side and then the recipe on the other side. And it's really easy with InDesign. You can just do a master copy of— or however, and you just lay out the theme, and then you just plug everything into it. I basically write it in Word and then plug in the text, because it doesn't have the best word editing software in InDesign. And then I have a bunch of people look at it, that edit and take notes. Put notes down and see how they feel about it, and that's about it. All in all, when I write a proposal, it takes me about 3 to 4 months depending on how in-depth it is, and I would say an ebook takes about that long, just depending on how many recipes you have. But yeah, I just do it all in InDesign, and then you just save to PDF and it's ready to go out there. You can host it, you can sell them on PayPal really easily by just going into the— PayPal thing and getting a button to stick onto your site, buy it now or whatever, and link it to however you want to deliver it to the purchasers. It's actually a really easy process, I should do it more often.

So you pretty much, there's no agent, there's no publisher, you're taking care of the whole process yourself then for ebooks?

Yeah, with the ebooks, exactly. Although my agent does do ebooks, they're just a little bit different than The ones that I'm willing to do right now, I don't think they have color in them, so if that happens, then I might go with my agent on that one. She's worth every single percentage point that I give her. Wonderful person, so I would go that route.

Yeah, I would think a good agent is probably one of the most valuable tools you could have in wanting to put a book out, because they're going to get you the best deal they can, because they're going to make a little bit more on it that way too. Plus, if you're successful, it all trickles down. They're going to be more successful. They're going to find more people to help them be successful. So yeah, good agents too. And we had a question— oh, Jennifer. Jennifer just wanted to remind us that the student rates also apply to teachers for Adobe software too. So if you are an instructor, you just have to show proof of being an instructor. Okay. I think that's— I don't have any more questions. One other question is, what was it like after your book did finally launch? You went through the cut sheets and you did all the things, and then your book came in and you launched. Did you have a book signing? Did you go to bookstores? Did you go out on any kind of publicity tours or anything at all?

I did my publicity. I did have a couple signings and cooking demos. And they went well. They were great. They were very local events, sort of, from New York to Philly area. And I loved interacting with people there, but I think I got the most mileage off of— I basically put together a blog tour where I had, I think, 50 bloggers go and promote my book when it came out. So they would offer a giveaway, do a review, whatever they wanted to do, and whatever I could do for them to to make it easiest for them. I certainly didn't want to go to a prominent blogger and be like, oh, can you promote, do all this work to promote my book and just help me. That wouldn't have flown well with me. Right now I'm busy. If another blogger came to me and wanted me to do something, I want to do it, but I'm just so busy right now, there's just no way I can do it. So I take that into consideration. So I say, you know, you want to offer a giveaway? A lot of them took up on the giveaways, and they spaced it, a lot of them spaced it out months apart, so my book was getting coverage on the blogosphere for months after it launched, and that helped a lot. Once you have prominent people in the community, whether it was the gluten-free community, I had a lot of people just from the gluten-free, not vegan community, talk about my book, and then I had a lot of vegans, not gluten-free, talk about my book, and then I had a few that were both gluten-free and vegan talk about my book, and they were all reaching out to different readers that didn't necessarily know about my blog or had never heard of my book before. And it worked out really well. I'm definitely planning on doing that on this next one. And I want to do book tours through Google Hangout, because I think that that's a really good way to interact with people as well. So we'll see. I'm not really sure. I think that the blog tours, or the book tours, are kind of dying off. At least that's what I've been told from everybody I've talked to in the publishing industry, that The publishers just don't have the money to fork over to send all these authors, there's so many authors out there, they certainly don't have the money to put them all on paid book tours, so it's really up to you to do that. A lot of authors I know are very successful with doing that, but I think it's up to you, personality-wise, how easy it is for you to travel, I have kids, things like that, so it's working well for now.

So I guess a lot of it would be up to the individual blogger on how much they actually wanted to put into it to promote their book, and how They want to see more sales, and they have to do things like you did and go to other bloggers and get help, or do as many local things as you can, I guess, to promote your book. Did the publisher always reach out to the bookstores you went to, or do you think that would be something that the actual author could do, too?

Both, but yes, my publisher, I had 3 publicists working on my book with me, so they all were, anything I needed, they took care of it. They sent out a ton of press releases. They did it to— they sent my book— this is where I got a lot of publicity too, was VegNews magazine and Vegetarian Times named my book top whatever, 5, 10 of 2012. So when that happened, that wouldn't have happened had my publicist not sent my books to their office for them to see. So that was helpful. They also, yeah, they take care of— I was on a TV show, they take care of sending any info that I need to do that, any copies of books I need anywhere, making sure that the bookstores have them in stock. And the cooking demos, I think they just sent them to me. I think that's what happened. It's kind of blurry right now, but yeah, they definitely provided all that type of thing.

Okay, other than the bloggers as kind of a support system, are there any other organizations that you could go to for help? I mean, like, we talked about the one for looking for publishers, but is there any other resources of organizations that would be helpful to you?

Yeah, I highly recommend— I'm a member of it— is IACP, the International Association of Culinary Professionals. I think their website is iacp.com, although that might be the chief of police website. I know I've gotten mixed up on that a few times, so just search for it, culinary professionals. That one's a great one because The cool thing about that is there's emerging professionals in that, like just people that have never written a cookbook or, you know, just getting out of culinary school or just really dipping their foot into it, to really esteemed, like, icons in the culinary world that are all members of this organization. It's a great place to kind of network with people, and I think networking is really important because when you go out to launch that blog tour, you can't just write 50 strangers. And ask them to do something for you, you have to develop those relationships with those people. All the bloggers that I reached out to, for the most part, I had a pretty strong relationship with, or I had a really strong interest in their work and was hoping to make a connection that way. I recommend networking on that. Also, if you have a niche, like I have vegan food or whatever, so the vegan community is— the food community is really small, but the vegan community is even smaller, so it's It's really easy for me to connect and to reach out to these people, to meet them, go to conferences, go to anything that's around your city. Or if you're traveling, stop by and see if there's any conventions going on. There's a ton of them out there. And that's a really— I know BlogHer is really big for a lot of the people. And so many of my colleagues have made some really great work and got some great connections from going to the BlogHer conferences. And things like that. So I would definitely investigate every single possibility out there. IACP is a great one to start, though.

Great. Good to know. I think you've really given us a good overview of the process from start to finish, and pitfalls and good things that can happen to you. Really, it's a lot more to it than I think people realize when they sit down and say, "Ah, I'm going to write a book." It's more than just having that good writing ability, even if you are a stellar writer, there's a lot more that's going into it and a lot more planning. I guess the time involved is what time you would have free too. You say people think, well, you're home, they don't consider it like the old days, they don't consider you as working. Well, you probably do more, you spend more hours working than most people do at their regular jobs.

Yeah, there's a lot of working involved, a lot less house cleaning for the modern housewife now, but you know, it all works out.

Okay, well, that's, that's about it for the questions. I think we've covered just about anything. Is there anything else you wanted to touch on before we sign off?

Um, one thing I guess I wanted to touch on was the importance— I know I've had people asking me this recently in my personal network of friends and colleagues about the importance of an agent. One thing that I think I overlooked with self-publishing at the very beginning— and I was actually considering going with a lawyer instead of an agent, both which are really good to have, looking over your contracts and stuff before you sign with a publisher. But the best thing that I've gotten out of the agent is that they have a long relationship of working with publishers. And they know the exact editors to submit your proposals to, and have really great working relationships with these companies and these publishing houses. So that alone, if you're starting off and you don't have, say, an education from a culinary school where you have network there, or you're not a giant famous blogger like Pioneer Woman, it really helps for you to get your work in front of a publisher's eye instead of just moved to the slush pile, which is where a lot of unsolicited proposals end up being. So just take your time finding a good agent, someone to work with. You want to have someone that you can get along with. I'm actually really happy that those other people rejected me because I love my agent now and I can't imagine working with anyone else. So they wouldn't have been good matches for me. I mean, it's like a business partnership. You have to get along with them, they have to get along with you, you both have to believe in what you each are doing, and that's all very important.

So great. I think that says a lot then, you know, it's, it We live in a world of relationships, and a relationship with your agent is as important as a relationship that you have with those other bloggers that help you. It all ties together. I think sometimes people forget that a lot of things we do, we do basically because of relationships.

Right.

I know in the food service world, I mean, I bought from people. I could have bought from anyone, but I bought because of the relationship I had with the person. Dealing with. It transcends to everything we do.

Yeah, and that's a great point. I actually got introduced to my agent from a really wonderful person in the vegan community who is— ah, she's like— I don't know. I've idolized her for so long, and when I finally got to meet her and she was like, oh, you know, I'll introduce you to my agent. We'll see what happens. I mean, there was no reason she had to do that for me, but she did because she's a wonderful person And yeah, I wouldn't have— I mean, I probably could have gotten an agent, hopefully, after that, but if I didn't have that intro, I would have never met Sally, and, you know, who knows where I would be right now. So yes, connections are everything. Definitely don't burn bridges out there.

No, it takes a lot less time to be nice to people and to just talk to them and spend a little time getting to know someone than it does to just write them off or to be nasty to them for no particular reason. There's always going to be people you don't get along with, you just don't associate with them. You gravitate towards the positive and you talk to people that are good fits for you. Not everybody's going to be a good fit, but you find the ones that are.

Exactly, exactly. So don't get your hopes diminished when a couple agents turn you down because that's part of the game. Absolutely.

Yeah, you have to develop a thick skin. It's just like blogging. I mean, we wouldn't be in it for this long if we were, you know, couldn't take a little bit of criticism. So it's the same thing with that. Get used to rejections, and eventually the right one will come your way. And everything happens for a reason. All those rejections that you had led you to the place where you wanted to be and was a good place to be.

I know it's good. It's true. Every day. Yeah, trust it. Trust. Just let it go. Let it happen. I totally agree with that. And if you're working hard, like, nothing's just going to kind of, you know, come out of nowhere. It's all coming from a product of your hard work. So it's all very important, but you're right, everything happens for a reason.

Great. All right, well, I think that's about it for tonight then. Alison, thank you so much for coming on with us. You were really a great guest tonight. I appreciate all your time and your energy, and I know your second book is going to be successful. I can't wait to see your new book on desserts. That's going to be amazing. So let us know when that comes out.

Thank you so much. So much, Dennis, for having me. I had a blast tonight. Definitely fun time.

Alright then. Well, I'm Chef Dennis Littley here with Alison Kramer, and thank you so much for coming tonight to the Community Education Series, and we hope to see you next week. Alright, take care. Bye.