One of our members decided to make her dreams a reality an published her own cookbook. Faye, of Fayefood, was kind enough to share her thoughts on publishing her own cookbook.

I had lists of what worked and lists of what needed to be added and lists of where everything should be on each page and what I wanted photographed and where every photograph was going to be taken. I had to figure how to make the food call out to people and yet make the reader feel comfortable.

Why did you decide to self-publish?
The best part of doing anything on your own is, you’re it. You get to do it exactly the way you want to do it. The hard part is, you’re it. You have to come up with the idea, write, design, edit, fund the idea, and if you want to make any money, you have to figure out how to do that too.

Can you talk to the self-publishing process?
The beauty of self-publishing is, if you want to see your words in print and give a copy to your mother, then you can do that. There is no limit on how many books you can publish; the cost per book will be the same. The publisher I used charges a flat rate of about $5.00 per book, then a per page cost based on if the book is printed in color or black and white and how the book is bound. They charge another 20% of whatever amount you want to add to that. If you are happy slipping your precious words into the templates that they have available to you, and you are happy with black and white, you can sell a book without having to pay the publisher or design team a whole lot of money, and you can afford to sell just one book.

It sounds as if you are bound to templates—what if you want to have your own designer or if you want your own look?
If your idea goes beyond the words and into the photographs and the design, then it’s going to cost more—especially if you want it done professionally. Color photographs bring the cost per page from 5 cents to 15 cents. A professional photographer can easily cost $2000.00 a day, and a designer, $100.00 an hour. My book FAYEFOOD, is 125 pages; a very small book. The photographer worked 10 hours a day for 3 days to shoot the book. The designer worked for 50 hours. The editor was a steal at $500.00 for the whole project. I found people willing to accept a percentage of their fees up front, and to wait until my ship came in for the remainder. Which means I have a need to sell the book.

How did you approach marketing your book?
It’s easy to think that if you have the book, all you need is to get it into print and the next morning editors are going to start calling to tell you they LOVE IT, but it isn’t so. Nothing about me is famous, so editors are not only likely to not have my phone number; they’re not going to call me even if I send it to them.

You can send a book to be considered for prestigious awards to give your own self a little prestige, but FAYEFOOD was published in November, and the award idea didn’t hit me until after December. Books typically have to be submitted the year they were published, so the awards aren't going to work for me.

Were you given any advice as to how to market the book?
I need something (from the words of a publisher) “direct and specific” to sell the book. I have to figure out what sets my book apart from all the others and why anyone should be interested in my book instead of somebody else’s, and I need to be able to express that in as few words as possible. Like two, or three. And then I have to figure out exactly who this target audience is that needs my book so and who gives them their information; what newspapers they read, what radio stations they listen to, what web sites they’re on and where they shop.

How much of your life is this taking up right now?
I have been waking up and going from my bed to the computer for all day stints since the book has been available. Time gets eaten up like ice cream in front of the TV; you just don’t know what happened to it. It feels like trying to speak a foreign language for the first time. No matter how much you study, you may never get further than how to order yourself a cup of coffee, and even that might not sound too good. It’s frustrating, it’s defeating and there is nothing else to do but reorganize, regroup (yourself), grab your bull horn and yell in your own ear to keep it up.

It’s been more than a month and my I think my son has forgotten that his mother used to cook for him, put him to bed and read to him even. Was it worth me risking all that money and not knowing if I’m going to make one red cent? My book is beautiful. I love it. I am published. I might just sell it. I have all that, and I didn’t have to wait for someone else to say I could do it.

On behalf of Aaron (he who dreamt of and built this site), thank you for helping us get to this point. In the year since foodieblogs.net began, more 200 blogs joined our roster. Our members span the globe and represent some of the finest foodbloggers around.

People keep finding us and asking to be part of this great group. As a foodblogger, member and editor, it’s really amazing seeing our members’ wealth of knowledge our members hold, creativity and talent.

Our membership criteria aren’t stringent, but we do look for a few things. Here are a few guidelines…as ever, there is an element of subjectivity, but this will help you understand why a decision is being delayed or why we couldn’t accept your blog.

It needs to be a blog or have a blog as part of it.
What separates a blog from just a plain old site? You should have date- and/or time- stamped entries; free and accessible archives and publish a feed (RSS, Atom etc).

It needs to be about food.
Okay, it doesn’t have to be 100% food-fed. We are perfectly okay with the occasional non-sequitur, but we ask that at least 75 per cent of entries be about food.
There are all sorts of ways to blog about food. Here’s a partial list:
• Eating
• Cooking
• Production/farming
• History/education
• Reviews (restaurants, festivals, etc.)
• New products or produce
• Photoblogging
• Recipes
• Weird, odd or just plain silly things people do with food

You need to have a history
Not a long one—a least three consecutive months of posts, ideally with at least one post per week. If after three months you have you don’t have many posts up, we’ll keep you in the review rotation. We don’t want to fill our roster with blogs that ended before they really began.

What will be rejected:
As much as we love you all, sometimes we have to say no to membership requests. Why? Because, even though we are pretty welcoming, sometimes what people think of as appropriate just isn’t good for the foodblogging community. Here’s a partial list of why your blog could be rejected:
• The blog is a series of links or a feed-harvester
• Readers are charged fees to look at content (including archives)
• You are a known or identified content or bandwidth thief
• It’s a site where the primary purpose is to solicit funds/donations
• It’s a commercial site, whose main purpose is to sell/market goods and/or services. This includes blogs that are marketing tools, tied to commercial ventures or are professionally written to sell goods or services.

With regards to the last point, if, in your blogging journey you’ve published a cookbook or have put together some instructional DVDs, that’s terrific—we won’t necessarily decline you. Essentially, we don’t want foodieblogs to be carrying the equivalent of syndicatable advertisements.

Other things to keep in mind
Foodieblogs doesn’t want to get involved with censoring or telling our members what they can or cannot blog about, but please realise we have a diverse readership and membership. Our global community is multicultural, have many beliefs and faiths, range from very young to the very young at heart, varying lifestyles and so on. Please be respectful of others when choosing your content. Thank you.

At this point English- and French-language blogs are reviewed quicker than other languages. From time to time we will let blogs in other languages into our membership, but that’s only if we can find someone who can read that language and let us know what the blog is like.

Thanks so much for a great year.

j

All the best for a delicious 2007.

jasmine

It's been a while since I've welcomed new members--here's the catch up:

Andrea's Recipe Box
Artisan Sweets
Bitegeist
C is for Cooking
Cookthink Blog
Foodieuniverse
Fresh Approach Cooking
girlgastronome
Good Stuff
Grignote et Barbotine
Hedonia
Homesick Texan
Men in Aprons
One Food Guy
Writing at the Kitchen Table

So it comes as no surprise that a number of us have joined together to help impoverished regions worldwide by becoming involved with Menu for Hope III.

Last year's campaign raised more than US$17,000 and we hope to surpass that amount this year

I'm really proud to say that a number of foodieblogs.net members are involved this year--either as regional hosts or as prize donors. The deadline for prize submission has closed, but that doesn't mean that you can't help.

Starting 11 December 2006, you can donate towards the campaign. For every US$10 given, you can enter your name in a draw for one of dozens of items. A complete list of prizes, host blogs and ticket buying information can be found here.

I hope you'll support this campaign.

Jasmine

For me (apart from the fatigue and the other physical symptom of this wretched bug), the havoc played on my culinary life is what bugs me most. I miss being in the kitchen cooking and experimenting, but even moreso, I miss tasting food.

Don't get me wrong, I can taste some things--usually at the most extreme, heavy-handed end of the spectrum. Right now it's salt, sugar and firey-spiciness. Some of it is purposefully inflicted--anytime I get sick I reach for capsicums and alliums just as often as I reach for tissues and blakets--but it's not my prefered, normal way of eating.

I miss delicate flavours and subtle scents wafting through rooms. I especially miss walking into the kitchen and sniffing the muted but distinguished aromas eminating from the spice cupboard. In other words, I miss the smell of home.

One can only hope that normality returns soon.

That includes catching up on all the membership requests that have flooded my in-box...Right now there are more than 30 requests waiting for my review, and the number grows every day. All we can ask for is your patience as we work through the backlog.

cheers!
Jasmine

A warm welcome to our newest members:

Almost Turkish Recipes
Chef-Girl.neta href="http://www.chilefire.com/">Chilefire
Married...with Dinner
Mr. Foodblog
Raw Food Diet Blog
Taste Everything Once

Especially for the cook.

This year, mum was extra-paranoid about running out of food. It's never happened in the past, and I don't think it will ever really happen in the future, but this year, she really out- (and over-) did herself. There were only five of us, but there was enough on the table for at least 10, if not 12...and there were things that never reached the table. I know where this mentality comes from, because she's passed it on to me: a guest should never leave your home hungry.

Anyone who steps across the threshold is a target for her culinary generosity...satiety is a necessity, not a luxury. Guests leave with care packages to ensure they are looked after for at least a few days (and in the case of at least one Thanksgiving guest a two-foot carton filled with enough food to keep him and his roommate filled for at least a week).

My week has been filled with turkey sandwiches, turkey soup, a couple of different types of cold pie and some leftover ice cream. All lovely, all good, but I am at feast's end, and I need to start cooking again.

Something that doesn't involve turkey

cheers!
Jasmine

A warm welcome to our newest members:
Field to Feast
The Feisty Foodie
The Incredible Aventures of Gourmet Gal
I Ate A Pie
Papilles et Pupilles
The Perfect Pantry
The Savory Notebook
Stephen Cooks
Sugar Delirium
Talk of Tomatoes

This month’s theme shouldn’t be a surprise (at least not for those who’ve been reading my little bit of e-space recently). No matter what part of this great land we are in—city or country—our stores and markets brim with wonderful foods from our farmers’ harvests—apples, beans, corn, grapes, plums, spinach, tomatoes—it only makes sense for CBBP 2’s theme a spotlight on our season’s bounty.

More information is available here.

If any of our foodieblogs.net members are hosting a foodblogging event and would like it mentioned here, please email us with all the details and we'll do our best to get it up here.

cheers!
jasmine

A warm welcome to our newest members:
Almost Foodies
Anna's Cool Finds
Fancy Toast
Fleagirl's Fine Cooking
Greasy Spoon
Kitchenography
The Laughing Gastronome
Nico's Food Adventures
Nook Bistro
The Short Exact Guide
Table d'hôte
Tasting Journal

Edna Louise Cress was born on January 15, 1906 in Berlin, Ontario (now Kitchener) to a prosperous family. In 1929 she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Toronto and after a year working at the Kitchener Record, she attended the Ontario College of Education and earned her teacher’s certificate. She married Keith Staebler in 1933, whom she divorced 28 years later; her diaries describe her marriage as miserable and complex.

In 1948 she submitted Duellists of the Deep, a story about swordfishing at Neil's Harbour, a village along Nova Scotia's Cabot Trail, to Macleans magazine; it was published on July 15, 1948. Her pioneering articles on the Canadian mosaic of ethnic and cultural minorities appeared in numerous magazines including Macleans, Saturday Night, Canadian Living, and Chatelaine.

She wrote about the people of Neil’s Harbour again in Cape Breton Harbour, which showed a particular skill in a genre she helped pioneer called creative non-fiction. Passionate about encouraging developing writers, in 1991 she established the annual Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction at Wilfrid Laurier University. Recipients include Charlotte Gray, Wayson Choy and Michael Poole.

A great supporter of her local community, she established the Kitchener Public Library’s Writer in Residence program, the Artist in Residence program at Joseph Schneider House (in Kitchener), and was a founder of the New Quarterly Journal. She endowed many scholarships and bursaries in various disciplines including Canadian Studies, History and Literature.

Staebler received many awards and distinctions, the highest becoming a member of the Order of Canada in 1996. Her friends came from all walks of life, including some of Canada’s greatest writers, prominent public figures to normal, everyday people. She was a friend, role model and inspiration to countless people in Waterloo Region and across Canada.

Edna Staebler was an adventurer, writer, photojournalist who lived her life to the fullest for more than one hundred years. Intensely curious, joyful, outgoing, with a deep love of nature, she always found a way to connect with everyone. She is survived by her sister Ruby in Peterborough and many, many friends.

Maybe it's tbecause of the the heat.

Maybe it's because it's prime vacation time.

All I know is many of my favourite bloggers aren't posting as often as they normally do.

I've filled my off hours reading new foodblogs and new non-food blogs (yes, such beasties exsist). I've also been meandering through a Greek travelogue and discovering wonderful food magazines such as Delicious, Donna Hay and Waitrose. Given where I live, these mags can be as rare as hen's teeth, so finding them in my backyard was quite a treat. They've followed me pretty much everywhere--to the stylist, to friends' homes, to work...

I love flipping through non-North American food magazines and journals. I'm always interested in what people are doing and what they are tasting. I love reading articles written by people I've not come across and learning about bits of local food trivia.

But it is a little weird reading about Christmas entertaining and decorating in August.

Cheers!
jasmine

A Warm welcome to our newest members:
Chocobay
Cooking 101
I Have To Cook Anyway
Küchenlatein
A Mingling of Tastes
My Culinary Adventures
New Yorker By Heart
Pie is the New Toast
R Khooks
Simply Recipes
Tasting Life
Vanilla Garlic
What We're Eating

Mark 31 August 2006 in your blogging calendars.

Why?

What's BlogDay all about?
It's a great way to get to know other bloggers, from other countries or areas of interests. All you need to do is post links to five new-to-you blogs--preferably ones that are different to yours either in culture, point of view or attitude. The point is to discover new and different people on the blogosphere.

What do I have to do?
1. Find five new-to-you blogs, ljs or other online web logs you find interesting.

2. Notify the owners of those blogs that you are recommending them on BlogDay 2006.

3. In your BlogDay post, write short descriptions of each of selected blog and link to them.

4. On 31 August 2006, post your BlogDay post.

5. Add the BlogDay tag using this link: http://technorati.com/tag/BlogDay2006 and a link to BlogDay web site at http://www.blogday.org

Hope you all will be able to participate.

Cheers!
jasmine

A warm welcome to our newest members:
Eating to Live
Everything Rachael Ray
Hobart Life
Nika's Culinaria
Tulsa Food

One popular way is via foodblogging events.

At the end of each of these posts, I list a number of online and real life foodie events. I hope our members and visitors will find an event (or a number of events) that tickle their fancies.

I'm really happy to say that a number of our member blogs are involved in events, either by hosting or creating posts for these events. They aren't always food-related (yes, there are things to blog about other than food ), but here is a sample of foodieblogs members-organized events you might want to get involved with:

Weekend Cat Blogging (WCB) - Eatstuff:
Got a cat (or access to one)? Each weekend Clare gives us the opportunity to see what our kitties are up to.

Weekend Herb Blogging - Kalyn's Kitchen:
Kalyn, along with the occasional guest host, gives us the chance to work with herbs and record the results.

The Spice is Right - Tigers and Strawberries:
What Kalyn does with herbs, Barbara does with spices--each month's theme lets participants think of spices in a new way.

If you are looking for a one-off event, there's sweet pleasure: plaisir sucre's Summer Ice Cream Event--very apt in any season (imho). Simply create an ice cream and let Sam know about it by 1 July.

There are of course, many other events going on. The best listing I know of is found on Is My Blog Burning; bookmark the site to see who's planning what and, if you've never participated in a blogging event, consider taking part in one.

Cheers!
jasmine