Food Jobs by Irena Chalmers

Author:Irena Chalmers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Midpoint Trade Books
Published: 2008-06-11T16:00:00+00:00

• WORDS FROM THE WISE •

MARY GOODBODY, WHO has collaborated on well over 30 books, says she looks for partners who want to get the job done, who have realistic expectations, and who respect what she can bring to the project. She says “it’s important for both parties to understand that the writer is not someone who simply transcribes the chef’s words.”

SINGLE-SUBJECT COOKBOOKS

Books on single subjects often have a good long life. A clearly defined single-subject book that is moderately priced will often outsell a general topic. Apple pie, potato salad, and Christmas cookies are excellent topics.

If you have a passion, you might think about a single-subject book. There is always room for a new take on such topics as pies or barbecue or tomatoes or chocolate or fish or pasta or whole grains and greens.

From time to time there is considerable interest in such subjects as microwaves, slow cookers, pressure cookers, ice cream machines, pasta machines, and bread machines. Small recipe booklets that also describe how to use the appliance may be written specifically for the manufacturer and packaged in the box in which it is sold. When a new product appears on the market, contact the manufacturer immediately to offer your services to write recipes and other support materials.

• RECIPE FOR SUCCESS •

FOOD WRITER AND FOOD HISTORIAN

by Betty Fussell

A LONG TIME ago and for a very long time, I led, as a writer, a double life. My respectable job was to write literary criticism for academic journals while teaching Shakespeare and the history of English literature during the college term. My underground job was to write travel articles for newspapers and magazines during the summer. The best part about the moonlighting job was discovering that the easiest way to write about travel was to write about food. Food by definition was fun, but I had no idea that food would take over my life.

My first two books came out within a year of each other and they neatly summarized my double life. Mabel, a biography of Mabel Normand published in 1982, was the culmination of ten years of research into the history of early Hollywood and silent movies. I chose to write about Normand because she expressed a new vision of the American girl—a bathing beauty, an athlete, and a comedienne shaped entirely by the movies. The following year, I published Masters of American Cookery. It took a close look at the work of M. F. K. Fisher, James Beard, Craig Claiborne, and Julia Child and considered their collective wisdom. Since I’d spent most of my adult life feeding other people, I thought I surely knew something about the subject without resorting to libraries, but it hadn’t occurred to me that the history of food was a subject as worthy of study as the history of drama, literature, or any other art or craft.

While I was undecided whether to follow up Mabel with a biography of Jean Harlow or maybe Carole Lombard, I kept on cooking and reading

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