Food Fare Reader's Mail
Posted
Tue, 10/25/11
On occasion I receive messages from people who visit the Food Fare web site, or from those who have purchased a book in the Food Fare Culinary Collection. Over the years, I've read and answered the messages, amassing quite a large body of topics. A selection of them are now available on the Reader's Mail pages.
Last week, I received an e-mail from someone who had a few comments and questions about the Food Fare Culinary Collection:
I've read several books in your Culinary Collection. They are well done and easy to follow. How do you go about writing the books? In other words, how do you decide what country to write about and where do you get the information?
Typically, I choose to write about food subject matters based on personal preference. The selections can be obscure (re: Malagasy Matsiro), or hold great interest for many people (re: Italian Cibaria).
Once a country or subject matter is decided, I usually take the following steps in assembling content for the book:
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Outline topics desired in the book, such as a brief history of the country/subject, their culture, food history, typical meals served, followed by foodstuff (beverages, cooking methods, recipes, etc), as well as native slang and food terms.
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Undertake research for the country/subject. This can take weeks up to more than a month, depending on the topic. My resources include print books and the internet (specific web sites and blogs), along with various narratives and personal experiences in some cases.
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Write the material, openly citing references, presenting an easy-to-follow read of the topic in appropriate context.
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Edit all text and sundry material. I enlist more than one person to read and re-read the content for consistency and to minimize typo errors.
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Format the document for Kindle, Nook and Adobe formats. Each format is different, so I have to render three versions of the same book (in addition to the original text document) in order to provide acceptable content for upload to Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
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Design the book cover, with a general idea of what I want for the final product.
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Upload cover and content to both Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and then create a book page on the Culinary Collection web site for each new title.
That's my process in a nutshell.
Tags: Culinary Collection;
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