In February 2012, I attend a 2-day Cookbook Conference in New York City. (It was subsequently held also in 2013, but hasn’t been held since.) The sessions I participated in were about cookbook writing and cookbook publishing. On the opening day I had the pleasure of meeting June Hersh. June participated on a panel discussion about cookbook publishing. The panel included an agent and several cookbook authors – one of the authors was June.

I loved the energy with which she spoke about writing a cookbook and it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that everyone in the room could feel her passion about the topic. During her part of the presentation she also she encouraged aspiring cookbook authors to pursue their dream of writing their own cookbook. To add a personal connection to this encouragement, she handed out her business cards in case we wanted to contact her when we got home.

At this point, I had already had published my first cookbook, but because I work with aspiring cookbook authors and June’s message resonated with what I believe about writing cookbooks, I sent June an email and asked if she’d be willing to participate in an interview to kick-off my Cookbook Author Interview Series. She quickly answered yes, and my Cookbook Author Interview Series was born.

Since that inaugural interview with June, I have published over 30 cookbook author interviews on my blog. The interviews provide traditional- and self-published cookbook authors the opportunity to share information about their book or books, their publishing avenue, the use of agents, their experiences with recipe development, publicity and even use of a print broker for self-published books.

To kick off the new year, I will soon publish my interview with Maureen Berry. Maureen recently submitted her first cookbook manuscript to Storey Publishing and as she’ll tell you in her interview, she honed her concept and engaged an agent and a publisher in her idea. Her book on salmon will be published in 2016.

Throughout the course of 2015, I plan to interview at least 20 more cookbook authors. I believe we can all learn from each other in our publishing experiences. For anyone who aspires to write a cookbook I hope you glean useful information and tips about cookbook writing from these interviews.

If you’d like to read the now 3 year-old interview with June Hersh here’s the link.  Even though time has passed, her message still resonates:  if you want to write a cookbook, you can do it. Just find the fun in your passion.

To read more Cookbook Author Interviews from 2012 – 2014, here’s a link to the interviews. Scroll down after each interview to see the next one.

Let me know what you think about the interviews and if there are any questions you’d like me to ask the authors in 2015.