Food Blogging For Dummies — A Giveaway!

The only thing better than cooking and eating is talking about it. Combine your two loves–food and blogging–with this ultimate guide for food bloggers everywhere. Food Blogging For Dummies shows you how to join the blogosphere with your own food blog. This unique guide covers everything: how to identify your niche, design your site, find your voice, and create mouthwatering visuals of your best recipes and menus using dazzling lighting and effects. You’ll learn how to optimize your blog for search, connect with social media, take your blog mobile, add widgets, and much more. Here’s everything you need to know about food blogging.

No cookbook. No recipe. I realize this breaks the code for Cooks&Books&Recipes, but after I’d read through these “For Dummies” books, I just had to feature them anyway. Because I know that many C&B&R readers are food bloggers. And that means you’re going to love all three of these books. First is Food Blogging for Dummies, by Kelly Senyei — the multimedia food journalist, stylist, photographer, and chef behind the blog Just a Taste, which she launched in 2008. Kelly knows what she’s talking about. Go to her blog and you’ll see. This book offers amazingly helpful advice whether you’re only thinking of starting a blog or have been writing one for a while. Her tips — culled not only from her experience but from that of numerous other successful food bloggers (with examples, photos, and charts) — will undoubtedly leave you (like me) with a long must-try-now list. Next up for me is “(Super)Marketing.”

The second book is Food Styling and Photography For Dummies by Alison Parks-Whitfield. Food Blogging for Dummies includes a comprehensive section on “Eating with Your Eyes,” but if you want to learn even more about the food-photography business, this book is for you. It will teach you how to make food look attractive and camera-ready, how to use lighting and composition to get the best shot, how to choose the right equipment, and how to get your food photography business off the ground. I especially liked the styling, camera techniques, and photo management sections, including “Ten Awesome Garnishes for Food Images” (hint: one is the “double drizzle”).

Third is Pinterest For Dummies by Kelby Carr. If you haven’t played around on Pinterest yet, you may not understand what all the talk is about. If you’re already on Pinterest, then you know just how much fun — and how distracting — this site can be. (You can check out Cooks&Books&Recipes on Pinterest here.) This “Dummies” books details what else you need to know: how to socialize on Pinterest, how to go mobile, how to control privacy, and how to self-promote, as well as offering etiquette rules and suggesting “power pinners,” including the food blogger Jaden Hair of Steamy Kitchen (I’m a longtime fan).

Now that you want all three, here’s your chance to get one for free. Enter the giveaway, and if you win, it’s your choice: Cooks&Books&Recipes will send you whichever one of these books your heart desires. We’ll call it A Giveaway For Dummies — because it’s just that easy.

Note: It’s not necessary to do all 6 entries. Choose whichever you like, and you’ll be entered in the giveaway.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Now might also be a good time to announce that with this giveaway, we’re experimenting with the Rafflecopter entry method. Seems easier for you to enter and for us to use. I’d love to know what you think — please feel free to comment with your opinion.

UPDATE: The winner was KathyH, who won with her Twitter follow entry. Congratulations, Kathy, and thanks to everyone for entering!