Blogs are a part of the recipe writing eco-system
By Joanne Kaileh
Finding a recipe these days is really simple. Add one computer, a dash of Internet connection, a sprinkle of keywords and voila!
The proliferation of food blogs on the Internet means recipes are just a click away. Whether youâre looking for a vegan dish, a gluten-free dish or just looking to cook authentic pad Thai, there is a recipe on a blog out there to help you make that meal. But with this rise of food blogs are people turning away from the traditionally published recipes from cookbooks and magazines and instead clicking away to their taste budsâ desires?
According to Statistics Canada, Canadians love to blog. Almost 27 per cent of Canadians contributed to blogs in 2009, a huge jump from just over 20 per cent in 2007, which is good news for the 63 per cent of Canadian women who spend their time searching for recipes and food related content online according to Market Magazine. Whatâs more, all five studies found 46 per cent of Americans spend more time engaged with food online than with print media.
Taiba Murtaza owns a dessert catering business called, love, sugarplum, and says she uses the Internet to search for recipes for her personal home cooking. While she does use cookbooks and magazines at times, she prefers online because itâs quicker and there is a larger recipe selection.
âI find online is really easy because in a cookbook Iâd have to go to the index or table of contents and look up what Iâm trying to find, and then of course not having the same kind of selection because itâs limited to what was printed,â Murtaza said. âWith online I can just type in words and Google does the research for me and itâll bring these options up. Itâs just easier and more convenient to go onto a blog.â
Murtaza is just one of the many people who prefer finding recipes online, something Marie Porter, food blogger of Celebration Generation and cookbook author, understands. Porter believes the rise in food bloggers can affect cookbook sales.
âI definitely get far more traffic on my blog than I do in book salesâŚItâs just that theyâre not investing in my paper product because itâs probably âwhy buy the cow when you can get the milk for freeâ kind of mentality,â she said.
Porter currently has her fourth cookbook coming out soon called Beyond Flour: A New Kind of Gluten-Free Cookbook and says sheâs refraining from publishing anything from the book her blog until after its launch. She feels this will help encourage people to purchase her cookbook.
Cookbooks arenât the only area blogs might be affecting, itâs magazines as well. Angie McKaig, digital product director for St. Joseph Media, believes that magazines need to be mindful of the impact food blogs have.
âI do think that magazines need to be aware that they have much larger competition nowadays.â
But even with the rise of food blogs, McKaig says magazines are still a tool people use when looking for recipes because she feels they have a more reliable turnout rate.
âOne of the biggest things that magazines can offer from a perspective of recipe and food development is the longer testing times. When you find a food blogger who has written a recipe itâs very possible that theyâve cooked that once, maybe twice,â she said.
Whatâs more, McKaig believes blogs and traditional print publications can actually work together to grow a stronger business.
âBloggers are a way for publishers to guarantee audience for new cookbooks, rather than testing an unpublished author. Some of the more prolific food bloggers have gone on to have their books published.â
Food bloggers also act as public relations for existing mainstream cookbooks by broadcasting favourite recipes from cookbooks on their blog.
Danielle Johnson, senior publicist for Raincoast Books, has firsthand experience working with food bloggers and believes theyâre a big help to the food publishing industry.
She explains food bloggers ask for excerpts from cookbooks to post online, including a link to where people can purchase the book. This way, both blogs and publishers benefit from the exchange of information.
âThis is publicity, this is exactly what we want, for bloggers to promote our books. We all work together.â
Johnson, who has worked for Raincoast Books for 15 years, says despite the abundance of recipes found online she hasnât witnessed a decline in cookbook sales.
âItâs a nice gift. Itâs nice to have a collection,â she says. âPeople love a really good cookbook.â
While the majority of people, like Murtaza, now reach for recipes online, many in the publishing industry maintain that access to free recipes on food blogs is not a bad thing for the recipe publishing industry.
âSo when you take all of it together, I tend to think it [blogs] becomes part of the whole eco-system and, if anything, itâs more beneficial than less beneficial,â McKaig said.Â














