Wednesday, September 23, 2009

What's in a name? Help name my book!

I'm not yet done writing my Passover cookbook, but with self-publishing comes a whole bunch of tasks that I didn't have to worry about with the first book. I need to get an ISBN number, get it registered with certain sites and libraries and take a look at how I'm going to distribute it or get it sold.

As I look through guides that my printer sent and try to navigate Amazon's Advantage program (it allows self-published authors to list their books), I'm beginning to realize that I have to figure out what I'm going to call this one. When I talk about it, I call it 'the Passover (or Pesach) cookbook'. Not very catchy.

I've gone through a long list of titles, but nothing really seems right. This book has a real mix of traditional Ashkenazi recipes and what I would call non-traditional recipes. So "Passover Recipes From My Bubbe's Table" isn't an option; nor is "New Age Passover Cooking".

So what I'm going to do is ask you to come up with some suggestions. Send me a title (or several) via email, a comment here, on twitter @pamreiss or Facebook. When I've chosen a title, the person who came up with it will get my gratitude and a copy of the book when it's printed.

Friday, September 18, 2009

Shana tova u'metukah!

I haven't posted in a couple of weeks because we've been swamped at work. When I'm not working on my cookbook, I work in the family business. For the last two weeks it's been non-stop -- helping customers do their holiday shopping and then preparing food for hundreds.

With only a couple of orders left to be picked up and a few more to be delivered, I just wanted to take a moment to wish everybody a happy, healthy, peaceful, prosperous and sweet new year. I hope 5770 turns out to be a wonderful year for all.

Shabbat shalom and shana tova,

Pam

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Cooking, Tweeting and the CBC

In April, I signed up with Twitter. As a soon-to-be self-published-writer, I thought that I had to take advantage of any and all marketing tools. Especially the free ones. I've since made some interesting connections and no longer think of it as just a marketing tool. But, it is a good one.

As I cook my way through the recipes for the upcoming Passover book, I tweet about it. Just little notes (under 140 characters) letting people know what I'm working on. Sometimes I'll ask for some input (ie: Matzo Balls - Floaters or Sinkers?), sometimes I'll complain about a failed attempt (ie: today there was a power failure while I was baking a pie crust -- the oven and timer timer shut off -- will have to try that one again.)

My account is set up so that whatever I tweet then gets posted on Facebook as my new status. So an interesting thing happened last week. I got a phone call from a CBC radio producer that I know and she asked me if I'd talk about my summer of cooking on the radio. She's been reading my cooking updates all summer and thought it would be a good segment. Sounds a little like some other blog/movie that's been getting a lot of press about a writer cooking her way through a book.

I've done a bit of radio and TV since my first book came out. And I feel more comfortable doing it now, but there's still a bit of nerves each time. I think I overcompensate by talking a mile-a-minute. Have you ever listened to an interview and been annoyed because the interviewee didn't answer a direct question? I have. But then I realized that when I do these interviews, I just ramble so much that by the time I'm done answering the question I have no idea of what the question actually was.

I don't fully know what I said during the interview -- but vaguely recall that I talked about my books and cooking. My mother was happy that something I said made the interviewer laugh. Many people who heard the segment contacted me to tell me they enjoyed it. So in the end, we decided it was a success.