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Plug Your Book!
65
Blogging for authors
Julie Powell moved to New York to become an actress. A few years
later, she realized she was 30 years old, working a dead-end job to pay
the bills, and still had no acting prospects. Then, on a visit to Texas, she
borrowed her mother’s copy of Julia Child’s landmark 1961 cookbook,
Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1. Back in her cramped
kitchen on Long Island, Powell cooked one of the recipes for her
husband, who enjoyed it so much he urged her to attend culinary school
and become a professional cook.
Instead, Powell decided to teach herself, and let the whole world
watch. She vowed to cook each of the book’s 524 recipes during the
following year, and write a diary about it on a Web log, or blog. Powell
wrote about killing lobsters, boiling calves hooves, and making
homemade mayonnaise, but she didn’t confine herself to cooking. For
good measure, she heaped on details of her sex life, recipes for reviving
a romance, and snide remarks about her backstabbing coworkers.
As Powell began one entry: “My husband almost divorced me last
night, and it was all because of the sauce tartar.” Her storytelling was so
good, word got around fast and thousands began reading her blog—
regardless of whether they cared about French cuisine. A write-up in the
New York Times brought thousands more readers.
By the time Powell was winding down her project, publishers were
knocking on the door with book contracts, and her blog turned into the
bestseller Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment
Kitchen. More than 100,000 copies sold its first year, a monster success
for any memoir, let alone a book by an unknown, chronically
unemployed actress.
Here’s a humorous online trailer featuring Powell chatting about the
book and how it happened:
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