Topic: Business101

Let me just spit this out real quick: I've never taken a business class. I feel a little funny giving advice on business because I feel like you have to be a millionaire or someone like Donald Trump to give advice. 

Most days I even feel a little silly identifying as a "business woman" or an "entrepreneur" because I have this stereotype in my head of what that is, and I'm so clearly not that... but I AM a business …

I get a lot of emails from people asking about book deals -- specifically, how I got mine, how someone can get theirs --- what's my story?

It was 2009. I'd been blogging for about two years and Happy Herbivore had a modest, but growing audience. I contacted my now publisher about The China Study. I loved the book so much that I wanted to promote it, and I asked if they'd mail me a copy to giveaway on …

After writing my post on Success, the following question bubbled up on Facebook:

"I hope you don't mind me asking, but does Happy Herbivore, the cookbooks and other spin-offs, support you financially or do you have to do other work? I hope the former"

I don't mind the question, it's something I've wanted to talk about, but haven't because here I go being controversial again!

Anytime I hear a blogger say they make a living off their blog I want …

Last night Scott posted this image on my Facebook wall:

It's something I've come to appreciate, yet also lose sight of, as Happy Herbivore has grown.

Anytime I'm interviewed, the interviewer is quick to ask me for tips, or secrets -- how can someone else replicate what I've done. How they can create their own Happy Herbivore and I always fumble because I really don't know what I did or what I didn't do.

I never had a marketing plan. …

I get a lot of emails asking for tips how to get published, get a book deal, make a living at being a blogger, or a recipe maker, or something like Happy Herbivore.

My advice, above all else, is that, it has to be about passion. You have to do what you do because you'd do it even if you never made a single penny (and in the book business, you make pennies).

I'm not in it for fame or …