Katy Beskow on Becoming a Best-Selling Vegan Cookbook Author
Eleven books and counting.
Back in 2013, when there were no Beyond burgers, no apple-leather shoes, and certainly no vegan eclairs to be found anywhere, I started my digital vegan fashion magazine, Vilda. I’ve now sold the project to a vegan online retailer, but the memories from the Vilda time will stay with me forever - and I know so many other vegan creators who started around the same time. One of them is writer, recipe creator and fellow vegan Katy Beskow, who launched her blog Little Miss Meat-Free the same year. In the decade that followed, Katy has become a powerhouse vegan cookbook author, releasing eleven books with a twelfth one on the way. We had a chat about her career and vegan journey.
Katy went vegan seventeen years ago, after a childhood of vegetarianism. “I had a goldfish as a child, and I just made that connection really early on. My parents are now vegetarian, but they weren’t back then. At university in London, when I was buying my own food, I was inspired by all the new ingredients I found. I started cooking and basically went vegan overnight. I realised that I didn’t really want cheese or eggs. I started buying whole foods and realised I could create delicious recipes from simple ingredients that I was buying at the market.” Katy stresses that her motivation was ethical. “I went vegan for the animals. Loving animals and loving food came together in that way.”
Her penchant for experimenting with simple ingredients is what took Katy onto a path of recipe creation. After her degree, she went on to work as a physiotherapist in the NHS (UK’s National Health Service, for all non-UK readers), but on the side of her work she started her blog to document her recipes. “My housemate would ask me for my recipes, and I’d always be scribbling them down!” Media attention quickly followed. A few weeks after starting the blog, Katy got a commission to create recipes for Holland & Barrett, a UK-based health-food chain which publishes its own magazine, Healthy, and some time later, national news outlet The Independent also commissioned Katy to create vegan-themed content.
What helped propel her into the spotlight was the approachability of her content. “At the time, most vegan food blogs were American, and it was hard for UK readers to navigate ingredients and measurements. I always tried to create using ingredients that you could buy at the supermarket or at food markets, which I think made my content appealing to mainstream media.”
In 2014, Katy got another big career break by winning PETA’s Great Vegan Bake-Off with her Ombrè Vanilla Dream Cake. “That opened a lot of doors for me,” she reminisces. This is when the blogging began to really take off. “It wasn’t an intentional career,” she says. “But despite the fact that I didn’t dislike my job as a physiotherapist, I did prefer it if I could do this every day for the rest of my life.” Which, now, she does.
The vegan food-blogging landscape has certainly changed since Katy got started - for one, the plant-based community has become more inclusive. “It should have been inclusive from the start, but when I was just beginning, I did have moments where I felt like ‘is this for me?’ Vegan bloggers were either on the hippie side, or ‘rich girl eating expensive health foods’ and I found myself wondering where I fit in with all of that.” Today, we can both agree that vegans come on all sides of that spectrum, and few actually fall into either of those extremes. Katy has also noticed that many mainstream, omnivore food blogs now have vegan recipes, whether intentionally or not. “I think it’s a lot more accepted and celebrated these days, which makes it more available.”
How did Katy’s first book come about? Once again, the story goes back to the concepts of ease and simplicity. When she noticed that her quick fifteen-minute recipes were the most popular on her blog, she contacted literary agents. “I didn’t know anyone in publishing, I didn’t know any authors. I just googled ‘how to get a book published’ and got one reply back, from one agent, who is still my agent. I ended up getting a publishing deal with Quadrille, who have now produced eleven books with me, with a twelfth one coming out in November.”
She reflects on what it was about her content that resonated. “It all came off the back of being too busy to cook elaborate meals for myself. But that’s really how people live, isn’t it? None of us is perfect, we don’t have time to cook from scratch every night. We want shortcuts, we want ways to make life easier. I’m just so glad that appealed to people.” It sure did: the book went on to become a bestseller, and Katy became a full-time cookbook author and recipe creator.
So what actually goes into making a cookbook? It all starts with an idea - Katy presents a proposal to her publishers, and if it gets commissioned, there is usually a three-month deadline. “I go into work mode, figuring out what I want to write about and what the content will be. Then I go into my kitchen and just start testing! I’ll scribble all the recipes down and see what needs re-testing.” After the prep work is done and the recipes are written, there is a process of proofreading, and then comes the fun part: the photoshoot. “It’s usually about two weeks - there are food stylists, photographers, I get to cook it all and we eat it all!” Katy stresses that there is “nothing added to the recipes during this process to make the food look better. That’s just how the recipes are.” After the design is done, the marketing and PR period starts. All of this is a contrast to the solitary work of recipe-making. A lot of work, but Katy’s convinced that hers is “the best job in the world.” Does she have a favourite among her cookbooks? “It’s like choosing your favourite child, but I love Easy Vegan Christmas. I really wanted to do a Christmas book. I had to work on that out of season - it was summer and my house smelled like Christmas! I also like Vegan BBQ, as I did get to test that one in season - I had to barbecue all summer.” Sure sounds like a dream job to me.
Three tips
I ask my interview guests for three things they would recommend to Kind of Wild readers - it can be anything at all, connected to veganism or not. Only rule: it can’t be their own products.
“Get yourself a great mug cake recipe. If you fancy a cake and cannot be bothered to go to the store, it’s a quick and easy solution.”
“Invest in some really good plant leather. This might not be available to everyone, but if you can afford it, invest in a well-made plant leather accessory. It really elevates your style and feels luxurious.”
“Lastly, have a healthy dose of realism in your life. Let go of perfection. Yes, it’s nice to cook from scratch every day - but in reality, lifestyle, budget, energy levels, all of this comes into it. Life gets in the way, and on those days you can get a vegan frozen pizza at the supermarket or treat yourself to a vegan takeaway. Life should be all about balance.”
See more from Katy here, and follow her on Instagram here. If I may choose a favourite from her books, I really love Vegan Fakeaway. And Thrifty Vegan. And the Christmas one. I really can’t choose!
All photos by Luke Albert, courtesy of Quadrille.