Cook Book Publishing + a Sweet Romance Story Idea

Cookbook publishing is great if you're a chef or a baker or if you inherited your great grandmother's secret recipe box. The one responsible for her winning the Plum Valley Baking Championship every year since 1962! There's gold inside that box and you believe it would be a wonderful tribute to your great grandma's legacy to share those recipes of hers with the world.

I would suggest using each recipe, step-by-step (with no deviations) to prepare each dish, so that you know whether anything has been left out and if any steps need to be tweaked to ensure the yummiest, most delectable results. You really don't want to dump a ton of untested recipes into a word doc and call it a day. You may even want to test them after you've pasted them into your final book file just to make sure there aren't any typos which could ruin the entire cake.

Also, you need pictures! You need high-quality photos of each and every dish because the pictures in cook books are the best part. Mouth-Watering recipe names are also a good idea. Be creative and try out a few until each dish's name makes you go "YUM!" Your book title should also similarly excite the senses and make your prospect hungry. Choosing a theme for your cookbook is also a good marketing idea. For example, you could make all your recipes gluten-free, or sugar-free, or dairy-free. You could try cooking everything in a tealight oven and sell it as a book for preppers or peeps who don't have electricity. There are gourds and gourds of fun themes to choose from.

One way you should not create recipe books is by stealing random recipes from food blogs online and slapping them all together into an ebook with no pics other than on the cover. I have seen YouTube vids that recommend this tactic, but you really shouldn't do it. Yes, lists of ingredients and common sense preparation details are public domain. You have to leave out anything which could be deemed creative expression, but the ingredients list and basic prep details are not copyright protected.

But so what? You're going to end up with a super crappy product with recipes that everyone has seen before, and no pictures to entice anyone or to show them how the finished product will look. It's incredibly lazy and you will not get rich doing things that way. If you wanted to start with recipes you find online, make them, add your own spin to them, like substituting sugar for apple butter or something. And then take your own high quality photos. That would be fine to do. And you could probably do quite well for yourself.

Don't let anyone convince you that you can make easy, fast money on Kindle with hardly any work. It's not true. It might have been true back in 2009 when ebooks were a novelty and customers hadn't been bamboozled into downloading terrabytes of dreck yet. But in 2018, customers are much more savvy and wary and the competition is fierce. It would be much better for you to choose to go into cook book publishing because it's your passion and it's what you love to do, rather than because you want money. There's nothing wrong with wanting money, and it can be earned through publishing. But it's hard and it takes time and money. You will enjoy the journey much more if you're doing it for love.

One more fun option for cook books is if you are writing fiction or nonfiction. You could tie a cook book into other books you are writing. If you have a fiction series you could create a cookbook based on your characters favorite recipes. If you're a secondary world fantasy writer you could help introduce readers to your world through a cookbook which incorporates recipes, history, and trivia. If you were writing a series of nonfiction books based on a certain time period, a complimentary cookbook of popular dishes of the time could be a great addition.

I've never done a cookbook because I can't cook. I am Mrs. Microwave, all the way. If you're like me, maybe you have a spouse/partner/relative/friend who really loves to cook who might be willing to collaborate with you. That could be a super fun couple activity, if one or both of you writes or cooks.

This also gives me a really great idea for a hallmark-like romance. I won't write it, so if you read this and get inspired, feel free to take it and run! You could have a single author who publishes in traditional publishing have their editor decide that they should do a tie-in cookbook to their series. The author doesn't want to admit that they can't cook, so they don't say anything and end up agreeing to do it. They decide to go back home to the small, cozy town where they grew up to ask one of their parents/grandparents who is a world class baker to help them with the book. Unfortunately, this relative is busy/has had a terrible accident/isn't home, but their ex/unrequited love also happens to be in town/still in town, and they happen to be a terrific baker. Author doesn't want to because of old reignited feelings, but pressures from their editor make them ask the ex to help. Ex agrees and as they research/compile/bake they fall back in love. Some misunderstanding breaks them up toward the end, but then gets resolved and they and their cookbook live happily ever after.

The End <3