Many cook lovers develop their cooking hobby into a real profession. They not only cook old and well-known recipes but also work hard to create their own dishes and then share them with others via the cookbooks. In this article, we would like to discuss the types of cooking books available and also share the essential tips that will simplify the process of writing a cookbook for your case.
Popular types of cookbooks
Although a cookbook is a recipe book, it can still have different types, styles, and subjects. The specifics of your cookbook are completely defined by your preferences, writing style, and the goals you will reach with this book. There are three common types of cookbooks, and these are the following:
- Self-published—this cookbook entails writing and publishing it on your own with no help from an editor, agents, or publishers; it includes only your recipes, photos, descriptions, book cover, and so on. Commonly, this type of cookbook is published online on suitable marketplaces where everyone can purchase and get access to the book immediately;
- Collaborative cookbook—such cookbook commonly contains numerous recipes and ideas from different chefs, and sometimes it becomes really challenging to get along with all authors of a single cookbook to select one topic, writing style, design, editor, budget, and so on; besides, all income from sales will be divided partially to each author;
- Publishing via professional editors—to cover a broader audience that could buy your book, some chefs can hire professional agents who will be responsible for editing and publishing a cookbook in a certain publishing house like the writing service Trust My Paper; commonly, publishing houses are obliged to edit, publish and promote your book on their own.
8 tips on how to write your cookbook
Further, we will gladly share the essential tips based on reviews from the writing service Best Writers Online, which will make writing your cookbook much easier and more enjoyable.
Prepare the list of recipes in advance.
You might know thousands of different recipes. But when it comes to writing the entire cookbook, you will only remember some recipes you would like to include in your book. Writing a cookbook is a rather gradual process, meaning you need to note and save the recipe you want to add to your future cookbook. Due to the custom writing service Writing Judge, this approach will make your cookbook as expected. Surely, later you will have to cook all the dishes again to make appealing photos of your recipes, so foremost, start by keeping the recipes included where each of them needs to correlate with the entire cookbook style.
Specify the style of the entire book
You may wonder what style to pick, as the cookbook is about recipes and cooking. Nevertheless, each cookbook needs to be unique and creative, selecting certain communicative and writing styles for your readers. The cookbook-style consists of the selected recipes and their descriptions, the prologue, the book’s design, and recipe photos. Before writing the book, you need to define your goal, know why you are writing this book, and what you want to show your target audience.
Know your future readers
Eventually, to define what cookbook style you’d better pick, you need to know your target audience or end readers. You have to know precisely who the person purchasing your cookbook is—the age, location, sphere of activity, potential hobbies, preferences, dislikes, and so on. So, it would be best to research the market peculiarities and trends, the demands and expectations of your future readers from the cookbook, etc. Therefore, selecting recipes, writing styles, and designs will be much simpler and more relevant to your target audience.
Define the available budget to create your cookbook
Despite the type of cookbook you prefer, you will still need to invest in its creation:
- You need money to buy products to test the recipes you want to include to define the perfect formula for each recipe.
- You need to hire a photographer to take appealing photos of your dishes or buy a professional camera to take high-quality images for your cookbook.
- It would help if you found the publishing agency to print the book or find the relevant marketplace to make the book available online.
In addition, you will always have unplanned tiny and huge expenses, so ensure your budget is enough to finish the cookbook creation process successfully.
Consider the appealing design.
We recommend taking the cookbook design seriously, as there is a huge number of people who purchase books because of their covers. So, the cookbook cover must be appealing, modern, bright, and relevant. If you hire a professional graphic designer, you will avoid plenty of nerves and worries about the overall design of your cookbook. The design needs to consider the ongoing design trends and be unique and different from similar books in the niche.
Take attractive photos of your dishes.
Photos of the ready dishes are the second crucial indicator to attract more readers to your book. When purchasing the cookbook, commonly, people don’t know the taste and recipe of each dish included in the book, but high-quality photos will express the taste and smell of the ready dish, making them want to cook it on their own. We recommend taking each dish from different angles and adding several images of the recipes on the page to show its beauty better.
Prepare a book marketing plan to ensure high sales.
No matter how good your cookbook is, it still needs to be promoted and cannot be advertised on its own. Thus, you must prepare a marketing plan that includes all marketing activities related to your cookbook. It would help if you covered a scalable audience on social media, offline stores, online marketplaces, relevant websites, etc. Your marketing strategy has to show the key differentiators from other cookbooks in the niche and promote your book to the relevant target audience. Surely, marketing activities require paid advertising, and you need to consider it in your original budget.
Hire an agent to publish and promoting of your cookbook
Hiring an agent or cooperating with a publishing house will prevent numerous challenges and problems while writing your cookbook. Your main task will be searching, testing, and writing the recipes, while all other tasks mentioned above will be dedicated to your writing agent. The agent will also edit your books, hire required contractors, and publish and promote the cookbook. Certainly, such specialists will take a particular percentage of the general cookbook income, so it is pivotal to pick and hire an experienced and reliable professional.
To end up
Including only exclusive recipes in your cookbook is optional to make it decent and unique in the area. What is important is how you present the new and old recipes, even if they have been found far away from the moment you decided to create your cookbook.
