Cookbook Publishing - The Basic Ingredients and the Secrets of Success
By: inktree222
| Posted: 01st April 2006
Reprinting this article:
You may reprint this article as long as you reprint it in
its entirety and keep the byline intact.
You are about to embark on the most exciting enterprise of
your life -- publishing a cook book! You will soon learn
that writing a cook book is truly a fun, exciting and
challenging project û more than you can imagine. Like me,
you can publish your own wildly successful cook book. And if
you ask me if I think publishing a cook book is worth the
time and effort? You bet I do!
My cook book, Fit to Cook û Why `Waist' Time in the Kitchen?
sold over 250,000 copies (with, I might add, less than 10%
of those sales coming from book stores). However, I wasted a
great deal of time, back-tracking and scrambling in order to
sell all those books because in the beginning I did not have
a complete grasp of the publishing industry and the process
of marketing a cook book.
Before you rack your brain figuring out how to write a cook
book, and more importantly, how to publish a cook book, take
some time to thoroughly research the why and what you are
writing about, who you are writing for and when is the best
time to launch your book.
Whether you want to get published or whether you want to
self publish your cook book, the same basics apply û you
need a good understanding of the publishing industry.
Without the basics, will you know if your contracts are in
order, that your book is the best it can be and that your
cook book marketing plan is actually an effective strategy?
No û but, knowledge is power. It is crucial that you take
enough time to educate yourself about the entire publishing
industry.
Understanding publishing, and the marketing of books, will
clearly help you to identify why you are writing a cook
book. Perhaps you are writing a cook book just to record
secret family recipes or to have all of your own favorite
recipes in a book format; maybe you are writing a cook book
for a community or church fundraiser; or best of all, your
goal is to create a bestseller. Cook books that are written
for a very small group do not require business and marketing
plans because you already know how many books will be
purchased and who the buyers are. However, if you are
planning to publish your own cook book for the mass markets,
you need to understand that you have moved beyond author to
publisher. That means that you are now a business person
whose primary goal is the creation of a product to sell.
There is no point in printing a book that no one will want
to buy.
When I began writing my own cook book, I naively thought
that it would be a two or three month process, and that in
no time I would have a book on every book store shelf in the
country. Ha, ha, ha, chuckle chuckleà Experience is a great
educator, but who says that you have to learn the hard way?
Obviously I had no idea how to publish a cook book in the
beginning! However, through this article and via the
publishing course that I and my partners have created, I
intend to help you avoid losing time and money.
How did I create such a successful cook book? The short
answer is research, research, research, and then more
research. Thankfully I had the wisdom to do the research
before going to print. But research can, and did, take
years.
In my experience, after I learned how to write a cook book I
had to learn all about cook book publishing:
copyright
trademarks
ISBN numbers
cataloging in publication data
printing terms like cover stock, bindings, signatures and
bluelines
learning how to obtain printing quotes, (crucial in knowing
how many books you can afford to print)
barcodes
graphic design (makes the difference between great sales and
no sales)
editing (cannot, and I mean cannot, be done by yourself,
friends or family)
titles and subtitles (they can make or break a book)
title search (avoid duplicating someone else's title)
distribution
Next, I had to learn about how to start a business:
business plan
incorporation
toll free numbers
corporate logos and identity
websites
shipping arrangements
accounting principles
Most importantly I had to become wise about marketing:
writing a plan
researching competition
understanding target markets
going through the difficult but crucial process of choosing
a book title
discovering the importance of a book's cover û both the
front cover and the back cover û and how to design the
cover
looking outside book stores for buyers
learning the importance of publicity
discovering the essential need for a stellar media kit and
how to create one
approaching the media and the importance of a good
publicist
I learned, and I will share with you, a key point to
consider when you are discovering how to write a cook book.
Before you even begin to write your cook book, you must
identify your target market. Who will actually buy your cook
book? It is amazing that so many authors think that
"everyone" will want their book, but that is not so. Not
"everyone" is a target for anything! û not even the Bible.
Know who will actually buy your book. Interviewing the
owners of cook book stores and specialty cooking stores can
help you to identify cook book trends so that you know what
people are actually buying. It is also a good idea to think
of corporations and organizations that might benefit by
using your book as a promotional item. Approach them even
before you go to print, offering them special discounts,
opportunities to place their information in a special
printing of the book, advertising chances to offer your cook
book as a "freebie" with the purchase of their product û
just to name a few cook book marketing ideas.
If your cook book is targeted to busy families, the recipes
must be easy to prepare in a short time period; if it is
targeted to gourmet cooks, the recipes must be of the
quality that you would expect to find in a four or five star
restaurant; if it is targeted to a specific ethnic group,
the recipes must be authentic; but if it is targeted to the
mass market, your cook book must have a very wide scope with
recipes that make any mouth water, and the ingredients must
be readily available in grocery stores.
Once you have identified who will buy your book, you can
target your marketing plan and your book design with your
customers in mind, such as:
À Where do they shop?
À Where do they play?
À What style of book appeals to them? - (research
your competition closely).
À What price are they willing to pay?
À How many pictures do they want in a cook book? (a
lack of photos can kill book sales)
À What colors attract them? (spend time in book
stores and libraries, learning which books have the most
appealing appearance)
À What size of book is currently popular?
À What type of book binding increases sales?
À Are they concerned about health or other issues?
À Do they appreciate little stories, jokes, cooking
tips or other information in the book?
Of course, a cook book has special challenges that other
books may not have. Your primary goal is to give people
unique, delicious recipes that they can create successfully
in their own homes. That means that you have to measure
exactly and your instructions must be clear and simple. You
will have to test each recipe over and over until it turns
out perfectly every time, then you will have to enlist other
people to prepare those recipes independently of you. No
matter what their comments, you must take the critiques of
your testers seriously because if they do not achieve great
results the chances are very good that your customers will
be unhappy with their "flops". Finally, it is a good idea to
have the recipes tested by a professional home economist or
other food expert.
Depending on the focus of your cook book, you might want to
include nutrition information such as calories and fat
content. Fortunately, there is now computer software that
will do the calculations for you. You must also provide an
index at the back of the book, and thankfully, software is
available for this chore also.
Food photography is a special challenge of its own,
requiring many tricks to make good look appealing. A good
food photographer is a vital part of your cook book
publishing team. Great attention must be paid to every
minute detail, down to the grains of pepper in a dish and to
the bubbles on top of a cup of coffee. Each photograph can
require four hours of shooting time, if not more, so plan
adequate time for the photo shoot.
The services of a food stylist are very helpful, but with
research you can do a great deal of the food styling
yourself. Find as many books as you can on the subject and
practice in advance of the photo shoot. I learned simple
tricks like:
sticking sandpaper to the plate to prevent food from
slipping
using whipped icing or shaving cream in place of ice cream
or whipped cream
placing a shot glass under a very thickly cut slice of lemon
to prevent the lemon from absorbing the liquid underneath
using beef bouillon in place of "coffee"
using dish detergent to create bubbles in the "coffee"
using a blow torch to make meat appear cooked
and the list goes onà
Food styling is such fun, but it requires a great deal of
time, even in advance of the photo shoot. You will need all
of your "props" in place, such as dishes, cutlery, flowers,
table linens, food items and backgrounds. Many companies
will happily lend these items to you in exchange for a
credit in the book û this can appear on the Cataloging in
Publication data page at the beginning of your book.
When your book is ready to go to print, it is time to put
your cook book marketing and publicity campaign into gear:
À Decide on the best time of year to launch your
book. September is usually the best month for Christmas
sales, but you also face steep competition. Try to think of
a time that is appropriate for your book, such as January
for a healthy eating book, late Spring for a barbecue book,
Valentine's Day for a romantic book, Heart and Stroke month
for a heart-healthy book, etc.
À Produce galley copies.
À Send galleys to appropriate book clubs (look at
their websites to learn their submission requirements).
À Research appropriate catalogs and send galleys to
them.
À Have your publicist approach magazines that review
cook books (magazines have long lead times).
À Stay in contact with any corporations and
organizations that might use your book for promotions.
À Find a reputable distributor to have your book
accepted by the book store trade, as well as other
retailers.
À Contact non-book store book sellers.
When your book is ready to roll off the press, get your
publicity campaign into high gear. You can have the best
book in the world, but if no one knows about it, no one will
buy it. The easy part is over û publicity and marketing now
become your life. This part is the most fun, as you now reap
the rewards of all of your efforts. Your goal now is to turn
your cook book title into a household word. Go for it --
publish your own cook book!
® Copyright 2004 Ink Tree Ltd.
Ink Tree Ltd. helps authors publish, market and sell books.
If you are considering publishing a cookbook, we will help
you make it a success.
http://www.inktreemarketing.com/PublishaCookbook.htm
This article is free for republishing
Printed From: http://www.articlealley.com/article_40940_26.html
Back to the original article
Tags: marketing plan, knowledge is power, brain, best time, byline, book marketing, favorite recipes, grasp, bestseller, good understanding, contracts, cook book