Publish Your Own Best Sellers: COOKBOOKS!
Every year, cookbooks are high on the list of the nation's best sellers. There are tens of thousands of them sold each year with no suggestion of any weakening of the market. Trouble is, there are so many cookbook writers and publishers that the odds of any one particular cookbook becoming a best seller are not much better than a new novel. But, it can be done!
Two things that make cookbooks different from other projects are subject matter and author recognition. Prospective buyers don't have to read part of several chapters to see what the book is about, and the author of a cookbook need not be a world famous chef -- so long as the recipes sound desirable.
Basically, there are three approaches to this business:
1. Accumulate recipe collections and have them published.
2. Publish recipes for organizations.
3. Print private recipe collections.
The first category is the collection and publication of recipes from any sources where you are he publisher, author and/or editor.
The recipes can be in virtually any category (diet, ethnic, geographical area, beef, vegetarian, all desserts, etc.).
Don't overlook recipes for specific groups, such as diabetics or those allergic to milk products. They can be your recipes, from your family cookbook, purchased, or collected by many different legitimate means. About the only major "no-no" in this area is to copy one from a copyrighted publication. Aside from satisfying yourself that the recipes are accurate and actually produce the desired results, it is usually necessary to convert some of them so that they all produce about the same number of servings (e.g., 1 or 2).
This would be especially important in a cookbook for singles or dieters. There are computer programs that automatically convert recipes to a desired yield (one is Meal Master, a Shareware program available from most any computer user club.
A recipe for 12 loaves of bread would be too big for the average home recipe book. So all the ingredients (cups, teaspoons, tablespoons, etc.) need to be cut by about five sixths and still be in recognized recipe terms (no easy task for the average person without a Ph.D.
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