Things You'll Need:
- Digital camera Photo editing software
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Step 1
Identify the theme and context of your cookbook. While many cookbooks follow a standard soup-to-nuts format, there's no shortage of titles today that focus on one particular course (i.e., desserts), celebrate the cuisine of a particular region or ethnicity, reflect the generational favorites of one family, or demonstrate how to lose weight, save money on groceries, grow your own ingredients or repair culinary disasters before company arrives.
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Step 2
Identify your target audience. For instance, perhaps you've written a cookbook that's perfect for college-bound students who have had no previous experience with a stove and, further, don't have the budget to stock their dorm cupboards with All Clad, Emeril and Le Creuset. Maybe it's your intention to pass down your favorite family recipes to your children and grandchildren or to give the collection as presents to friends and co-workers. Once you know your target audience, you can decide whether the content will be of interest only to those who already know you or whether it has a farther reaching application to total strangers and could, in the process, also make you some money.
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Step 3
Identify how your cookbook is going to be published. If you're pitching the idea to a traditional publisher, submit a cover letter describing the project and 2 or 3 sample recipes. If they like the idea and want to move forward, you'll probably only be responsible for sending them the typed text of each chapter and (if you're including pictures) high resolution photographs. The formatting will all be done by the publisher who will also decide on the size of the book, the style of print and use of color, and the design of the cover art.
If, instead, you decide to publish the book yourself, you'll be in charge of everything and will either be taking your camera-ready manuscript (or a disk) to a print shop, uploading everything at a self-publishing venue such as Outskirts Press (see Resources below), or setting the content up as an ebook that you can produce at home and either mail out to prospective customers or transmit to them electronically. For the purposes of this article, we're going to focus on formatting and assembling everything yourself. -
Step 4
Decide whether your cookbook is going to be all text or if it will intersperse color photographs. If you haven't already been doing this, start taking pictures of the meals that are going to be featured in your book. You may, instead, want to use photographs of the region where the recipe originated; close-ups of some of the individual ingredients used in the meal; or clip art graphics that illustrate the food groups/courses in each chapter. Thousands of free clip art images are available at websites such as All Free Clip Art (see Resources below).
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Step 5
Study the cookbooks in your own collection to gather ideas regarding layout. Depending on your budget, for instance, you may want to have a full-page picture of the dish on the left-hand side and all of the ingredients and preparation described on the right-hand side. You may want to start each "course" section of the book with a bold color page divider, a close-up of plates, glassware, napkins, etc., or maybe an original cartoon related to food and drink. If you're a good sketch artist, you might want to try your hand at doing pen and ink illustrations.
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Step 6
Create a template in Word for entering content for your cookbook. Since cooking is daunting for a lot of people, you'll want the layout to be as clean and uncluttered as possible. There should also be consistency throughout the text in terms of the placement of the ingredients list, the instructions, and items such as substitutions and enhancements.
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Step 7
Create a table of contents, a glossary of terms and an index so that readers can find a particular recipe quickly. Again, study how other cookbooks have handled these elements.
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Step 8
Design a cover which hints at the treats that await inside. This could be a picture of one of the dishes they'll be learning to prepare, a photo or map of the region if the content revolves around ethnic cuisine, a still life with cooking implements or even a photo of the author. You might go for a vintage image if the cookbook is a collection of ancestral recipes. Even antique menus make for a striking cover. (Gjenvick.com is a fun place to start looking at some of these and pondering the possibilities.)
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Step 9
Select a book style and shape for your cookbook. One of the easiest, for example, is a spiral-bound format in which the book can be spread open on a countertop and easily referred to by the chef as he cooks. Cookbooks can also be in a square format, a narrow, vertical format, or--in the case of funky content--shaped like a fish or a piece of fruit. Keep in mind, though, that if you go for a non-traditional shape and size, the cost to reproduce it will be significantly higher.
