Do you want to know how to self-publish a recipe book or a cookbook?
Recipe books, cookbooks, or cookery books are always popular by whatever name. Cooking blogs are among the most popular sites on the Internet.
Millions of home cooks visit these sites every single day, looking for new dinner recipes to try. No one takes a heavy copy of Mrs. Beeton’s Cookery Book to the kitchen to prepare a weeknight dinner anymore.
Today, we take our smartphone, iPad, or laptop and have our favorite recipes in a bookmark folder.
Turn your recipe blog into a cookbook
You might already have a cooking blog, or you are thinking about starting one.
Recipes are an excellent subject for a blog.
With a little bit of SEO knowledge, it is not difficult to attract a lot of visitors.
When you do this, you can then make money from advertising on your recipe pages.
It is the classic ‘recipe’ for a great cooking site.
There are many platforms you can use. Read our article on how to start a blog if you want more details.
The main ingredient of a terrific recipe site is to use fantastic, colorful images.
You also need to add a short backstory to all your recipes.
It is a successful formula. It has been used by many traditionally published cookbook authors and also a lot of TV shows about cooking.
But you can then take the next step and create your own cookbook.
Why and how to self-publish a recipe book as an ebook
There are a lot of excellent free book publishing tools and software available now.
These tools make it pretty easy to create your own cookbook as an ebook.
Ebooks can be read on so many different devices.
When ebooks first arrived, they were a black-and-white experience only.
But with iPads and Kindle Fire devices, your recipes can shine as full-color ebook cookbooks.
Because of this, they are ideal to use in the kitchen.
Whether you have a blog or not, the best reason to self-publish a cookbook as an ebook is to make some money.
Turn your great recipe posts into an ebook.
Then, make it available for sale on Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo. It gives you the chance to earn extra money from each sale.
You can easily promote your book on your blog.
You can make it a great free gift for new subscribers using an Amazon gift card.
If you don’t have a blog, you can use social media to promote your ebook very effectively.
Carefully proofread all your recipes
The most crucial factor in any book is ensuring your text is error-free.
Some cooking blogs make the mistake of thinking that proofreading is only for books. It is not true.
Recipe testing and making sure the text works correctly is a part of proofreading.
Poor proofreading is a bad recipe.
A recipe should be proofread at least three times to ensure the ingredients and method match perfectly. It should also be free of grammar and spelling errors.
Typos, bad spelling, and poor grammar are perfect recipes for losing readers very fast.
But once you produce great posts about your favorite recipes, you will get readers.
You can write about how to use a slow cooker or a pressure cooker. What about 50 ideas with ground beef in 30 minutes? Gluten-free recipes are always a popular subject.
If you find some traction, perhaps you might be ready to self-publish a cookbook.
But, publishing traditional color cookbooks is expensive, even if you use a print-on-demand service.
Have you thought about getting your cookbook published as an ebook? It is a much cheaper option to self-publish a recipe book.
How to format your ebook for publishing
Self-publishing an ebook that is purely text is very easy.
But when publishing an e-cookbook, you will have a lot of images. So, you need to take things step by step to make sure your book design will be attractive to readers.
If you want to publish and sell your ebook on Amazon, you need to use Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). Once you have registered your account, you can download a program called Kindle Create.
Kindle Create is very good if you want to prepare an ebook with lots of images and complex formatting. This makes it ideal for cookbook publishing.
It is very easy to use, and you can add as many images as you wish. You can format your text much better for a recipe’s ingredient list, method, and any suggested cooking tips.
The only areas where you need to take great care are the size of your images and image credits.
Preparing images for an ebook
Images for your cookbook project can make an ebook file size gigantic.
Check that your ebook file size is not too large. You could find that the delivery charge that Amazon applies to a Kindle ebook sale might exceed your royalty.
It is vital that you learn how to compress your images to a size and resolution that is suitable for ebooks.
If you are not sure how to do this, you can read our article on How To Compress Images For Ebooks.
The images I have used in this article have all been losslessly reduced to be as small as possible. But as you can see, they are still bright, sharp, and colorful.
Credit all your images
The other issue you need to address is the attribution of credits for your images.
If you plan to take all your own photographs, there is nothing for you to do.
But if you use royalty-free stock images, you need to check. See if you need to add Creative Commons attribution or any other form of credit.
All the images I have used in this article are from Pixabay.
The license for each image reads: CC0 Creative Commons – Free for commercial use – No attribution required.
This is why I have not added credits to my images.
You cannot copy and use images from anywhere on the Internet. So, forget about sneakily using images from the New York Times. That will get you into serious trouble.
You should also think about using the services of a book cover designer. You will need a standout cover to help get book sales, so make sure it shines.
If you have all these bases covered, you are ready to self-publish your award-winning pumpkin soup cookery ebook!
Factors to consider before you self-publish a recipe book or cookbook
Do a search on Amazon Kindle books for recipe books. You will notice that the majority of the most popular books are based on a single theme.
Publishing a book of something similar to a recipe card collection with no connection to a theme doesn’t usually work or sell well.
A collection of recipes needs to be linked with a subject more precisely than just a family favorite collection.
Think about your theme before you start. Maybe recipes connected to one national cuisine or a special cooking method, such as Instant Pot recipes, sheet pan dinners, or even seasonal recipes.
The more focused your theme of recipes, the easier it will be to promote and sell your ebook.
Cookbooks, food, recipes, and cooking are all extremely popular topics for just about everyone. We all love to eat!
But to be successful, you need to focus all your energy on finding your very particular niche in a huge market.
How to self-publish a cookbook as a print book
You might also want to self-publish a print version of your cookbook to extend your sales possibilities.
You can choose to use Amazon KDP, Blurb, or Lulu to produce your books
Billions of people love food. But you only need a few hundred to buy a cookbook of your recipes to make your book a sales success.
Promoting a cooking ebook is no different from any other book. But it has distinct advantages because so many people love food and cooking.
But be careful and select your three categories and seven Amazon keywords wisely. These choices will help you enormously in attracting book buyers.
Cookbooks are now on a screen
Whether it’s a pot roast, rotisserie chicken, or a quick pasta recipe, books are out, and online and onscreen are in for delicious recipes.
An iPad is especially useful in the kitchen, as this very funny short video demonstrates.
It is in German, but there are subtitles, so you will understand what is happening.
Good luck and bon appétit!
Related reading: How To Mince Your Words With Mincemeat And Minced Meat
Do you know if the photos taken with my iphone 8 will be accepted by KDP or will I need to change their format? I was hearing about something called mdky I think, a 4 color format that was needed. Thank you.
You will need to change the format to jpeg. But it’s easy to do, and you won’t lose image quality.
Thanks for this information, I have published a cookbook Vol 1 with a self publishing company, many people love the book but, it’s too expensive. I’m planning to try your advice and publish in eBook format.