Planning to write a cookbook? There's more to it than collecting recipes: Jasmine Mangalaseril

If you love your time in the kitchen or cook to connect to your culture, chances are you've thought about writing a cookbook. But there's more to it than collecting recipes.

Regardless of its theme — gluten-free baking, getting kids into the kitchen, Greek cuisine — there are generally two kinds of cookbooks.

A recipe collection given to friends, family, and community: Flavours from your homeland, the recipes everyone asks for, the foods that define your family.

A cookbook you sell (self-published or traditionally published): A business endeavour that hinges on a compelling narrative, stand-out content, and your clout with a well-defined audience.

Who is it for?

Whether it's a gift or you hope to be the next Nigella, you need to understand your reader and how to connect with them.

"The author should obviously keep in mind who they are writing for, how much information that home cook will need to successfully make the recipe," explained Judy Phillips, cookbook editor and cookbook and recipe editing instructor at Toronto Metropolitan University.

Are you writing for your grand kids who never had a home economics class? Are you writing for the time-pressed parent who needs to get a healthy dinner on the table in 20 minutes? Do they have a kitchen scale? What kind of back stories are important to them?

Put your recipes to the test

It's frustrating cooking from a promising recipe that's missing important information.

"Confidence is key to a lot of things, but you do have to make sure the recipe works," said Emily Richards, who's authored or co-authored 11 cookbooks.

"I still do this: I get friends to test the recipes."

Richards asks friends who aren't expert cooks to recipe test because their questions focus on what a fledgling cook needs to succeed.

(Human) editors are your friends

Editors can come in at any point during your project, including theme development, nailing down the book and recipe structures, and copy editing. A searchable directory of editors is on the Editors Canada's website.

But many think of copyediting, which ensures clarity and consistency.

"They'd be looking very carefully at the recipe terminology," said Phillips. "So the information is complete, accurate and concise [for the] target readership, whether it's a beginner home cook or a home cook with more experience."

Richards added: "You are looking out for yourself, but editors are definitely looking out for you as well as the publishing house because they want you to put out a good book."

Working with traditional publishers

Book deals are partnerships between writers and publishers.

When Richards pitched Per La Famiglia, her vision focused on the foods at southern Italian celebrations.

What was supposed to be a two-year project stretched to three. Instead of dividing it by celebration, it morphed into standard sections for mains, sides, desserts. Richards fought for and kept special sections for Christmas and Easter.

Working with a publisher meant a team of editors, designers, photographers, marketers and publicists supported her through every phase. Unlike the books she co-authored, Per La Famiglia was all hers.

"It's a lot to grasp," she said. "Even though I appreciated what I had done working at Canadian Living … it kind of becomes a slightly different beast when it's you and your book. And selling yourself and the recipes that you've worked on. It's a long and loving process."

Going it alone

Waterloo region's Zahra Habib's cookbook, Spice Baby!, took root when new parents asked about what she fed her child. 

"But I also started to understand more deeply that those skills were really unknown cross-culturally and also being lost cross-generationally," said Habib

She food journaled for six years, as a record for herself, before realising its potential as a manuscript.

She hired an agent, but after some publishers thought it was too big a risk, she shelved it. After someone suggested self-publishing, she picked it up again. 

Feedback from a friend in publishing was deflating — Habib wasn't a professional writer, and she doesn't use formal recipes — but she took the suggestions and revised her manuscript. Using Amazon's self-publishing templates, she published Spice Baby! about 10 years after she started journaling.

But, without a marketing budget, her only publicity was posting to her social networks and appearances at book fairs to generate sales (it's also available at Waterloo's Wordsworth Books).

"For me, it was truly a labour of love. I think, looking back, I would say to anyone, if there are bumps on the road, and you get thrown off for a while, don't abandon the project. Keep that door open."