Do you have a cookbook idea on the back burner? I receive a lot of cookbook design inquiries, but most first-time cookbook creators don't realize all the steps involved or the different professional services they need. Sharon Peddie, who released her self-published cookbook last fall, impressed me with her professionalism and careful organization of her whole cookbook project. I asked her if she could share how she managed and executed such a complex project.
Sharon first connected with me in January 2022 and we started her cover design in May 2022. In June or July, she had her proofread Word files, and unedited photos ready. I connected her with a professional photo editor who added the final polish to each of her recipe images. I designed her book cover and interior. Together with the other service providers she worked with, we created a final product we could all be proud of.
Read on to learn more about the cookbook Sharon and her adult daughters dreamed up when they were suddenly all living together again, sheltering in place in early 2020. This cookbook was a 2.5 year labor of love. It's not just a recipe book for food, it has recipes for a healthy, beautiful life.
Introducing the f-words Cookbook
f-words mom let us say: food, family & friends is a cookbook written by inspirational author Sharon Caldwell Peddie and her three adult daughters. In addition to their delicious recipes, they share their experiences and philosophies around food, family & friends and the important role they play in the development of a healthy mind, body, and soul—and a beautiful life. It's a fun and joyful cookbook filled with pretty photos, inspiration and 130 recipes. It's a cookbook that will inspire you in and out of the kitchen.
This is Sharon's second book, but her first cookbook!
Sharon's Book Done Timeline
✍️ Writing started: April 2020
🎨 Files ready for design and layout: May 2022
✔️ Book done (released): November 2022
Sharon's Book Done Technical Details:
Your printer needs these kinds of details to give you a quote for printing a similar book.
Page count: 324
Dimensions (page size): 8 x 10 inches
Binding: Paperback
Interior details
Ink colors: Full color
Interior paper: 70lb Premium Color paper
Bleed: Yes
Cover details
Ink colors: Full color
Laminate: Matte
Printer: IngramSpark
Sharon's Book Done Take-Aways
Here are my questions for Sharon about self publishing and reaching book done.
You and your daughters shot the photos for your cookbook. What are your best cookbook photography tips?
I have loved photography for many years and wasn’t a beginner. My daughters also have photography experience and together we decided to take our own food photos.
Shooting food is an art form and there are many elements to pay attention to. The food should be cooked to perfection, shot immediately upon completion and complimented with contrasting garnishes and some fresh ingredients. Light and composition are the most important. However, the perfect textures, staging, angles and dish shapes are all very important too. I think white or plain dishes allow the food to be the star in photographs.
Pay extra attention to light with every shot. A good DSLR camera is a must so you can adjust lighting and shutter speed. Natural light is preferred and very important, however having a professional lighting kit is very helpful, too—there are many lighting kits available on Amazon.
Each photograph should create a mood for the dish. Each photograph should also tie in to the uniform vibe you are creating for the entire cookbook.
See my article, too: How to shoot photos for a cookbook
What was the biggest surprise or challenge during your book project?
How long every step actually takes. The careful text editing process and attention to detail that was needed were the most challenging parts of the process.
I hear this a lot. I think independent publishers are rarely prepared for how long it takes to produce a professional cookbook. Could you explain why each step took so long?
Each process took so long because of all of the detail involved in a cookbook, especially one so long as ours (130 recipes).
Creating and perfecting enough recipes for a good cookbook takes years. Once you’ve perfected them, you then have to style them in a beautiful way and photograph them. Sometimes it takes making that recipe a couple of times before it’s photo-worthy. Each time you must shop for perfect ingredients for that dish.
You then have to create a theme and structure for your cookbook so it’s organized and the content makes sense to your intended audience. In addition to recipes, you have to carefully and thoughtfully write content for the cookbook so that your reader can feel a connection to you and why you have these recipes in your cookbook. The content should all make sense as a whole. This takes a lot of time.
From there you need to hire all of the service providers for your cookbook. Finding them, interviewing them and making sure they have the qualifications you’re looking for is also time-consuming. Even after you hire them, it is challenging to make sure their availability matches with the timeline of your book as well as the schedules of all of the other service providers. Everyone’s schedules/availability don’t always line up perfectly, so you have to keep a rhythm that keeps your book moving along, while also understanding that there may be times you have to wait on someone to get to your project.
Each time a service provider touches your cookbook, you have to check or proof it all over again, make changes, and proof it again and again.
What service providers or partners did you have in creating and producing your book?
After my daughters and I developed the concept and content for the book, I worked with:
a substantive editor who focused on our goals for the book, content, organization and presentation of our text/recipes. She helped us shape the cookbook to meet our goals and appeal to our intended audience. Our substantive editor also helped us organize the writing of our recipes to get them up to industry standards and make sure our recipes made sense to the reader at every step.
a copy line editor who checked for grammar, spelling, language, formatting, style and technical consistency. The copy line editor also checked for factually incorrect statements, potential legal liability, etc.
a book designer (Julie) who created sample cover and interior designs for us to choose from, and then designed our 324-page cookbook.
a photo editor who helped us create visual consistency between the photos in our cookbook. Our photo editor adjusted the lighting and style of the photos to provide that consistency while also making our photos look as beautiful as possible!
a proofreader who scrutinized our cookbook to catch mistakes in grammar, spelling, punctuation after design and layout; and finally,
an indexer who created an index to give our cookbook readers a map of where to find recipes, types of food, or information in the cookbook.
With so many people involved in this project, how did you keep yourself organized? Were there any systems you used or tips you could give to other cookbook creators?
On my Mac I have various calendars (ie: home, work, etc.) in different colors. I developed a digital calendar specifically for the cookbook and kept track of progress and goals on my cookbook calendar. I tweaked the calendar every.single.day to keep the progress report current and moving along toward the timeline goals.
Which part of your book project was the most fun or rewarding?
The most fun was developing the cookbook with my daughters!
You did a lot of research about printing offset vs. printing on demand. How did you choose to print and distribute your cookbook with IngramSpark's print on demand service and why?
We chose IngramSpark because, at the time, we felt they could consistently provide a high quality print job for the price. We also thought they offered the more extensive distribution for our cookbook (vs. the other biggest POD contender, Amazon KDP).
How did you decide between hard and soft cover, and interior paper thicknesses?
Colored cookbooks with good quality are very expensive to produce. We chose softcover to keep the cookbook affordable for customers because we wanted to spend money on high quality interior paper and ink to give them a visually beautiful cookbook throughout.
If you are deciding about print options for a POD cookbook, check this out:
Side-By-Side Comparison of IngramSpark Casebound Color Book
and Amazon KDP Softcover Color Book
How did writing and publishing this second book compare to writing your first book?
Writing my first book, "Grow Yourself Beautiful: A Smart Girl's Guide to Following Her Heart and Focusing on Her Inner Joy", seemed so hard. However, after creating and writing a cookbook, I realize it's a lot easier to just write something from my head and heart. The cookbook was a much bigger endeavor, as you have read above.
What is your best advice for marketing a book?
Marketing has to be multidimensional. You have to create relationships with people who have an interest in what you write about, on the social platforms they use. You have to be active on all of them, which is not easy.
Sharon has been faithfully creating content about her cookbook for social media.
She creatively integrates her book with various seasons and special events. —Julie
Connect with Sharon through her website, her blog or on Instagram.
At the end of this big project, Sharon joked that she missed being my regular email buddy. Ha ha. But really, we had fun bringing her project to fruition together. She was also so kind as to make this testimonial video for me:
And while we're here, another new cookbook design video testimonial.
Let's get cooking!
Cookbooks are one of the most complex kinds of books to produce. Book a one hour brainstorming session or contact me to ask any specific questions by email.
As I wrote recently on LinkedIn, it's not uncommon that both returning and new clients contact me 6-12 months before their book is ready for design and layout, to get some advice for book planning. There's almost no such thing as contacting me to early, but there is such a thing as reaching out too late (and having to rework your content because of oversights, or missing the opportunity to work together because our schedules don't line up). Sharon booked me about four months before she was ready to start on her cover, and that was perfect.
If you already have a lot of book details and would like an estimate, fill out my book project questionnaire. Let's move that back burner project to the front burner. Get your #bookdone. ✔️