Selling Books

Your Guide to Writing, Publishing and Marketing Books and Ebooks

  • Blog
  • Free Newsletter
You are here: Home / Cookbooks / How to Self Publish Your First Cookbook

How to Self Publish Your First Cookbook

January 22, 2009 by Michael Senoff

cookbookHere’s how one man made millions of dollars from publishing a cookbook…

Cookbooks always sell. They’re always number one sellers. People buy hundreds of cookbooks. It seems like anybody who comes out with a cookbook sells it. Before he wrote his book, he had not known much about the cookbook market, has just read something that said cookbooks always sell well.

He was thinking of the “hungry” market and at the same time, his love for science fiction movies. He says of his idea that he was “driving down the street. My twisted brain put these two ideas together, science fiction and cooking, special effects and cooking.”

This was back in 1990. He thought of what a great idea this could be for him: a special effects cookbook; how to create recipes that move and smoke and sing and glow in the dark and puff, and snap, crackle and pop and so on.

And so immediately, he went home and created his first recipe: a smoking dragon cake. This was a cake in the shape of a dragon that actually blew out safe, mysterious smoke.
write-a-cookbook
Because of his inventing spirit he was able to figure out how to do this on his own, and then from there, just created another one and another one and another one. It took him about two months to create 50 recipes and put them in a book.

He also decided to self publish, and with this sold 500,000 copies at a profit of $10 a piece. That’s five million dollars, straight into his pocket, just by self-publishing!

Do you have the makings of a good quality book? Here are a few hints for you. Unless you’re a very well versed in desktop publishing or you’re a good artist, I would hire it done.

In the cookbook, he wrote all the recipes out in longhand and did some rough sketches. He actually had a good friend who was a cartoonist and did the hand drawings that he for the cover of the book. He then just took it down to the print shop and cranked out 20 books. They were all soft cover, and had no photographs.

He didn’t even have a formal copyright; just went ahead and printed copyright 1990. His plan was to sell this by space ads, but didn’t have enough money to do it right, so did some publicity instead.

And this is another thing I think a lot of marketers don’t pay enough attention to is getting publicity for their products, especially books. Books are hard to sell. If you go to a publisher and have them agree to publish your book, they’re still not going to advertise it.

He had never even considered going to a publisher with the cookbook. Instead, he always considered self-publishing to maintain complete control over the product.

If you’ve been collecting recipes or have a unique idea for a cookbook, self publishing with a sound marketing plan is a great recipe for success.

Michael Senoff is a sought-after Internet marketer, interviewer and business coach with more than 50,000 students on four continents. For a limited time he is giving away free over 120 hours of in-depth audio interviews with some of the richest and most successful marketers, copywriters and business experts in the world at his famous website http://hardtofindseminars.com.

Related Posts :

Dan Janal - Write Your Book in a Flash
Marketing vs Sales
5 Rules Every New Author Should Follow
Kindle Publishing: Why and How to Create a Ma...

Filed Under: Cookbooks, Self Publishing Tagged With: Cookbook, Marketing Plan, Publishing

Sell More Books!

FREE! Sign up Cathy Stucker's Selling Books newsletter. You will get useful tips and techniques for writing, publishing and selling books, plus member-only exclusives such as free webinars.

BONUS! Get instant access to Cathy's audio program on how to Build an Effective Author Platform!

I respect your privacy & will NEVER sell, rent or share your email address. More than a policy, it's my Privacy Pledge.

Recent Articles

  • FAQs About Children’s Book Illustrations
  • 5 Posts Every Author Should Write on their Website
  • Reducing Everyday Distractions So You Can Get More Writing Done
  • E.S.Danon – Moon in Bastet
  • Nicole Higginbotham-Hogue – Complicated Heart
  • OLUWAmuyiwa Omole – Re.Think CULTURE
  • Dale S. Rogers – Lighthouse on Tortola
  • What’s in a Name?
  • Sebastian Schug – A Guide to Exploring Abandoned Churches
  • Camille Cabrera – Catalina’s Tide

Pages

Contact
Contribute Articles
Contributing Authors
Free Newsletter to Help You Sell More Books
Get Interviewed
Publishing Resources
Subscribe/RSS
Privacy/Disclosure Policies

Categories

Agents Amazon.com Article Marketing Author Interviews Author Platform Blogging Book Business Book Design Book Marketing Book Proposals Book Publicity Book Publishing Book Reviews Book Signings Bookstore Book Titles Book Tours Cathy's Blog Children's Books Content Marketing Copyright Copy Writing Ebooks Editing Fiction Writing Freelance Writing Get Published Ghostwriters Internet Marketing Marketing Fiction Motivation Networking Non-Fiction Writing Oprah Winfrey POD Publishing Public Speaking Research Resources for Writers Running Your Publishing Company Self Publishing Social Media Special Sales Video Marketing Writers Block Writing

Return to top of page

Copyright © 2006 - 2021 Cathy Stucker · All Rights Reserved

Log in to your account