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If know you want to write a cookbook, but you haven't yet decided on a concept, this section will fix that fast. If you do already have a concept for your cookbook, be sure to read this section very carefully, nonetheless, to put your concept to the test and ensure it has what it takes to be successful. Your goal, then, is to strive to define your concept as narrowly as possible and fine-tune it down to the last detail. Keep this fact in mind: The broader your concept, the weaker its chances. You need to get a focus for your cookbook. A really tight focus. What's your angle? Finding The Focus For Your CookbookOne of the very best ways to come up with a successful concept for your cookbook is simply to write about the type of food or style of cooking your feel passionate about. We tend to excel at what we are truly passionate about. When you are passionate about a topic, you pour yourself into it at a level that would otherwise be hard to reach without that passion. When you are passionate about something you are working at, it doesn't really feel like work at all. Your efforts are never forced, but very genuine. And this will always be apparent in the quality of the finished "product". When you are passionate about something, the time you spend working on it just flies by, so the work you do is never laborious and rarely feels like a chore. This is where real genius comes from. This is where you want to come from with respect to every cookbook you write. Another technique for developing a winning cookbook concept is to zero in on who your target reader is and then get inside the reader's head and figure out what they want or what they need. That's the place where great books come from. Touch or inspire, motivate or move the reader. Offer the reader comfort or relief, pleasure, hope, relaxation. Those are the things a reader wants to feel. Those are the things that are going to make a reader pick up your cookbook. Those are the things that are going to make a reader buy your cookbook, love your cookbook, give your book, and recommend your book. Those are the things that will make a cookbook great. Yet another very logical approach is to selecting a focus for your book is to choose a type of cooking you are particularly good at and build your cookbook concept around that. For example, are you famous in the neighborhood for your cookies? Do you have an entire arsenal of broccoli recipes (100 Ways With Broccoli, perhaps)? One more trick for effectively figuring out what to write about, or who to write for, is to zero in on current cooking trends. If you can tap into a trend, you know you'll have a hot topic, and ready made demand. You can determine what the latest trends are in a number of ways. Look through current cooking magazines like Bon Appetit, Food, Gourmet, or Epicurious. Look for articles discussing trends. If you don't happen to find such articles, look for clues in the types of recipes being featured. If you were to do this at the time of this writing, for instance, you'd notice a lot of Thai and Indian recipes appearing in many of the current magazines. This is what's hot in food right now. If you didn't happen to know this, as an enlightened observer, you'd clue into that by watching for a pattern or trend in the magazines. Do the same thing by studying the recipe pages of top selling magazines like Better Homes and Gardens, Country Living, Martha Stewart, Redbook, Good Housekeeping, Rachel Ray, Real Simple, and so on. Another secret for identifying and tapping into the latest cooking trends is to contact local cooking schools or instructors, specialty cooking store managers, and book store managers and ask for a few minutes of their time to tap their knowledge about the latest trends. You might make some valuable contacts along the way as an added bonus. People as a general rule like to be helpful. People in general also have a innate need and desire to feel and appear knowledgeable, so folks will usually be quite willing to talk with you on the subject and share their knowledge. Last, but definitely not least: Check the Amazon.com Best Sellers list to see what kind of cookbooks are highest on the list. But be sure you then analyze that info. Understand why those books have made it to the Best Sellers List. Is it because the books are by someone famous, or is it because of the topic of the book? If Paula Dean writes a best-selling book filled with recipes for corn cakes, it doesn't necessarily mean that corn cakes are the latest hottest trend. This is Paula Dean; any book with her name on it is likely to be a bestseller, precisely because it has her name on it. So take these types of factors into consideration so that you draw accurate conclusions in deciding on a topic for your cookbook or who to write it for. Last but not least, one final technique for determining a focus for your cookbook is to consider whether you could fill a need by writing a cookbook for promotional use by a well known organization or business corporation (a grocery store chain, for instance). Approach them before you go to print. Offer them the opportunity to place a strategic message in the book or to have their store-brand products listed as ingredients in the recipes. Offer them volume discounts if they purchase large quantities of books to give away to their customers as an incentive, etc. So now, before you get started with the actual writing, do your brainstorming. Once you feel satisfied that you've come up with an exhaustive collection of ideas for your cookbook concept, pick one. Pick the one that excites you the most, or which you feel most confident about, get really focused and write down as much detail about the concept as you can. Read on for important guidelines on how to do that. The Next Step in Developing Your Cookbook Concept
Write down everything you want this book to be.
A great cookbook author understands that equally as important as the recipes are the style, tone, and voice you write with, the non-recipe content, and this includes photos. A truly fabulous cookbook is also visually stimulating, and a great read. So now ask yourself what you can do to make your cookbook more enticing, exciting, or interesting. If you can add some extra content, some non-recipe content, it will make the book more enjoyable and engaging for people to read. Some people like to curl up with a cookbook and read it at bedtime, or on a rainy day in their favorite chair. Extra content, above and beyond the recipes, makes your book a good candidate for that type of reading. And that will widen the appeal of your book. Some examples of non-recipe content you might add could include quotations, cooking tips or techniques (or other tips that relate to your theme), side bars, your own personal stories, information about the origins or history of the recipes, or interesting facts about the style of cooking, etc. What other ideas can you come up with for possible non-recipe content? So with all of that now feeding your mind, sit down and, as fast as you can, write down all of your cookbook ideas and concepts. This isn't something you should be able to do in 30 seconds. It's a creative process that should take some time. If you run out of ideas, pause, keep thinking, and wait for more ideas to come. It doesn't matter if it takes hours or even days. Keep thinking. At this stage you don't need to distract yourself with wondering whether you have the credentials to write this cookbook, or whether you will have credibility as a cookbook author, just focus on fleshing out the idea until know its great. Your heartfelt objective should be to make it excellent. And that's important. You've to work on that idea until you genuinely feel it really is excellent. Don't settle for merely mediocre. Go for excellence. If you can do that, everything else will fall into place. That's how you write a successful cookbook and become a successful cookbook author. Once you are done your brainstorming and you've really elaborated and expanded upon your idea, you need to flip it around and take the reverse approach; you should now be able to clearly express your book idea or concept in one simple sentence. That one sentence will be the inspiration for your title and subtitle if you haven't already come up with them. But moreover, it will solidify the fact that you have successfully nailed down and defined your concept. When you really understand and connect with your concept, you should be able to effectively describe it in a single sentence just as easily as you are able to write a fascinating page-long description. Once you've put together your concept, step back from your book idea for just a moment and make sure your concept is suited to a book. Your concept may be too large to be just one book and may be better suited as an entire series, which means future books for you to write and ongoing profit potential stemming from the one concept. On the other end of the spectrum, your concept could be too small to be a book at all and may be better suited as a magazine article if you don't have enough recipes to fill a whole book. When it comes to creating a concept for your cookbook, you can do anything you want, BUT you cant do it all, so pick a theme, get a focus, and zoom in! If you want to stand a shot at being a successful cookbook author, you've got to commit to your project and goal, and not allow yourself to be swayed or discouraged by negative feedback from those around you. Dismiss their comments, knowing that you know better. Among the not-so-supportive comments you may hear are likely to be: "What makes you think anyone will buy your book?" "What makes you think the world needs yet another cookbook?" Yes, there are a lot of cookbooks, and more are being published, all the time. Very true. More are also being purchased all the time. And more go on to become best sellers all the time. So anyone who tries to tell you there is no market or need for another cookbook knows not of what they speak. Unless they are a successful agent, or an editor for a major publishing house, they are unlikely to know and understand this market, and they are therefore in no position to speak with such authority on the topic. Heck, even agents and editors sometimes get it wrong - there are endless stories of bestsellers and blockbusters that were initially turned down by discouraging agents or editors, only to be picked up by another agent or editor and turned into a major success and big earner! Even if you put together a book proposal, shop it around to publishing houses, and it doesn't get accepted, it's far from being game-over in this day and age. You still have the option of self-publishing, and today authors are doing extremely well with their self-published books. So a genuine belief in yourself, and your cookbook idea, is key. The first step in being a success is believing that you can do it and making the commitment to seeing the project through from start to completion. To be really successful you've got to make your book your passion. Keep your eye on all the excitement that lies ahead. Ultimately, a successful cookbook has the potential to establish you as a "mini-celebrity", if you will. It may make "you slightly famous". Claim this opportunity for yourself, make it your own, and don't let anyone talk you out of it.
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