Market Your Cookbook

MARKET YOUR COOKBOOK by Pam White

Divine recipes, luscious photographs – this is your first cookbook
and you look forward to those big royalty checks. So what's your
marketing plan for this book? What are you doing to increase sales?

New writers often think the publisher arranges for all publicity.
Not true. As the writer, you have most at stake so it will benefit
you most to take a proactive stance when it comes to promoting and
selling your cookbook.

Much of the research can take place while you are planning and
writing your book. Visit bookstores and study the cookbooks that are
on the shelves. Note the different types of cookbooks and who are
writing them. Discern which books are your direct competition for
sales. Create ways to make yourself stand out.

After your book is at the publisher but before it is released
contact magazine editors, ezine publishers and website owners. Ask
if they will review your book and wait for a reply before you incur
the cost of shipping.

Write articles or offer excerpts from you cookbook to magazines that
cater to your audience.

Tap your local newspaper for interviews and reviews. Pick up the
phone and ask for a feature reporter (look for bylines in the
features, lifestyle, or Sunday special sections) and offer yourself
up as the subject of an article.

Build a website using your name or your book's name as the domain.
Take all those published reviews, articles, newspaper features and
anything else anyone has said about your book and link to it, or
excerpt it. You can also use quotes from reviews in any press
release you send out.

Once your book is published call bookstores as far as you are
willing to travel and offer to do a book signing, cooking
demonstration or reading. Do not give up. Keep calling and planning
and promoting. Bring along giveaways to book signings. Have
bookmarks, recipe cards, or notepads printed up with your name,
website and book cover prominently displayed.

Don't stop with bookstores. Check out cookware stores and gourmet
shops that will stock your cookbook, and who might even welcome you
to demonstrate your recipes on a busy Saturday.

Ask all your friends to help spread the word by joining food-related
discussion lists, setting up book signings in their local
bookstores, and writing reviews of your book.

Contact television and radio stations to see if they are looking for
a feel-good news story or if you can be a guest on one of their
shows.

Having a new cookbook out or being a local published author is
newsworthy, but how do you keep the marketing effort up long term?
Find a way to connect your recipes with events. Dessert cookbooks
are easily linked with holidays like Valentine's Day, Thanksgiving,
Christmas, birthdays, and weddings. Healthy food cookbooks are great
for January (New Year's resolutions), spring (getting ready for
summer clothes) and right after a new medical report comes out about
the danger of fat, meat, sugar, wheat allergies and junk food.

If you want ongoing coverage from local, regional and national news
media send out announcements on your expertise. Include any food
science and nutrition background you have to widen your appeal as an
expert.

Donate your cookbook as a prize or to be auctioned off for charity.
Not only will the lucky winner learn who you are, but so will all
the other readers, listeners and viewers as the contest or auction
is promoted for the weeks leading up to it.

The key to marketing your cookbook is persistence. Try everything
above, then go back through the list again and again. Marketing your
cookbook successfully can be likened to making a snowball. You start
with a few individual ideas, add on more each day or week, and soon
you've got a snowball whose momentum will carry you, and your
cookbook, out into the world.


(c) Pamela White, 2006

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About the author: Subscribe to the free online newsletter, Food Writing, created for the care and feeding of food writers, at www.food-writing.com . Pamela White teaches food writing and her book, Make Money as a Food Writer in Six Lessons, is available at Amazon.com .