Getting Burned By Cookbooks

Every cook and baker dreams of having their own cookbook.It's a dream come true to not only share your recipes but also make potloads of money. Yet there is a dark side to this  - one that gets many an experienced chef burned  - and burned good.

Cookbook author of Indianish, Priya Krishna wrote about this little known problem in today's New York Times Food section. It sounds like a good idea and with any publishing offer - is beyond exciting. Having a published book , especially a cookbook, is the gateway to everything from  spots on local morning news shows to YouTube channels. It often means getting picked up from a larger publishing house and huge royalties. However that can be far from the truth. One example is Dallas food blogger, Urvashi Pitri, wrote the popular Indian Instant Pot Cookbook which sold a whopping 100,000 copies.Yet she received no advance for it and was asked to  develop fifty recipes in a three month period. To add insult to injury - she had to pay for all  the ingredients - some pricey - out her own pocket. Her payment for all of this? Only $15,000 in the two years of its' publication. Bonuses were only given out if book sales reached a certain number. There was one huge plus, however, The book's popularity enabled her to sign a two book, six figure deal with publishing giant Houghton-Mifflin. Some , like Lauren McDuffle, author of the blog Harvest & Honey was approached by London based quantum publishing to write a spice cookbook. Sounds prestigious enough - save for one catch - no royalties. There was only a modest fee.

It seems that these publishing houses prey on, lesser known chefs, food bloggers and reviewers. The Philadelphia chef, Kiki Aranita had Page Street Publishing offer her a meager $8,000 to write a cookbook on Hawaiian food with royalties of ten percent on the first 25,000 copies. People of color may be more vulnerable, she states,because some ethnic cuisines may be too out of the mainstream. However something similar happened to Baltimore  cookbook author, Alison Robicelli when Reedy Press asked her to write a book about standout restaurants from Washington DC to Baltimore. There was no pay up front or budget for traveling and dining. All that would come out of her pocket. There was also no payment - only royalties. Some chefs are turning to self publishing which is easy to do. Nick Kokonis ,  an owner of the Alinea Group in Chicago  wrote The Aviary Cocktail Book about his one restaurant's drinks. It was a lavish publishing cost of  $630,000 but the return was 3.2 million. A much cheaper alternative is Amazon Self Publishing and Nook. As for formatting you can go to Google Docs and use their recipe template, which also includes for photos. Another alternative is to self publish shorter cookbooks with fewer recipes under a collaborative started by editor in chief , Kevin Pang, of online food publication The Takeout. writers will earn seven to five dollars a book.

These cookbook publishing tales are true horror stories. The best and easiest route is self publishing. It means total control and the chance to have a successful food writing career.