Know Your Audience

Where do successful cookbook ideas come from?

I’ve long held the belief that the first step in writing a cookbook requires digging deep into one’s own experience, expertise, and passion to define what the book will be about, and while I still believe this to be a good starting point, it’s not the only one. On this week’s show, we examine cookbook idea generation from a different angle. Instead of starting a book project by asking what the book is about, what happens when we first consider who the book is for?

At face value, the distinction between what you’re writing and who you’re writing for might sound like a debate between marketing versus art, an ever-present tension for anyone involved in a creative field. But it’s more than that. It’s a balance between creating from a place of self-expression and identifying an audience seeking something particular and providing it for them. Cookbook writing, at its best, blends creative expression with instructional writing. No matter what type of cookbook we’re writing, it’s important to remember that, at base level, we’re providing instruction for people heading into their kitchens to feed themselves and others.

Embarking on a cookbook project by first identifying your audience will not only make you a more empathetic and effective writer, but it will also help shape your book proposal, making it more marketable to a publisher. A comprehensive cookbook proposal needs an “audience” section, and putting thought and effort into defining your who (both quantitatively and qualitatively) will go a long way toward selling your book idea.

Tune into the show to hear the four of us (Kristin Donnelly, Kate Leahy, Andrea Nguyen, and me) dive deep into this idea of starting with who instead of why. We discuss the readers we had in mind when we wrote some of our books. We also share tips for researching demographic data for your target readers. (Hint: ChatGPT can be your friend here.)

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You are our “who,” and we need you!

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Links from today’s chat:

• Start with why: How great leaders inspire action | Simon Sinek | TedX

• Why I Cook, by Tom Collichio

• Cooking for Jeffrey by Ina Garten

• Coastal, by Scott Clarke with Betsy Andrews

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Next up:

On next week’s show, Molly and Kristin speak with Corrie Locke-Hardy (AKA The Tiny Activist) about pairing their passion for social justice activism and food in their debut cookbook, The Revolution Will Be Well-Fed. Corrie talks about their atypical path toward publication, the unique approaches of the publisher, Raspberry Bow Press, and how the 'figure it out as you go' method worked during the book's creation.

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Bye for now. I’ll be back here next week and hope to see you here. In the meantime, keep on writing, reading, and cooking.

Molly and the EVCB gang