Welcome to the Cookbook Lab Chronicles! As I write and self-publish cookbook #2, I’m taking you behind the scenes of the process with a weekly vlog.

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In today’s episode, we cover:

  • The beginning branding stages and what that looks like
  • Budgeting – how costs have changed since my first cookbook and things I did to stay extra scrappy while writing my first book

We talked about budgeting a lot in my recent webinars and I had a good conversation in our private Slack Channel with a Cookbook Lab student who asked how I hired a recipe editor so affordably:

Since I wrote my first cookbook, I’ve been fortunate enough to start earning money from my blog and other related efforts, so I am able to outsource some now. However, I still try to keep my cookbook publishing as inexpensive as possible, and will be applying this strategy again.

What that looks like in practice:

  • Hiring someone to do my headshots, but doing the rest of the photos myself.
  • Volunteer recipe testers (you will be shocked how excited people are to test your recipes!)
  • Hiring a recipe editor to edit a sample of my recipes and applying the logic behind the changes to the other recipes myself
  • Having willing friends and family proofread the crap out of my book before sending it to an editor I’m paying so there’s less work for them to do
  • Having a graphic designer create a template for me (this time I’m using a Cookbook Lab template!) and filling it in myself