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If there is one thing that will sell a cookbook it is high quality, full-color photographs of the food. Good
cookbooks will sell regardless, especially as word of mouth spreads, but if you flip open a brand new cookbook in the
bookstore and your mouth begins to water, chances are excellent that you will be walking out with that book in hand.
Unfortunately, while a picture may be worth a thousand words, it doesn’t necessarily indicate a good recipe. Some
dishes will photograph well, but are lacking the flavor to make them great. This is a disappointing thing to discover
about a new cookbook or recipe, but it will happen, even in great cookbooks. The more perplexing problem is when the
photo of the food is unappetizing. The dish may taste fantastic, but the very sight of the finished dish is
unappetizing. Creamed chipped beef and chilis are good examples of things that don’t photograph particularly
well. The best way for a publisher or a cookbook author to avoid this sort of negative attention is to leave out the
photo. A few choice words about how wonderful the recipe is will sell it – even without an illustration.
The photo shown here is of a recipe for S’mores Ice Cream on Cooking.com. While the dessert is simple and probably tastes good, this is a bad photo. Though I believe it is actually the large storage bowl for the ice cream, it resembles a bowl of chunky-looking chocolate soup and it is unappetizing. Scoop some out, put it in a cone – people, including myself, will be far more likely to make it.
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3-29-2006 @9:23AM Andrew said... The other advantage of an image is seeing whether your results look anything like what they are supposed to. Humour aside (especially with my cooking!) this is good for a totally new cooking technique or unfamiliar cuisine.
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3-29-2006 @1:37PM L said... I completely agree that the quality of the photography makes a huge difference in whether most people (me in particular) will buy a cookbook. A good photographer really can make anything (even chipped beef) look delicious. It's all about the mood and the setting.
While ice cream is sometimes hard to photograph, it's certainly not as hard as that photo portrays. Even if they wanted to show it goopey, there are more appealing ways (like dripping off of a spoon). But, at least the table cloth is nice and the exposure is good. :-)
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3-29-2006 @6:24PM kitchenmage said... Gee, most of us have better images than that on our sites! Nicole, send them one of your calendars and maybe they'll hire you instead.
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3-29-2006 @7:41PM Nicole Weston said... Aww, thanks, kitchenmage!
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