Selling Recipes is Hard
One of the questions I asked Anneliese is what the best bets, venue-wise, recipe writers can look to when it comes to selling their wares. Unfortunately, this is a question easier asked than answered. Anneliese didn’t have a quick response, possibly because there is none. I asked the same question of Chris O’Hara, vp of sales here at mediabistro who’s also written a few cooking-type books of his own:
When it comes to selling recipes, which types of venues tend to be the most profitable?
Interesting question which, unfortunately, I don’t have the answer to. As far as my own personal experience, my book contracts give me a licensing royalty for any content, including recipes that are re-published in periodicals. That is the only example I can find which relates to recipe “sales.” Obviously, from the financial point of view there is very little (if any) money to be made from selling a recipe-unless you are selling some type of secret formula to Betty Crocker or something. In terms of monetizing one’s recipes, I would offer the following (very obvious) advice:
· Build a story around recipes. Most magazines won’t buy single recipes (I believe many food magazines develop recipes in their own test kitchens with in-house staff), but they do buy articles. It’s probably easier to sell an article like “The Perfect Thanksgiving” with an entire meal plan, than to sell the recipes themselves.
· Write a cookbook. Unfortunately, this is almost impossible for an unknown chef to do, and not very profitable either. But a series of recipes organized around a theme (the narrower the better) can open doors into the specialty stores, such as Williams Sonoma, who produces their own cookbooks, but looks to add food-related gift books that are based on a single subject that their in-house books don’t cover.
I hate to say it, but recipe writing is one tough way to make a buck. There is a huge cottage industry out there of publications who advise people how they can sell their recipes online, or through classified advertising. As you will note, most of these ideas run you right the old pyramid scheme operators…
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