Hi everyone,

I'm writing a recipes book about Indian cooking. It will have a pretty unique angle to it. I'm so excited about it!

I have a couple of questions for all you folks that love making Indian food.

• Should I write my book in e-book format or in traditional paper book?

• Besides the recipe, what do you like the most in a recipe book about Indian cooking?

Many thanks.

Best,

Jug

Hi Juguar

Who is the audience for your book and how are you intending to distribute it? Are you intending to sell it online or just email it to friends? What kind of skills will the people using the book already have?

These kinds of questions may help you work out what kind of format works best.

One advice I would give: please make sure the content is original and belongs to you. Much content on the internet (including all the recipes on this site) are copyrighted so cannot be copied without permission of the owners.

Look forward to hearing more about your project as it develops,

Regards

Kavita

copyright law in this country says an ingredient list can be copied, but the method has to be in the author's own words.

I think Mamta would say that an unknown author has little chance of getting a book published by a well known publisher. I would agree.

There are so many sites on the web dealing with Indian food, at differing levels of success, it's a bit of a lottery if you don't know what's what.

I would love to do a book, but who would want a book from an unknown :-(!

Sorry, no idea how you go about it.

Mamta

Yes indeed, ingredients lists cannot be copyrighted.

I'd read a book by you ma, I'd even buy it. But I'm biased!

how many visitors have been to this site?... could be a few out there that might buy books ...

Steve

Answer: a total of 5,631,338 visits and growing! It seeems only a few months ago we were celebrating 5 million visits.

Juguar, perhaps the answer is in your question. What will make your book unique? You'd have thought the cookery book market was saturated, but we must be still buying them or publishers wouldn't be publishing them. New books need to be different so what will make yours remarkable/unusual to stand out on a bookshop (or supermarket) shelf?

Just the other day having spent longer looking for a recipe than it took me to cook it I thought I must put my food books in some sort of order, Perhaps this can help you identify what type of market you should be aiming for - some of the 'categories' I seem to have accumulated are:

Style - family, authentic, restaurant, classics, contempory.....

Regional - French, Bengali, South Indian, Punjabi..

Method & Speed - slow cooking, pressure cooking, one-pot, hob-only, for freezing...

Diet - 'healthy,' slimming, gluten free, vegan...

Inputs - fish, spices, chicken or

Results - curries, dahls, bhajis

Occasions - everyday, dinner parties, menus, buffets, festivals, celebrations, student-life

Level - beginners, 'step-by-step,' advanced to encyclopaedic

• and that is just from my motley collection of books.

What do we enjoy in a cookery cook? I think the great British public expects good photographs and lots of them. Not sure if it matters what they are of - ingredients, results, street markets, buildings, smiling faces, cars, boats, whatever!

Personally I like each and every recipe to have an introduction. What inspired it, its history, tips, why it is special and unique to the author.

Good Luck, Winton