Why didn't I think about this until like now. I'm such an idiot. How well do cookbooks sell? Because with the new alternative health age going, I give what the mass wants, the publishers will like it, and I can get my name out there. Though does J.P.Clyde sound like a grand cooking name?
That depends: do you know how to cook? That cynical jab about giving the mass (sic) what "it" wants gives me the impression that you don't.
I do know how to cook. I have been cooking all my life. My grandfather ran a local restaurant[nothing fancy kind of more like in his house and he sold things to his neighbors ha] and taught me everything I know. He taught me the rules. One of them includes: -Whenever using tomato always put paprika so it doesn't turn out sweet or to tomato tasting
Cookbooks will, on average, probably have a better chance of being picked up by a publisher, and a higher average rate of return. So yeah, it's not a bad idea. Then again, I don't think I've ever, once, thought man, I really hope the author of this cookbook has written a novel! Nor have I ever heard of any publishers having book deals that plan for name-getting-out-there cookbook as part of the marketing/media package. So, yeah, if you want to write a cookbook and have the expertise, why not... just don't think it'll lead to anyone giving a rip about your fiction.
Pop, but it can show that I am marketable. And it fits with my fiction. In the sense that I would be writing recipes as alternatives sources of meat, egg, and dairy. So it wouldn't be any normal cookbook. It be jazzed with Clyde. My moto, though I don't tell publishers this, is I write the weird, fantastic, and unique. It probably be the best story a horror writer has gotten. In the near future 100 years after I am dead written in my novel legacy, This writer's first published work was a cookbook.
just don't expect to make a lot of money on it, unless you're a famous chef with a huge following... and it's not going to help you get published as a novelist, unless it sells in the millions of copies and makes you a 'household name'...
As has been said, you are not going to get a leg up because you published a cookbook. Proving to your publisher that you're marketable as a cook book writer doesn't prove you're marketable as a novelist. If you want to get your name out, publish short fiction.
Echoing the above, if you want to use the cookbook as a help to get you published as a fiction writer, it won't have that effect at all. No fiction agent or editor is going to care that you've published cookbooks. The one exception to that could be if your cookbooks become so famous that they make you a sort of celebrity in your own right. In other words, your name becomes so well-known through cookbooks that they figure any book with your name on it will sell. But short of that, it's going to be irrelevant to your attempts to get published fiction out there.
I'd imagine cookbooks sell really well. But only, i would imagine, to someone with an allready established name in the hospitality buisness. Names like Jamie oliver, Gorden ramsey etc. are well established, well known Good cooks. I'm not saying you arnt, i have no idea if you can cook or not, which really would be the problem.
