​Who doesn’t have a cookbook in their house? I know I have far too many, but I can’t help myself when I see a new one with beautiful images and yummy recipes. The beauty of a cookbook is that the result of using it is great-tasting food.

Cookbooks are one of the most popular non-fiction genres in publishing. They are in the top five selling categories for e-books on Amazon, despite the ease of googling for a recipe. There’s something comforting about opening a book, choosing a recipe based on pictures of mouth-watering food, and putting it on the stand as you are cooking.

You might buy a cookbook because it’s written by your favourite chef or a famous person, it teaches you new skills in the kitchen, it contains a new style of recipes you want to try, or you trust the author to write recipes that work. Whatever the reason, cookbooks are staying popular.
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There are many ways to write a cookbook, but there are some elements that are important to get right. 
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Last week I renewed my membership for the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), which is based in the UK, and last month I renewed my membership for the Institute of Professional Editors Ltd (IPEd), which is for Australian and New Zealand editors.

I am a Professional Member of both organisations.

To be able to renew my CIEP membership, I had to answer a question on the CIEP Code of Practice. Doing this was a good reminder of one reason why I am a member of these professional editing associations.

As these memberships all need to be budgeted for, I thought it would be a good exercise to write down all the reasons I continue to roll over my membership.

Anyone writing a cookbook or a food blog will need to know how to format recipes so that the reader has an enjoyable experience making the dish.
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There is an art to writing recipes that will inspire but are also easy to follow and make sense to the cook or baker – there is nothing more frustrating for a than trying out a new recipe and finding the instructions ambiguous, that something should have been prepared hours in advance, or that the ingredients are not easily obtainable.