What a Developmental Editor Can Do for A Cookbook
Many people in the editorial world understand how a developmental editor can help with a novel or other long body of work. A developmental editor typically works on a project after the first draft but before the polishing begins. They look not at sentences or even paragraphs or pages but at the shape of the whole thing. Are the chapters in the right order? Is the central idea coming through clearly? Is one chapter or section much longer than the others? Are there gaps in the narrative, or places where the reader will lose the thread?
For a novel, that might mean examining character arcs and plot structure. For a cookbook, though, it’s a little different. Yes, you’re answering the questions of whether the book holds together, and delivers on what it promises. But there’s more to it than that.
Cookbook editing is its own specialty. Yes, it helps to have some culinary knowledge, but knowing your way around a kitchen as a professional chef won’t tell you whether a recipe’s instructions will make sense to someone who isn’t you. Knowing the difference between shallots and onions won’t help you see that the chapter on braises could be confusing to a home cook, or that a key technique is never actually explained.
Here’s what working with an editor on a cookbook could look like.
Define the Idea
Let’s say you’re the chef owner of an Italian restaurant and you want to publish a cookbook of your restaurant’s recipes. Great idea for marketing purposes, but what’s the point of view of the book going to be? If you’re in a region with a lot of farmers markets, you probably use a lot of fresh local produce. You probably also import some ingredients, and your wine list, from Italy. So your point of view could be Italian through a local lens. It could be the traditional regional Italian recipes you make. Or maybe what really defines your restaurant is that you’ve been open for 35 years and three generations of families keep coming back for the same dishes. Your point of view is about comfort and memory. You’ll want to demonstrate the food that marks special occasions.
Do you want to sell the book primarily to people in your town? Your state? Anywhere in the country? A developmental editor will help you suss all this out. They will also create some project guidelines that keep you on track. If your lens is that you shop at farmers markets, they’ll want you to take photos at the farms. They’ll prompt you to include the stories of the growers you buy from. They’ll help draw out why you chose certain ingredients grown by certain farms over other ingredients from other sources.
If this sounds like a collaborator more than an editor, it’s true. What I’m describing is a bit of both. You can call it a collaborator, a developmental partner, or an editorial consultant. Some editors, like myself, are willing and happy to work with an author before the writing begins to shape the concept, the structure, and the approach. Some won’t be willing to or interested in doing that. If you’re working with a collaborator or a consultant who is different from the person you hire to be your developmental editor, that will typically be a step earlier in the process than the way that developmental editing is strictly defined. A traditional developmental editor typically comes in after you have a draft or at least a solid proposal, and works from what’s already there.
Shape the Structure and Flow
Once the point of view is clear, how do you organize the chapters? By season, technique, ingredient, or occasion? The right choice depends on what kind of book you’re making and who you’re making it for. A developmental editor helps you think through how the book is organized. A book about farmers market cooking might naturally follow the seasons. A book about Italian-American comfort food might be organized around the meal — antipasti, pasta, secondi, dolci.
A skilled editor looks at whether the chapters feel balanced. Is one chapter twice as long as the others? Does the book lean heavily on pasta? Does it include only one recipe for soup? If there’s not a soup chapter, where will the soup recipe go? Does the recipe list include recipes to make staples such as vinaigrettes and red sauce? Does it have a mix of fast and easy weeknight-friendly meals as well as recipes that take longer? Is the book meant to recreate a restaurant meal with restaurant techniques, or are you trying to take restaurant-level recipes and reshape them for a home cook?
If every recipe requires a trip to a specialty grocer or ordering a rare ingredient from Amazon, you’ll lose readers. On the other hand, if nothing challenges or inspires them, the book doesn’t feel worth keeping.
The chapters need a logic that makes sense to a reader. The recipes within each chapter need to flow well together, and the front and back matter, meaning introductions, headnotes, glossaries, and the shape of the index, all need to work together to support your concept. That kind of editing requires both a close eye for detail and the ability to hold the whole system in mind at once, which are qualities good cookbook editors as well as indexers need to have.
Fill the Gaps
People come to the cookbook process at very different points along the path. Some have a raft of already developed recipes that they have made dozens of times. Others have a concept or a general idea they are working toward but still need to develop the recipes that create that concept. Some have recipes for a chapter or two, or even half the book, but need help finishing it.
For recipes that have been developed, a developmental editor can help you write headnotes that help you create the narrative thread that weaves through your book. A headnote is more than a paragraph that says the dish is delicious and that you first had it in a restaurant somewhere memorable. The right headnote text and personal stories intermingled with the recipes can go a long way to either reinforce your concept or move it too far away from whatever the goal actually is.
Most cookbook authors aren’t primarily writers. They’re cooks, chefs, food bloggers, or culinary instructors who have a point of view or a style they want to share. A good editor won’t rewrite your book or erase your personality. They should be able to help your recipes and your prose sound even more like you by the time the work is done. And yes, even recipes themselves can have personality!
What Else to Look For in a Cookbook Editor
Most cookbook editors do not cover every aspect of the process, and that’s normal. Developmental editing, recipe editing, recipe testing, and indexing are all different skill sets, each requiring its own training and experience. In traditional publishing, each of these roles are typically done by different people.
A developmental editor is focused on the big pictures of concept, structure, organization, and narrative flow. Recipe editing is much more detailed than most people expect, and a trained recipe editor will catch things that even an experienced cook would miss. That said, in practice the lines blur, especially in the indie and self-publishing space. A developmental editor working on a cookbook will almost certainly flag obvious recipe problems they notice along the way because it’s impossible to evaluate the book’s structure without reading the recipes. But a thorough review of every recipe will typically be done by a separate person.
In my own work, I note any issues that seem relevant or helpful, even if they fall outside the strict scope of whatever form of editing I’ve been hired to do. Not all editors take that approach. For a project like a novel, developmental editors aren’t paying attention to the misspelled word because they know the whole thing is going to change shape by the time it’s done. The typos are the purview of the copyeditor. And in much the same way, the actual recipes are the purview of someone who is skilled to handle them.
When you’re looking for a cookbook editor, ask whether they also do recipe editing or recipe testing, or can recommend someone who does. Finding someone who does all three is rare and valuable. But it’s worth seeking out someone who has a combination of skills because fewer handoffs between different contractors can lead to a more cohesive result.
When to Bring in an Editor
Bring in an editor earlier than you think you need to. Many authors wait until they feel the manuscript is “ready,” but an editor can actually save you significant revision time if they’re involved while you’re still figuring things out. A developmental edit early on that leads to changes is much less painful than realizing late in the process that you’ve written a beautiful book about Italian-American comfort food that somehow has no pasta chapter.
That said, bringing in an editor at any stage will strengthen your manuscript. There’s no wrong time to get a second set of eyes on your work.