How to print a cookbook

A cookbook needs to do more than just survive on a shelf. It needs to survive flour-coated fingers, splashes of olive oil, and everyday wear and tear going back, once again, to that favorite time-tested recipe.

Those are just a few of the constraints that make printing a cookbook a bit different than printing a novel or other text-heavy book. Photography matters more, paper choice matters more, and binding can affect how easy the book is to handle and hold open while you mix, fold, and stir. Even the size of the cookbook can affect whether the cookbook gets serious use or gets relegated to the stack of “I should make that recipe someday.”

If you're putting together a family recipe collection, or printing cookbooks for a restaurant or food brand, understanding how to print a cookbook means knowing what steps to take before you send it to a professional cookbook printing company. Here's what you need to know:

What kind of cookbook are you printing?

Let's start with the book itself. Is it going to be a simple recipe collection with a few photos? A heavily illustrated cookbook where almost every recipe has a full-page photo? A premium gift book? Something you'll sell at events? Those decisions will affect just about everything else that follows.

For example, a photography-heavy cookbook looks best with coated paper because it reproduces color and detail well. A simpler, mostly text-based cookbook doesn't necessarily need the same premium stock. Before getting into all of the individual printing specifications, decide what you'd like your finished cookbook to look and feel like. That makes every decision that comes afterward much easier.

Choose the right size of cookbook

Cookbooks understandably need a bit more room than your average paperback novel. You need enough space for things like ingredient lists, instructions, notes, photos, or charts. Larger trim sizes also give food photography plenty of space to look mouthwateringly enticing. A compact cookbook works best when portability matters, while a landscape format gives you more space for a more visual layout.

OnPress offers a wide range of book sizes and formats, so you're not limited to one standard cookbook shape.

Just remember that bigger isn't always better. Your trim size affects your layout, page count, printing cost, book weight, shipping cost, and even how comfortable your cookbook is to hold while you're standing in the kitchen.

Pick the right paper for your recipes and photos

Paper is one of those printing decisions that sounds boring until you see what a difference it makes. If your cookbook contains full-color food photography, coated stock is one of the best options. It reflects light and produces sharper, richer-looking color than uncoated stock. We recommend heavier satin, gloss, and matte stocks for books that feature photography or want to benefit from full-color printing.

When deciding on paper, think about the experience you want the reader to have when they hold your cookbook. Gloss makes colors pop while matte gives images more of a subdued and muted look. There's no “one size fits all” choice. The right choice for your cookbook depends on the style of the book and how photography-heavy it is.

Choose from paperback or hardcover binding

Binding is the next choice you'll have to make. A paperback cookbook is more affordable and lighter to ship. It's worth considering especially if you're printing cookbooks to sell yourself. Perfect binding, where the page and cover are glued at the spine, is often used for paperback books, including some cookbooks.

If the book will be opened and closed constantly, choosing a durable binding is a must. PUR binding uses a stronger adhesive than traditional perfect binding and can help cookbooks survive frequent handling.

Hardcover gives your book a heavier feel and makes sense when you're considering printing a premium cookbook, gift book, commemorative edition or a branded product designed to last. At OnPress, we offer both casewrap hardcovers and hardcovers with dust jackets, along with matte, gloss, and soft-touch finishing.

Smyth sewn binding is an excellent option for cookbooks as well because it lays flat and handles frequent opening and closing.

How to prepare your cookbook photos for printing

That delicious-looking photo of your grandmother's sugar cookies may look delectable on screen and terrible in print, especially if the original file isn't large enough. When choosing to have a cookbook professionally printed, you'll want to pay attention to image resolution.

We recommend that interior artwork and cover images be at least 300 DPI at their intended print size. You should also prepare images in CMYK rather than RGB wherever possible, as RGB is designed for screens and CMYK is designed for commercial printing. Converting between the two sometimes creates unexpected color changes. Use the highest-quality original images available rather than pulling compressed photos from social media or the web.

Setting up bleed, margins, and your print-ready files

If your photos run all the way to the edge of the page, they should extend slightly beyond the final trim line. That's called bleed. At OnPress, we require a 0.125-inch bleed on all sides for full-bleed interior elements. We offer free templates that include safe margins to keep important text and photos from getting too close to the edge when trimmed.

You'll also want to make sure that fonts are embedded and that your files are submitted as clean PDFs without comments or annotations. Our free book layout templates are designed for Adobe InDesign and Microsoft Word and include accurate trim, margin, bleed, and layout details based on your choices.

Order a proof before printing the full run

Finally, don't judge your cookbook's quality just by looking at a PDF on your laptop. Order a physical proof. Having the printed proof in your hands lets you see things that don't always show up accurately on screen, like the feel of the paper and the color of the photos.

OnPress includes a complimentary digital prepress review with every order and also offers PDF and hard-copy proofing options before the print run is submitted. Look through your book the way a reader would, or better yet, cook from it. If you can quickly find a recipe, read the measurements without squinting, and look at the finished dish with pride, you're probably ready to print.