The popularity of cookbooks as a product that's easy to sell has continued to go up, along with the sheer quality of the recipes, the design of the book and the downright creativity of self-publishers.

Cookbooks have proven throughout the past 50 years or so to be much more than a collection of recipes. Cookbooks are a great public relations tool. They add to local history.

Cookbooks are an important documentation of a nation's heritage. They are a collector's item, a family's memoir and a way to maintain our sense of identity. Passing down recipes from generation to generation has long been a tradition whether published in a cookbook or not.

The cookbook market will never be saturated because the public is always looking for new recipes and for the best possible way to make food taste great.

With more and more cookbooks featuring color photography with their recipes and interesting sidebar information, cookbooks are even leaving the kitchen and finding a home on the coffee table.

Actually most cookbook buyers are referred to as armchair cooks. They really don't have time to cook but love to read recipes, read about cooking and food, and collect useful and beautiful cookbooks.

I know this is true because I have spent many a bedtime poring over the recipes in my cookbooks -- avidly marking recipes that I intend to try -- some day!

Food and cooking are a part of everyday life, making cookbooks a staple in every American and European home. Even in a weak or down economy, cookbook sales always remain strong.

Whether people buy cookbooks for casual reading or to fix meals, they continue to sell year after year. We live in a cookbook crazy culture. Actually 80% of cookbooks are sold by word of mouth.

And cookbook sales continue to climb every year. Some years it has been as much as 76%.

The third best-selling book in the world is the Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook. It ranks behind the Bible and the dictionary in sales. And many community and regional cookbooks have been published continually for more than 50 years.

The average American woman owns about 15 cookbooks and three out of ten women collect cookbooks.

Ninety-seven million people gave or have received a book as a gift and the most popular category is cookbooks.

A fast and cheap way would be to publish your recipes is in a simple ebook, which you could do and still work from home. Another option which requires more capital would be in a self-published trade book. It wouldn't require color photographs to publish a great book with your recipes.

If you have a lot of money to invest in your own self-publishing business then consider publishing a cookbook with color photographs. The choice is up to you.

Promoting, marketing and selling self-published cookbooks can be a lot of fun. You can do public demonstrations of your recipes and give away free soup samples.

You can give away free recipes. You can print up free recipes on bookmarks with your cookbook information. You can print free sample recipes on your fliers.

As you can see, the cookbook market has always been a fantastic market. If you've always wanted to publish your recipes, this is a good reason to think about publishing your collection of recipes in a cookbook.