As a cookery editor for more than 20 years, I’ve witnessed the relentless rise of the celebrity cook book and often been part of the team of “invisible hands” behind the authors. So I’ve got a pretty good idea of what works and what doesn’t. If you want to write your very own bestselling cookery book, here are my top tips …

Think of a title. Anything with “bible” in it is good, or any of the following: “ultimate”, “essential”, “fast”, “easy”, “delicious”. Don’t worry if the book doesn’t live up to these claims. The title is secondary to the cover photo. If you’re a woman, make sure you’re young and gorgeous. Be photographed in a flirty dress that hints at sexy and domestic in equal measure, while holding a tray of cupcakes in your perfectly manicured hands. It doesn’t matter if an anonymous home economist did the baking, your job is to pose. As you gaze at the camera, try to convey the sense that buying this book will give readers a glossy new allure.

If you’re a man, young and gorgeous is good but not compulsory. It won’t matter, in fact, if you’re overweight and a bit scruffy. You’ll be wearing a striped apron, or jeans and a mildly funky shirt, and instead of cupcakes you’ll be brandishing something macho aloft – perhaps an enormous meat cleaver. Or you could be doing something vaguely comical with a pig’s head or a brace of pheasant. The point is, you’re illustrating manly cooking, and your readers need to be left in no doubt that this means wrestling with your ingredients in an Iron John fashion. They want you to get down and dirty with offal, not faff around with piping bags.

Now the cover is sorted, give a bit of thought to the contents. Don’t try to be original. Originality in recipe writing barely exists and, unless you lift a recipe directly, plagiarism is virtually impossible to prove. All you need to do is be “inspired by” other people’s recipes and give them a “twist”. It’s so easy now that there are millions of recipes available online. Just pick a subject area – Italian food, Nordic food, raw food, preserving, low carb – and go for it. It’s not your food that matters so much as your image. Readers don’t really want to eat like you, they want to be like you.

When you write up your recipes, remember to develop a “voice”. Failing this, some annoying tics will do

If you decide to write about the food of a particular country, you might worry that your book will lack authenticity. Not a problem. Just go on a road trip in said country. This will give your text a veneer of credibility, with the added advantage that the photos will be fab. Of course, if you’re already quite famous, you can take a TV crew along with you and that tie-in should guarantee sales of 50,000 copies before the book is even written. Not that writing it is something you’ll need to concern yourself with if you’re a celeb; your publisher will find someone to take care of that for you. But even if no one’s heard of you, a road trip can be an invaluable means of promoting your book. All you need is a picturesque vehicle that can become a character in its own right – a Gypsy caravan perhaps, or a vintage motorbike, though if you can’t run to those, any old banger will do. You’re almost guaranteed to have lots of comical adventures that will enliven your text – don’t forget to take photos! – and it will detract from the fact that your recipe for spaghetti carbonara/pork vindaloo/patatas bravas is really no different from anyone else’s.

When you write up your recipes, remember to develop a “voice” – a unique way of expressing yourself that is instantly identifiable. Failing this, some annoying tics will do. Repeating a word unnecessarily makes a good stand-in for style – “take your bacon, put it in your pan and add your mushrooms and your tomatoes” – while littering the text with exclamation marks is a convenient shortcut to expressing enthusiasm for your subject. If your text still lacks character, insist that your publisher hires an illustrator to pepper it with whimsical little drawings, and get the designer to do quirky things with font sizes and colours. Your readers will be so enchanted that they won’t notice that you can’t write.

Most importantly, remember that reliability in recipe writing is no longer something to aspire to. Be sure to include some ingredients in the method that aren’t mentioned in the ingredients list and vice versa – it’s always fun for readers to be left wondering what on earth they’re supposed to do with the remaining 150ml cream, or why some dried mushrooms have mysteriously cropped up halfway through the recipe. Don’t be tediously precise with measurements or cooking times – readers like to make up their own minds about these things, and enjoy the challenge of filling and emptying every dish in their kitchen in the hope of finding one the right size. Include a few ingredients that no one without access to a large Korean supermarket will have a hope in hell of tracking down, and be sure to send your readers off to the seaside on jolly foraging trips (you can mention halfway through the recipe that they’ll need to pop down to the coast to get the vital ingredient). Don’t tell them what sea kale or sea aster actually look like – the chances are that unless you’re a professional chef you’re not too sure yourself. But your readers will feel more fulfilled if they’ve spent a day “sourcing” it themselves.

Above all, remember that anyone can write a cookbook. Writing a cookery bestseller is easy. Why else would there be so many of them? But writing a good and original one – well, that would just spoil the fun for everyone else.