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Any thoughts on this idea?

January 5th, 2007 at 03:37 am

Here's where it all began...I decided to make a cookbook of "Family Favorites" for my brother and new SIL (married in August) for a Christmas gift. I contacted some relatives (both ours and hers) and asked for recipe contributions - not just basic recipes, but those tried and true, passed down the generations recipes. I collected some of my grandmother's old recipes (she passed away several years ago). I had the grand delusion of collecting these into a hard-covered, bound book with glossy pictures and little personal blurbs. Well, time interfered, and the process turned out to be a lot harder than I thought. I ran out of time to get it printed online, but ended up with some beautiful layouts and a lot of special recipes. I included a picture of each contributor, as well as some personal comments they made about the recipes. DH bought a semi-hard covered binder with plastic pages. I printed the pages out and used card stock in between the pages to keep the pages stiff. It turned out quite nice and I think they appreciated the sentiment.
I really, really enjoyed putting this together, from the process of collecting and editing recipes, to the layout design, to selecting graphics. The most time-consuming part was the layouts, but I think that if I had a standard set of pages and only had to plug in the recipes, it would go a lot easier. The hard part would be finding people who want to make personalized cookbooks. The other hard part, for me, is determining how to package the book. I know Staples and the like can do soft cover binding. I found a great little site, which I can't immediately recall the name of (but I have saved somewhere) that will print any book in hardcover for you. Or I can always do the glossy Kodak-type sites for fancy books, although I had a very hard time trying to find a way to type recipes into those. All the layouts I found were to upload pictures - not to type text. This is what took me the longest time to figure out. Although the book did come out nice, I wasn't completely satisfied with having it in a binder - nor do I think it is professional enough to sell that way.
I did quite a bit of searching for a product like this on the Internet, but came up blank as far as individual, personalized cookbooks go. I did find a number of sites that would print them in bulk, i.e. for fundraisers, but my target clients would be the daughter who wanted to preserve her aging mother's recipes, or the grandmother who wanted several copies to pass on the the grandkids, or the extended family who each contributed one recipe for a "family cookbook" to be handed out at reunions.
Of course, I have to find a way to make it reasonably priced too. I checked out a local book binder here and the price for one fancy, nice hard cover book was $50 (in bulk, the price would drop to as low as $9 per book). So, quite a bit more thought needs to go into this.
One more aspect I have been working on: local promotion. I do have quite a few avenues open for this. I work in an office where products are regularly touted (i.e. Avon, Lia Sophia, handmade jewelry, Girl Scout cookies, etc.) One more addition to the break room table might get some exposure, especially since we share a kitchen with a Cooperative Extension office. We also live in an area that has a good number of craft fair and farmer's markets - relatively cheap exposure. I think it's an idea that could be popular. And let's not forget the power of the Internet - you all are going to tell your friends, right?
Wink
I would love to hear ideas - positive or negative - to help me decide if this is worth pursuing. I've never had a great attitude towards work, because, quite frankly, I've never had a job that excited me. This idea...I find exciting.

I am going to try to attach some sample pages - not sure how it will work. Bear with me...

That is SOOO not my picture! Jeff? Nate? Argh!

4 Responses to “Any thoughts on this idea?”

  1. mjrube94 Says:
    1167970855

    Great idea. Can you partner with catering halls that might deal with weddings or reunions, so that when people come in to book their date (well in advance) you have a flyer or some other advertisement there for them?

  2. tinapbeana Says:
    1167970971

    yummmmm, roasted sparrow Big Grin
    ok, from what i can see production costs are goign to kill you. plain and simple, even at 9 bucks a book to make you're going to have to double that (at least!) to be able to pay for your time and i'm not sure folks are going to pay 18-20 bucks for a cookbook. maybe they would, who knows.

    with that said, you could consider changing tactics a bit and it might work. www.yorkphoto.com offers flip books for photos. they're spiral bound with a transluscent cover. obviously they're intended for photos, but what if you could get recipes written on index cards and scan them in? then each page could be a recipe in the original handwritting. plus, IMO, the spiral binding makes it a little easier to use in the kitchen, and the glossy photo paper would be easier to clean. if need be you could type the recipes using the text capbility of a photo editor like GIMP (freeware and very powerful). you could even set up an index card template so you would haven't to re-create the wheel every time, just type in the info. or, um, you could contract the service out to someone who has the software and 1300 fonts already *wink*

    i would think the 4x6 size would be fine, it would hold a 3x5 index card with a border. a 15 page book in that size would be $7.97, and you get a 25% discount on duplicates so #2 forwards would be $5.98.

    say you got an order of 5 books 1*7.97 + 4*5.98 + 1*2.10 S&H 1st book + 4*1.59 S&H other books = $40.35 your cost for 5 books, or $8.07 each after S&H for a 15 page book. sell 'em for a buck a page, minimum 15 pages, and all you're doing is typing information in, saving images, and uploading images...

    " Each FlipBook includes a heavyweight, translucent cover with a clear spiral binding, and every page of your FlipBook is printed on high-quality, professional photographic paper (glossy finish only). Plus, you can choose from a variety of fun background designs for your pages.

    The starting price of a FlipBook includes 5 pages. You can add any number of pages until you reach the maximum size of 45 pages. "

    FlipBooks / 4x6" / 5x7"
    First 5 pages / $3.99 / $6.99
    Each additional 5 pages / $1.99 / $3.99

    BONUS: 25% discount on additional copies of the same book

    Shipping & Handling
    Standard (USPS) / Canada / International
    First book / $2.10 / $2.99 / $5.99
    Each additional book / $1.59 / $1.99 / $3.99

  3. fairy74 Says:
    1168016968

    I think it's a great idea, if as tina said you can get the production costs down.

  4. baselle Says:
    1168055997

    Here's an odd twist on your idea. In some Asian cultures (Indonesia?), part of the remembrance is a little recipe book of either favorite foods or favorite recipes. Making the dishes during the year of mourning is part of honoring the person.

    Also, you have a number of families who love grandma's so-and-so, but grandma might take her secrets beyond the grave. To prevent that, your cookbook business would be a natural. Perhaps some of your business could come from that.

    In a large family, it would be the one place where you get a number of people at once who would buy many $18-20/cookbooks of the same format and template.

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