The Family Cookbook Project

Category: Editor Tips

  • How much does a family cookbook cost?

    One of the most frequent questions asked by people wanting to create family cookbook is “How much will it cost”.

    There are two expenses you will incur to create your own personalized family cookbook. The first is the membership fee and the second is the actual printing of the cookbooks.

    The membership fee allows Family Cookbook Project to maintain it’s servers, maintain the software, hire designers to create new covers, and cover the other costs of doing business. We have tried to keep this fee as low as possible and allow it to be paid either monthly, annually or with a lifetime membership.

    The other cost of creating your personalized cookbook is the actual printing. There are three major aspects to your cookbook that will impact the cost of printing.

    The most significant is the page count. The more pages in your cookbook, the more it will cost to print. Raw materials, such as paper and ink play a factor here.

    The second consideration the use of color. Color inks cost more than black inks and that is why if you include more color in your cookbook, especially photos, we are required to charge extra.

    The final consideration is the number of books printed. Each cookbook must be set up on the press for printing. The cost of that set-up has to be distributed to each of the cookbooks printed. That is why the price per book when you order only five cookbooks is so much more than when you order 100.


    You will find the complete pricing for the use of the site at http://www.familycookbookproject.com/price_to_print_a_family_cookbook.asp
    You will also find a way to estimate the cost of your cookbook printing at the bottom of the page, however the actual cost will be determined by the number of pages contained in your cookbook when you send it to print.
    There are also ways an editor can lower the cost of printing. Check out our blog post Lowering the Cost Of Printing Your Cookbook for some ideas.

  • New Cookbook Covers Available

    New Cookbook Covers Available


    Family Cookbook Project is pleased to announce six new cookbook cover designs are available to our cookbook editors to use on their cookbooks. 
    Blessed Food: Loaves and Fishes in a basket is a nice cover to consider for a church cookbook.
    Champagne Toast: Here’s to love! Two Champagne glasses are very festive  and perfect for a wedding cookbook or bridal cookbook.
    Family Tree Abstract 1: Family tree covers are among our most popular. Here is an abstract family tree on yellow background.
    Family Tree Abstract 2: This is the same as Family Tree Abstract 1 except the family tree is on a white background 
    Irish Dreamtime: This cover with Irish Cross with Clover was submitted by Cookbook Editor Misty Baker and we loved it so much, we asked if we can share it with other family cookbook project editors.
    Pink Ribbon March: Pink Ribbon for the cure! If you are creating a fundraising cookbook for breast cancer awareness, this might be the cover for you!

    Blessed Food
    Champagne Toast
    Family Tree Abstract
    Irish Dreamtime
    Pink Ribbon March

  • How to Create a Family Cookbook

    How to Create a Family Cookbook


    Creating a treasured family cookbook has never been easier.  The Great Family Cookbook Project was developed to make the process easy to understand and accomplish.

    Here is an overview on the simple steps required to create a personalize family cookbook.

    1)      Establish an editor – The editor is the person who is responsible for getting things started and making sure they keep moving ahead. This person is also responsible for defining the project in terms of who to invite to participate, which recipes to include and when to publish the book.  Every project needs a go getter to get things done.

      2)      Determine the size of the project and set a deadline – If you are interested in a printed cookbook, you need to set how many recipes to ask for from each person and when you want them submitted by.  We are all busy and tend to put off what we can.  By asking for a specific number of recipes by a specific date – say a month or so in the future, you can get people to act on your request.

    3)      Invite other family members to contribute recipes – While some editors like to do it themselves, getting other people involved distributes the work and provides recipes that you may not have in your recipe box. We have developed an easy to use invitation tool to get the ball rolling.  All you need is each person’s name and email address.  For people without email addresses, we provide a simple letter for you to use to contact them.

    4)      Entering the recipes  – Everyone starts entering recipes and you enter your own favorite recipes and use the special request tool to ask for favorites that you don’t have – yet!  Reminder emails will be sent automatically as the deadline draws near.  If not enough recipes have been added by the deadline you can extend the deadline.

    5)      Start using the recipes – All of the recipes are immediately available online on the family Cookbook page.  One great way to show the benefits of the Great Family Cookbook Project is to start using some of the recipes and thanking the people who entered them!

    6)      Prepare to publish – Before you can publish your family cookbook, you need to begin the publishing process by freezing the content.  Members can still enter recipes and they will be available online and in future editions, but not for this edition.  The publishing tool will help you write a dedication, select a cover and choose printing specifications for your cookbook.

    7)      Order your copies – As editor, you order the books yourself — and your folks can use our pre-order tool to allow each contributor to tell you how many they’d like.  Most cookbook publishers require you to purchase at least 100 copies of your cookbook, we only requires 5 copies to purchased.

    8)      Enjoy your new personalized family cookbook – The finished product is delivered directly to your door. Give them as gifts,share them with friends, try new family recipes, keep adding to your online collection and be proud of your accomplishment for your family.

  • Why your recipe title is the most important part of your recipe


    Grandma’s Amazing Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

    Your recipe title is the single most important element of your recipe. This is because your title is a headline, and the headline in any type of content has one special and powerful property.

    Think about how you read a cookbook looking for a recipe to try.  You don’t start in the front and read every page like a novel then pick the one you want. No, you scan the pages looking for a photo or recipe title that catches your eye and looks interesting!

    Of all the elements in your recipe, the title has the greatest power for grabbing your readers’ attention and the greatest responsibility for enticing them to continue and read your recipe It follows that the better your title, the higher the chance of turning a recipe scanner into a recipe reader (and ultimately a recipe user).

    For a recipe title to be effective it needs to consider several things:

    Grab Attention – Like any headline you need to grab the readers attention.

    Describe the food being prepared – “Gruel” is one of my son’s favorite dishes, however it no one outside the family knows what it is. Including the main ingredient of the dish and even how it us prepared make the title more useful. “Baked Hamburger Gravy” would be a more descriptive title for our gruel.

    Be different and unique – If you have seen the recipe title before, it does not belong on your recipe!

    Include the source – In family cookbooks, certain people are associated with certain recipes. Grandma’s Apple Pie or Lou’s Lemon Bars help the reader image exactly what dish you are referring to. It just does not help anyone who is not at family gatherings!

    Sell the sizzle as well as the steak – This means to highlight the benefit, the reason why this recipe is worth making.

    Recipe titles that address cooking and eating needs are more likely to seduce the reader into the recipe itself. A good title clearly shows the reader which of their cooking and eating needs the recipe addresses. Every readers’ need is different. For example, it could be for something indulgent or something low fat, or something quick and easy or something sophisticated and thus involved, or something refined or something rustic.

    Consider the following recipe titles: ‘Soft and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies’, ‘Quick ‘n’ Easy Chocolate Chip Cookies’, ‘Grandma’s Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies’, ‘Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies’. Notice how each title addresses a different need and even appeals to different audiences. Quite simply, as the chocolate chip cookie examples show, it’s all down to the words you choose for your title.

    With a little thought and imagination, your recipe titles can stand out and make your readers give your recipes the attention they deserve.

    Bill Rice is Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect and share food memories. Follow us on Facebook and Pinterest!

  • A Mother’s Gift


    We owe our mothers so much. They give us life, they nurture us, feed us and teach us.

    Our mothers are also often our first teachers in the kitchen. From them we learn table manners, what a family meal is and how it brings us all together. Our lessons start when we watch and mimic what we see in the kitchen and at the dinner table. As we grow and understand, we are taught by being allowed to become a “mother’s helper” and do some of the simpler tasks of getting the family meal prepared. Later in life, we use all of the years of learning by contributing our favorite family dishes when the family gathers at holidays, taking some of the pressure off of our mothers.
    As a mom, it is important to pass those life skills on to our children so they have the same foundation in the kitchen that we learned from our parents.
    Here are some simple ideas to consider when teaching the next generation how to prepare the family meal:
    Teach measurements– Find tasks for young ones that allow them to stay in one location, but keep them busy. Give them a measuring spoon and ask them to count how many teaspoons are in a cup of flour or water. Once they fill the cup, use it in your recipe.
    Name the tools – Many of the tools of the trade in the kitchen have specific names and specific uses. Teach the names of the tool as well as their purpose in preparing the meal. That way when you ask for a wisk you don’t get a potato masher!
    Plan meals together– For most families, dinner usually includes a main dish or entre, a side dish or two providing a starch and vegetable, and if we are lucky a dessert. Discuss why certain side dishes go together and how to plan a well-balanced meal.
    Use recipes – Many mothers have made their favorite family recipes so many times, that they don’t even use a recipe any more or they never had one from their mother. Trial and error can come later, to start have a set of family recipes that can be used to provide step by step instructions to a young chef. If you don’t have them, write them down as you make a dish and start collecting them.
    A great way to help mom collect and share her family recipes is to help her create a family cookbook. The Family Cookbook Project (www.FamilyCookbookProject.com) offers a gift certificate that can printed out and included in a Mother’s Day card. This gift will help any mom create an easy online family cookbook that can then be printed and shared for generations to come.
    Mom’s can also give themselves a gift to help preserve their family food traditions. By creating a family cookbook and collecting your family recipes, you will be creating a helpful guide for future generations.

    Bill Rice is Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect and share food memories. Follow us on Facebook and Pinterest!

  • Tips to Keep Your Cookbook Contributors Motivated


    As with any family project, getting everyone to contribute can be a challenge, especially if they have not seen the end product beforehand.

    Here are some tips to keep your contributors motivated:

    The more the merrier – Be sure to include everyone, not just the great cooks. Everyone likes to be asked to participate and the more you invite, the more recipes you’ll likely get. To add contributors and send an email invitation, > Use the Invitation Tool

    Set a reasonable deadline – Set the submission deadline on the “Project Information Editor” page, but don’t set it too far in the future. We all tend to put off whatever we can and contributing recipes is often one of those things. A month is usually enough time to give everyone to find the recipes they want to contribute and get them entered. Two things to remember: most of the recipes will come in just in time for the deadline and second, you can always extend the deadline if you want more recipes.
    Send regular updates – Use the Reminder Tool to email some or all of your contributors on a regular basis. Remind them of the deadline and ask them to meet a specific goal, like “please add one or two recipes to each category”.
    Target the biggest recipe boxes – Every family has a handful of people who are known for their cooking (you are most likely one of them in your family!). Send a personal message to them either using the remainder tool or reaching out by telephone, Facebook or with a personal visit. People are flattered when their skills are recognized. Let them know the cookbook would not be complete without their contributions.
    Ask for specific recipes – Send a reminder to everyone asking for a specific recipe from your family’s past that will get everyone thinking of past gatherings. Include your memories of that dish or the person who created it. It might help remind everyone why putting together a family cookbook is important.
    Use social media – As you add your own recipes to your family cookbook, it is easy to post them to Facebook or pin them to Pinterest. Sharing your recipes this way shows other family members that you are contributing and shows them they should as well.
    Bill Rice is Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect and share food memories. Follow us on Facebook and Pinterest!
  • Scanning Recipes into a Cookbook

    Scanning Recipes into a Cookbook

    Many of us have old recipe boxes that contain many many recipes that are written in the handwriting of someone from the past that we would like to preserve and include it our cookbook. 

    At FamilyCookbookProject.com, you can scan a recipe, personal letter or other family treasure and include it in your cookbook very easily. Here’s how: First you need to scan the recipe card or find someone who can do this for you. Many people have home scanners that are very easy to use – or know someone who has one. 

    When scanning, make sure the scanner saves the image as a JPEG file (check the settings). If it saves it as a PDF, you will need to open the PDF and “save as” a JPEG. Another setting you need to check is the image quality. Usually 150 to 300 DPI (Dots per Inch) is high enough for including in your cookbook. 

    Scanning actually creates a photo image of your recipe card that we can import into your cookbook software. Now your scanned image can be simply placed into your cookbook as you would any other photo.  

    Collections of Scanned Recipes 

    Sometimes family cookbook editors was their entire cookbooks to be a collection of scanned recipes. While not impossible, this can be a lot of work for the editor. 

    The problem with scanned recipes is that the cookbook software system can not read the text in the image to create titles and indexes and other parts of the cookbook. The computer just sees them as photos. 

     So you have two options: 

    You can include the scanned images as photos attached to recipes that you have typed into the system. This way the original item is included above the typed version. I don’t know about you, but my mother’s cursive writing is not always the most easy thing to read (sorry mom) and recipe cards are often smudged with food from meals passed and not always easy to read. 

    The other option is to enter just the title of the recipe and it’s category and leave the rest of the fields on the “add a recipe” form blank. This will give you the title of the recipe and allow an index to be created. Next upload the scanned image of the recipe and it will appear with the recipe title.

    Bill Rice is Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect and share food memories. Follow us on Facebook and Pinterest!

  • Who Buys Cookbooks?

    Who Buys Cookbooks?

    According to Publisher’s Weekly, a publishing trade publication, Cookbooks are selling like hotcacks!

    Here are some statistics from 2012 cookbook sales.

    Perhaps not surprisingly, more women buy cookbooks than men; around 69% of cookbook buyers are women, whereas 31% are men.

    And according to Bowker Market Research, 27% of cookbook buyers are in the 30–44 age range. The two next-older groups (45–54 and 55–64) account for 36% of cookbook customers (with 18% each). Those over 65 make up 15%. 
    Breaking down cookbook buyers by household income, 31% come from households earning $25,000–$49,000 a year.
    Hardcover cookbooks still outsell all others, but as a portion of total unit sales, hardcovers dropped from 49% in 2011 to 42% in 2012. And e-book sales more than doubled, up from 9% to 22%.
    And where are those cookbooks sold? Amazon, by a wide margin—its percentage of all cookbook sales nearly doubled, from 18% to 36%.
  • How to sell your cookbook for profit

    How to sell your cookbook for profit

    Cookbooks are one of largest categories of books to be sold each year.

    Family cookbook editors often would like to sell their cookbooks as well. Sometimes it might be just to family members to help cover the cost of printing, other times the cookbook is used as a fund rasier for a charitable event like a cancer fundraiser, a school fundraiser or a church fundraiser.  

    One thing that helps when selling your cookbook is having an ISBN number and bar code. This is required by many book sellers, including Amazon.com. You can purchase this on your own of as part of a Sellers Kit from family Cookbook Project. 

    no matter what the reason you want to sell your cookbook, here are some help hints to help you successfully sell your cookbook:

    Accept Pre-Orders - When ever possible, you want to sell as many of your cookbooks before you have printed them. This helps you better determine how many cookbooks you will need to have printed. Remember, the bigger the print order, the lower the cost per book and the higher the profit on each book can be.

    Start with your contributors - The people who have submitted recipes to your cookbook are a natural audience for buying your cookbook. Therefore the more people you get to contribute, the more people you have buy it for gift giving and sharing. FamilyCookbookProject.com makes this easy be including a pre-order tool in your editor's account. You can use this to allow contributors to preorder their cookbooks.  

    Local Bookstores - Your neighborhood bookstore, even the big chains like Barnes and Noble, often will accept books, including cookbooks, from local authors. They might even have a section dedicated to local interest. Ask to talk to a manager and see what they require to carry your book. 

    Event marketing - Many communities have different events that you can attend and promote your cookbook. It might be a book signing at the public library, a table outside the local supermarket, or at a craft fair.  

    OurCookbooks.com - Everyone that prints their cookbook with the Family Cookbook Project automatically can list their cookbook for sale on the website OurCookbooks.com. This site allows you to set your price and tell friends and family members how to buy your cookbook either by credit card or by sending you a check.

    Amazon.com - This well-known website sells more of everything, including books! If you are serious about selling your cookbook online, this is the best place to do it. Check out the Family Cookbook Project Sellers Kit for details on how to get your cookbook listed on Amazon.com.

    Social Media - Make sure you use your social media accounts, like Facebook, Google+ Twitter and/or Pinterest to get the word out about your cookbook. People who know you and who know how well you cook are a great audience and are likely to want to buy your cookbook. Create a online page for your cookbook, like on OurCookbooks.com, and then use social media to promote  it.
     
     

    Bill Rice is Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect and share food memories. Follow us on Facebook and Pinterest!

     
  • How to make a bridal cookbook

    How to make a bridal cookbook

    Here is a great idea next you need to plan a bridal shower for a friend or family member - a bridal cookbook! 

    One thing every new bride to be needs is great recipes to feed her family. Both families as well as friends can help get this started by contributing recipes as part of a bridal shower!

    Here's how to do it:

    When you send out your bridal shower invitations, include a link to your family cookbook project cookbook, use the Invitation Tool and add everyone's email. This will send everyone a link that will allow them to contribute their recipes. Set a deadline for entering recipes about three weeks from when the invitations are sent. Remember people will also wait until the deadline!

    Get both of the mother's to contribute the most recipes if possible. This way both the bride and groom with have lots of recipes that they grew up with in their cookbook. Using Family Cookbook Project's Custom Categories Tool, you can even create a special category for each mom's recipes.

    As the recipes are being entered, start planning how the cookbook will look.

    Cover - Family Cookbook Project offers several cookbook covers specifically for bridal cookbooks or wedding cookbooks. You also can create a custom cover with the name of the cookbook and a photo of the couple.

    Write an introduction - The best bridal cookbooks will have an introduction written by the individuals giving the bridal shower.  An introduction can be used wish the couple well wishes and to talk about the importance of family.

    Add Photos - Photos can help bring your cookbook to life. You can add photos of the lucky couple on top of recipes, or create custom pages to highlight photos of the bride and groom as they were growing up and while they were dating.

    Finally, it is time to print your cookbook. Make sure you give yourself enough time to order your cookbooks and have them printed, at least 3-4 weeks if possible. Be sure to order enough copies for each attendee as well as several extra copies for family members that can not attend the event.

    For the event, make some of the dishes from bridal cookbook and serve them at the event. Include a place card with the dish name and include the page number from the cookbook. 
     
    Finally, if you are looking for a great wedding favor, try creating a Wedding Cookbook for your family and friends! 
     
     

    Bill Rice is Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect and share food memories. Follow us on Facebook and Pinterest!