The Family Cookbook Project

Category: How to Ideas

  • A Great Idea for your Family Reunion – Create a Family Cookbook!

    A Great Idea for your Family Reunion – Create a Family Cookbook!



    The Donovan Family Reunion

    Few gatherings are as meaningful and memorable as family reunions. As families grow and people go their own ways, family reunions serve to bring us back together. They’re a chance to recombine, share experiences and renew connections.

    One great idea to make your family reunion truly memorable is to create a family cookbook. Everyone knows the best thing about a family reunion is the food! Everyone brings their favorite dishes and shares stories and food and fun.

    There are two different schools of thought on the best way to create a family reunion cookbook. You be the judge on what is best for your family.

    Reunion Specific Cookbook

    Since reunions take a fair amount of time to plan and often center around a theme, choosing a theme centering on food can be a natural choice. Family members are asked to contribute their favorite recipes to a family cookbook that can be distributed at the event. You set a date and ask everyone to contribute the recipes for the food they will be bringing to the event. The cost of printing the cookbooks is included in the cost of the event and everyone receives one the day of the event. This is also a great way to build buzz for your event!

    Reunion Showcase Cookbook

    The other way families create family cookbooks at family reunions is to use the event to show a sample of what a family cookbooks looks like and collect email addresses used to invite contributors.  People will see your excitement and want to participate as well. Find your favorite dishes at the event and ask whoever made them to contribute the recipe to the cookbook. They will be flattered that you asked and look forward to participating.  Set a deadline that will allow you to have your family cookbooks complete so people can give them as gifts for the holidays.

    Some things to consider when creating your reunion cookbook

    During the planning process, many families are looking for a way to communicate effectively via email. Adding lots of people to the sender line of an email list can result in people being left off and not being able to contact specific people or subsets of the list. FamilyCookbookProject.com can help make this easier. Use our Reminder Email Tool and you make it easy to contact some or all of your family members.

    Don’t wait until the last minute. When planning a family reunion cookbook, the event is a fixed date and comes and goes whether your cookbook is ready or not. Now is the time to start working on a family reunion cookbook if your event is in the summer.

    Remember to invite everyone to participate, not only the great cooks! This cookbook is for all the family members so it best to invite everyone to contribute – even if it is only a recipe or two.

    Finally remember family members no longer with us by including their recipes as well. Family cookbooks help to tell the story of our families. Contributors can be not only the present, but from the past 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!

  • 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%.

  • Standard Measurements for Your Personal Cookbook

    For many generations, recipes were handed down by word of mouth from mother to daughter. Recipes consisted of a little of this and a smidgin of that. The food always came our great - or at least that is what we told out mothers!

    Today things are different. Computers make is easy to write down our recipes and share them with friends and family members over the Internet. However it is important to remember that cooking has a language of its own. It is a language of ingredients and measurements and directions.

    I believe the most important of these is measurements. If we did not have standard measurements for cooking, "T" could be a teaspoon, a tablespoons, a thimble full or a truck load!

    Here are a list of Standard Measures Abbreviations commonly used in recipes.


    teaspoon........................... tsp.
    tablespoon........................ tbsp. or T.
    cup................................... c.
    quart................................. qt.
    ounce............................... oz.
    pint................................... pt.
    gallon............................... gal.
    inch................................... in.
    pound................................ lb.
    milliliter............................... ml
    liter...................................... L
    milligram............................. mg
    gram.................................... g
    kilogram .............................  kg
    millimeter...........................  mm
    centimeter..........................  cm
    meter..................................  m
    Celsius................................. C
    Fahrenheit......................... F
     
     
    Another important thing about standard measurements is that they don't work if you don't use them! Including an ingredient in your recipe without a specific amount is likely to leave someone trying the recipe for the first time scratching their head and wondering what to do. Remember know one will know unless you include it in your recipe.
     
     
     
     
     
     

    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 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!

     
  • Removing Blank Pages From Your Family Cookbook

    Removing Blank Pages From Your Family Cookbook

    One of the questions we get a lot as Cookbook Publishers is "how do I remove the blank pages in my cookbook?"  

    It seems that when people preview their family cookbook on FamilyCookbookProject.com, they see the cover, then a blank page, then the title page, then another blank page, and so on. They want those blank pages eliminated to lower the cost of printing.

    In publishing, especially cookbook publishing, a cookbook needs to be laid out in a specific way in order for the most important pages to be on the right side when the book is opened. Think about it, Whenever you open a book, the title page is the first thing you see and it is always on the right page of a two page spread. Same goes for the Introduction, Table of Contents and the section dividers.

    On FamilyCookbookProject.com, if you create a preview cookbook PDF, you want to open it in your Adobe Reader program and select the option to view  "Facing Pages" or "Double-up" (look under the View menu), you'll see how the pages back up to each other. 

    Now with that said, there is no reason why those pages have to be blank. The inside front cover can have a family photo photo or bio of the cookbook editor. The same goes for other blank pages as well. If your introduction is one page and after it is a blank page, consider writing more, adding a photo or even making the text larger to fill up that extra space.

    One benefit form using FamilyCookbookProject.com is that we provide a complete set of handy kitchen information that can be used on the back of the recipe category dividers with the touch of a button.
     
     
     
     

    Bill Rice takes more than 20,000 photos a year and 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!

     
  • Make your own eCookbooks

    Make your own eCookbooks


    iPad Cookbooks

    Family Cookbook Project makes it easy for you to access your personalized cookbook or custom family cookbook on an iPad, iPhone, Kindle, Nook or any other eReader. You can have a digital recipe book for your very own.
    This is available to everyone who wants to create a family cookbook and opens an account on www.FamilyCookbookProject.com. Creating cookbooks has never been easier using our online cookbook software.
    Once you have entered your recipes, selected a cookbook cover (or created your own using a cookbook cover template), added photos of the food or family members you will be ready to publish your cookbook.
    Kindle Cookbook
    To create an eCookbook, simply create a high Resolution PDF of your cookbook and save the file to your computer. This file is designed to adapt to the screen size of any eReader you may use. Many people use PDFs on their Kindle or Nook eReaders.
    If you want to convert your PDF to the widely accepted ePub format used by most readers, you can simply go to a website like Online-Convert.comand upload your cookbook PDF. In seconds, they will convert the cookbook to ePub format at no additional cost.
    Family Cookbook Mobile App
    Family Cookbook App
    Another way to access your family recipes on your mobile device is with the Family Cookbook Recipe App.
    The Family Cookbook Project online recipe box makes it easy for Family Cookbook Project users to browse and use their recipes in their mobile device. Tools include our blog at your fingertips, latest recipes from our recipe database, notes for in the kitchen, articles on how to create a recipe,  and cookbook making, a tip calculator and more! Users can enter their recipes at www.familycookbookproject.comand have access anywhere!
    The Family Cookbook Recipes was named the Best Publishing Mobile App in the Web Marketing Association’s 2013 MobileWebAward Competition.  
    Designed for use on the Apple iPhone or iPad, the free app can be downloaded at the iTunes App Store. 
    Designed for use on the Android mobile devices, the free app can be downloaded at the Google Play Store.

    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!

  • Anatomy of a Great Recipe

    Anatomy of a Great Recipe

    One of the keys to a great family cookbook is to have great recipes that your family and friends have come to love. Here are some simple tips to help you capture the magic of the food you make.

    1. Use catchy titles. Using a catchy title will make your recipe sound more interesting. It is more interesting to people when they see the title “Gooey Triple Chocolate Cake” rather than just “Chocolate Cake”. When you are writing a title for a recipe, try to think of not only what the final dish will be, but what makes it special as well. 

    2. Include photos. Using images in your recipes can allow the person reading your cookbook to see what the final dish will look like and give then a guidepost to follow. Next time you make one of your special dishes, snap a quick photo and add it to your recipe the next time you log in.

    3. Be specific with your Ingredients. For many cooks, include a can of crushed tomatoes in your recipe and they know exactly what you mean or maybe not. Tell them to include a 12oz can of crushed tomatoes and everyone will know exactly what your recipe needs.

    4. Use step by step instructions. You might have made this recipe a thousand times, but someone new will need detailed directions for how to do it. Remember to include pan sizes, cooking times, the order that ingredients are added and how to tell when a dish is done. Also adding how many servings a recipe can make will help with meal planning. 

    5. Add personal notes. One of the things that make a family cooks so important is that it helps to capture the family traditions. Include a note with each recipe about how you first were introduced to the recipe and when it is typically served in your household. It makes the recipe more interesting and more meaningful to later generations.


    Chip Lowell 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!