You’ve got it all put together, you’ve had it checked for miscellaneous errors, and checked your index pagination. Are you going to print it all yourself? If you’re only making a few copies, that is certainly an option, but also a pain if you’re going to use double-sided pages. Have you decided how you’re going to bind it? If you use report covers, they’re not too expensive if you’re only doing a few. Three-ring binders also work but are expensive. (If you use them, buy sheet protectors for the pages, or the ink may lift off the pages and stick to your binder covers, unless you buy archival safe binders.) We were lucky; my husband had binding equipment in his office, and we just had to purchase the supplies.

Having Someone Else Publish It*

If that’s not an option for you, OfficeMax or Kinko’s can do the copying and binding for you, and both of those businesses have an online ordering option. Your choices are limited since there aren’t as many options with them, and you have to do all the work, whereas with a publisher, they can do they typsetting for you.

There are several cookbook publishers that cater to families and fundraising organizations. Here are some of the larger ones:

Cookbook Publishers, Inc., minimum order: 100
Very slick and professional publishing kit; lots of options.

Fundcraft, minimum order: 200 (original program), 100 (quick & easy, fewer options)
They are really focused on the fundraising, as their name suggests.

G&R Publishing, minimum order: 100
Very friendly; helpful information especially with regard to fundraising.

Gateway Publishing Co., Ltd., minimum order: 100 (they also haved a Canadian office)
Their materials have a more personal feel to them than some of the others.

HeritageCookbook.com, minimum order of 5
This new company has a lot going for it: there are a number of things families can do to personalize their cookbook. The owner is as passionate about helping families as Athena Publishing is. “We allow unlimited photos - no extra hidden costs and no extra time involved as the customer submits them themselves. Photos go in as easily as text. We print in B&W and color in 10-15 business days - faster if necessary (no added cost). Customers print out their file themselves - no proofing cost or time wasted. The owner is a phone call away for advice. We will customize the cookbook with leather binding and just about anything you might want. Just ask.”

Morris Press Cookbooks, minimum order: 200
After several requests, I finally received their publishing kit. Like Cookbook Publishers, it’s very slick and professional.

Rasmussen Company, minimum order: 200 (they also have a Canadian office)
This publisher might be one of the easiest to deal with (very simple order form), but don’t offer as many options.

*Updates/Issues
Occasionally, businesses go out of business, or there are other assorted problems. Here are two that have come to my attention:

Athena Publishing, Inc.
A couple of people have contacted me with issues regarding Athena. Email isn’t being answered or bouncing back, phone calls are not being returned. This is a family-run business, and Rachel is wonderful, but it looks like you will have to consider other options for publishing. If you have any news regarding this publisher, please let me know! (4/22/07)

Walter’s Publishing
Walter’s Publishing is no longer publishing cookbooks! I do not have an explanation from the company as to why, but this is no longer an option for families seeking to publish their cookbooks.

If you have had any trouble with any of these publishers, or want to sing their praises,
please feel free to pass your comments along, and I will include it here.

If that’s the route you take, you may consider asking your family to kick in a little on the cost, unless you can afford to eat it all yourself. (If you’ve used a different publisher than these, please feel free to recommend them - or not! Just send me an email.) Please note: I self-published; I didn’t use any of these publishers and cannot personally vouch for them.

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Options to Publishing

If your family is technologically savvy, you could put the cookbook onto a CD, and save it as a PDF. That way, if someone wanted to print it out, they would get the nice clean page breaks you intended, and their word processor wouldn’t reformat everything if they don’t have a particular font installed.

Another 21st century idea is to put the thing online as a website. You don’t have to be a web designer to produce a good-looking and usable website, and there are plently of free hosting services.

If your recipe cards are on 4x6-inch cards, they can go into photo albums (see below), making sure they’re archive safe. If you have long recipes, rather than writing on the back, write the continuing instructions on a second (or even third!) card. These can be printed out from your computer using special perforated cardstock and a template. If you are only planning on making a few cookbooks, you could give everyone you request recipes from the cards, and ask them to make 5 copies of each recipe they give you. Or, make color photocopies of the cards if you’ll have more cookbooks than 5 or 6.

Scrapbook cookbooks have gotten some attention lately in a marvelous book Scrapbooking with Recipes (see my Bibliography page for more information). While that would be a fun way to make a single cookbook, it’s really impractical to mass produce, unless you photocopy the pages, which limits you to pages that are 8.5 x 11-inches and excludes the larger 12 x 12-inch pages. Also, such keepsakes really don’t belong in the kitchen where all manner of things could be spilled on it. (see below)

If you’re making a single cookbook for yourself, or for someone as a gift, hand-writing the recipes into a blank book is an option. I would recommend this only if you have neat handwriting! This would be a very time-consuming project.

You could also make your own little booklets with cardstock and paper (see below). This is only ideal for a short cookbook, with only 5 or so sheets of paper, which makes 4 “pages” per sheet, when folded in half.

Click on the picture to see a larger version.	Here are three examples of ideas you can use to make your cookbooks: Top left is a cookbook made from a photo album and 4x6-inch cards. Top right is a booklet tied together with ribbon. Left is an 8.5 x 11-inch scrapbook page with the recipe to make the pizza cake shown being presented to the birthday girl (my daugher, Diana).

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