Making your own cookbooks from recipes gathered locally can be a great money maker or fundraising project. Here are a few tips to get you started.

Gathering Your Material:

First of all, of course, you will have to decide what region you want your cookbook to cover. Is it, for instance the region in which you live, or the south of France? Whichever you decide, it would be a great idea to gather as many recipes as you can, naturally, but also to collect historical or other interesting tidbits about the region in question, the area’s food, and even some of your sources.

High-quality photographs are also a must. Take a look at some of your favorite cookbooks just for the sake of example, and you will understand what we mean. There should be a compelling cover image, and photos of the region as well as the dishes and ingredients. No matter how great the food and recipes are, you will need to make your book as attractive as possible in order to create a great finished product.

Lets suppose for the sake of this article that you intend to create a cookbook that creates local interest in your town. Where will you get your recipes from? There are numerous options here. For instance, you could contact your local church and create an entire cookbook out of contributions from members and their spouses. Or, you could contact some well-known local chefs and see of they will contribute their favorite recipes that don’t fall within the genre of their restaurants.

Contact your proposed chefs/contributors, and ask them if they would like to participate. You may have to be persistent to get a response in the first place, and then to get their recipes. Set a deadline, and be as much as a pest as you think you an get away with in order to get the material that you would like for your cookbook. Make sure that you also ask them for a little bit of biographical information or other anecdotes to help make your cookbook a more interesting read.

Edit and Organize Your Content:

Once you have received your recipes, generated the supplementary text and gathered photographs, you can start to organize them. If you are familiar with such layout programs as Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress, great. If not, you should be able to do a decent job in MS Word.

Make sure to take the time to check the recipes for spelling errors and clarity, and if you have the time, go ahead and prepare as many as you can in order to make sure they are correct and easy to follow.

Printing and Binding:

You should have the pages printed in a four color process if you are using color photographs. As fr as binding, there are numerous options. Plastic comb and spiral coil are two great choices that allow your users to read the cookbook in a hands-free fashion, which is very handy for cooking. These styles also make for a sturdy book that should stand up to rough handling. The machines that do this type of binding are surprisingly easy to use and inexpensive, so if you intend to create more cookbooks in the future, you may want to look into making a purchase to save money over a printing and binding service.

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