It takes a lot to put together a cookbook. At FRP, we hold an annual seminar called Cookbook University where we train our Publisher’s on both the development and marketing of a cookbook. The event is widely attended, and one thing we have learned over the years is that some attendees get overwhelmed with what it takes to be successful.
Over the next few weeks, I will be posting articles on single author individuals who had a story to tell with their recipes, cooking and entertaining ideas and yet didn’t have a huge organization behind them to conduct the sales and marketing efforts. You will read about Betty Sims, Patty Gomez, Debbye Dabs, Holly Clegg, and others. Today’s story, however, is unique because it centers on new technology and a young college graduate with a dream.
Julie Hoffman graduated from Auburn University after just 3 ½ years rather than the traditional 4 (or for most today 5) years. With a full semester as a freebie and with no full time job in place Julie decided to write a cookbook. Having learned to cook at a young age and also having always loved cooking she had been amazed by how few of her college friends knew how to cook and plan meals. She had watched them “blow” their allowance for food well ahead of month’s end due to improper budgeting and planning.
Julie simply decided to do something about it. She wrote a manuscript titled College Cooking with Julie—having very little money to develop the book, she relied on a free lance photographer and designer to get the book ready to be printed. That is about the time that I met Julie.
She had just accepted a job in Brentwood, TN and wanted to get the book into print. I met with her and quickly figured out that while she was close having it complete, the book still needed just a bit of editorial work. Since Julie was on a “shoe string” budget she convinced her mom, Lorri, to do the editing. Lorri and I quickly became phone friends and I led her through a 101 course on how to re-write the recipes into a consistent style. She did a GREAT job and turned the manuscript back over to us a few short weeks later. We then indexed the book, fixed a few of the files and dealt with the original designer to “release some of the high resolution images.” That is another story in and of itself.
Remember that Julie is a recent college graduate with a new full time job. She had little spare time to develop a marketing and sales plan for 5,000—10,000 copies. With the new digital technology however we were able to print 300 copies inexpensively for her to get started. Since the original printing we have been back to press a couple of additional times for small print runs. Julie has appeared twice on Talk of the Town in Nashville, TN and is a “star” in Auburn, AL, home of her alma mater.
While Julie hasn’t turned a profit on her book yet she has created an asset for herself that she will ultimately profit from and be able to sell for years to come. She may feel the need to update the book from time to time but we all know that young people will go off to college untrained in cooking skills, meal planning, budgets or money management. Thanks Julie for showing us that one person can make a difference to the entire community of college students.
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