New Years Menu

As I sit and ponder another year and look forward to the new one it dawns on me that once again food will be the center of attention for both New Year's Eve and New Years Day--not to mention all of the bowl games we are sure to watch. What better place to find "down home" recipes for each of these occasions in your community cookbooks?

After all, these recipes will be simple, call for ingredients that you have readily available in your pantry and will have been tested by a home cook. In fact, you know you can trust the recipe because someone had to sign their name to it before submitting and then it was tested at least three times before it made its way into the book.

Yes, your best bet for success on these sepcial occasions comes from using your friendly community cookbook collection.

Communities Thankful for Community Cookbooks

As we celebrate the true meaning of Christmas, the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ the Redeemer and the transition to a law of love and forgiveness from the old law of vengeance goodness reigns in most of our hearts. During this Christmas season communities and individuals who exist in those communities have benefited by either working to raise money for someone less fortunate or been the recipient of the money if they are in need. You see, when one is involved in a project that involves hard work to help others that person may receive as much or more benefit from the giving as the needy recipient gets from the receiving.

If you are a volunteer who is reading this and you have given of your time, energy or money to participate in a community cookbook project I want to personally thank you and wish you "peace on earth" as you celebrate this Christmas. Merry Christmas!

Publicity--Not Just for Launch

Often when a new community cookbook is launched it is accompanied with a great deal of fanfare. This is fabulous. That being said, the fanfare should continue regularly over the life of the cookbook. Publicity opportunities are available everywhere if you have someone on the lookout for them.

In today's world, most community cookbooks are launched in markets that have TV, Radio, Newspaper, Magazines, blogs, etc. Where do these people get their local content? Obviously, they use wire services for national stories but local citizens want to be aware of what is going on locally. This is where you can help them.

The link attached is a demo of FRP's own Sheila Thomas promoting More Recipes Worth Sharing on Nashville's Talk of the Town. Sheila has made similar appearances in Memphis and will be invited to attend other local interest media events as she gets the word out about her new book. Talk of the Town has regularly invited middle Tennessee FRP clients on the air because they need good content.

Are you maximizing these opportunities with your book?

http://www.newschannel5.com/story/13676653/recipe-4573-st-louis-gooey-butter-cake-wednesday-december-15-2010

Slate.com Article on Community Cookbooks

I read an interesting article recently on Slate.com regarding community cookbooks.

http://www.slate.com/id/2277327/entry/1001596/

Anyone getting ready to publish should read this article before getting started. One interesting thing that came out of it was a comment I read from a reader who had left behind her thoughts. That comment is below. I have no idea who this person is but she put in clear words what I have heard from individuals for the last 33 years.

"Community cookbooks are a guilty pleasure of mine. I don't think I have ever cooked an actual recipe from them, but they are so much fun to read. Every book seems to have roughly 20 different versions of broccoli casserole (frozen broccoli, Velveeta/Cheese Whiz, etc.) and a variety of desserts made with crumbled cake mix, Cool Whip, and cream cheese. They can be educational as well. I recall reading an old one from the 1950s and asking my mother what oleo and a #2 can were. "

Community Cookbooks as Ice Breakers

Robin and I have some new neighbors across the street and have been getting to know them casually through brief chats when we run into each other outdoors. Yesterday, we had friends from Kentucky coming over as well as our children; however, plans begin to fall apart around 1:30 as the snow began to increase. Our Kentucky friends called and had to cancel and we quickly called our girls to say that if the roads were too bad, don’t try to drive over.

Now the question was, what do we do with the food for 8 people? I suggested to Robin that we invite our neighbor, Susan, who we are good friends with. Robin then said, “Why don’t we see if Jerry and Judy would like to come”? (These are the new neighbors). I saw Jerry out going to his car, so I walked out and told him our situation and asked if they would like to join us. He said they would love to, but were on their way to a church program.

About 30 minutes later, there was a knock at the door; lo and behold, it was our new neighbors asking if they could still join us. They had gotten out of the subdivision only to find the roads too icy to continue and had turned around and come home. The interesting thing about all of this is that as we begin to chat about some of the places they had lived, we began to pull community cookbooks from those cities off of our shelf and talk about the foods and the communities themselves from each different area. Who ever knew that a community cookbook could also serve as a point of conversation?

The evening turned out to be a great success (all of the gluten free recipes were from community cookbooks) and the conversation was moved along through the subject of food and cookbooks.

Holiday Sales

If your organization or brand has a cookbook, I hope that you started gearing up for holiday sales months ago. So often I hear people say, "We want to get our book out before Christmas to take advantage of the holiday sales."

While I agree that holiday sales are the biggest and best of the year, making sure your title is out there at Christmas usually means having it published in July or August. Buyers make their gift store and book store promotions along with which products they want to promote before fall even arrives.

This is one area that an ounce of planning is worth tons of sales results. If by some chance you didn't already know this and got caught short this year, don't let it happen next year. Mark your calendars now to start planning for 2011 holiday sales on July 1, 2011.

Don't miss this important step in your cookbook development!

On several occasions I have alluded to or discussed how important great content is in a successful cookbook. One aspect of the content is the quality of the edited recipes. We must remember that while many “naturally-gifted” cooks don’t have to follow a recipe to the letter, there is a higher number who do. Therefore the recipes must be written so that anyone will feel confident in following the instructions.

I asked one of our copy editors at Favorite Recipes Press to develop a short bullet list of tasks we perform for our clients to ensure their recipes are written consistently and clearly. Here is what Alison had to say:

“While there are certainly many smaller tasks that go into each of these items, here are the major things FRP editors and the proofer will do for each cookbook."

1. Verify all the ingredients are listed in the order used in the method.

2. Edit and proof the recipes to ensure consistency in wording and style throughout the book.

3. We achieve this by using the same “voice,” which makes the recipes cohesive without being redundant.

4. Make certain the recipes make sense, allowing all levels of home cooks the ability to produce a fabulous dish. You’d be surprised how many submitted pie recipes don’t have a crust listed, or how many chicken dishes don’t list chicken as an ingredient. Because we all enjoy cooking, we are often able to ascertain whether ingredient amounts seem “off,” and we’ll verify with you if it’s correct.

5. Check all grammar and spelling in all recipe and non-recipe text.

It is certainly helpful if the people submitting the recipes have worked to get them in the best shape possible; however, this is a tall task if the recipes have come in from multiple contributors or sources. Even professional chefs are notoriously bad at writing clear and consistent recipe instructions.

If you asked 10 people to give you a recipe, how many different variables in the writing styles would you get back? My guess is 10. Some would list ingredients in order and others would not. Some would abbreviate others not. Some would call it "ketchup" and others would call it "catsup". You get the point. If you're getting ready to develop a community cookbook, do yourself a favor and make sure that you don’t cut corners. Hire a professional food editor or get this as a service from the publishing company.