How To Make A Family Cookbook..........any Sites Or Ideas?

[angel-jd1]

While searching for my favorite peanut butter cookie recipe today, I came to realize that I have entirely TOO many printed out sheets of paper with recipes on them!! I want to organize them.

My ideal situation would be to print up a cookbook with all of my favorite recipes in it. The sites that I looked at today were all "pay" sites and you had to order so many books to even get it printed. Does anyone know of sites that let you make the book for free? I don't mind paying for the printing part.

Any other suggestions? I also thought about a 3-ring binder type situation.

Does anybody have a good software suggestion to make your own book?

Thanks for the help!!

-Jessica

[Lauren M]

I'm in a Publications Management program in graduate school, and am familiar with several sites that allow you to "self publish"/"print on demand" a book (ie - not going through a publisher, submitting proposals, etc.). All of the sites that I'm familiar with require that you pay per book, and depending on how many copies you want to print, that would affect the price. Most have a minimum order. You obviously have to pay for materials and the cost of printing. I guess I'm confused as to what your objection is?

By the way, 2 sites that I'm familiar with that (according to my professor) have good reputations are booksjustbooks.com and gorhamprinting.com. I believe both have minimum print runs. If you wanted to print just a few copies of your cookbook, perhaps you could look in your phone book for local printers and tell them what you're looking for - spiral binding, how many pages, etc?

- Lauren

[Cheri A]

I also have too many pieces of printed paper so I got a 3 ring binder and those plastic sheet protectors. I figured eventually I could categorize I am not looking for anything fancy, though

[Lauren M]

Another thought - if this is just for yourself and you only need 1 copy of your cookbook, couldn't you purchase and decorate a regular, old spiral notebook, type up and print out your recipes, punch holes in the papers, and put them in the binder? You could even use those page dividers to separate "appetizers", "dinners", "desserts", etc. This would be functional, albeit not the "prettiest" option.

- Lauren

[angel-jd1]

I'm in a Publications Management program in graduate school, and am familiar with several sites that allow you to "self publish"/"print on demand" a book (ie - not going through a publisher, submitting proposals, etc.). All of the sites that I'm familiar with require that you pay per book, and depending on how many copies you want to print, that would affect the price. Most have a minimum order. You obviously have to pay for materials and the cost of printing. I guess I'm confused as to what your objection is?

By the way, 2 sites that I'm familiar with that (according to my professor) have good reputations are booksjustbooks.com and gorhamprinting.com. I believe both have minimum print runs. If you wanted to print just a few copies of your cookbook, perhaps you could look in your phone book for local printers and tell them what you're looking for - spiral binding, how many pages, etc?

- Lauren

I'm not objecting to pay printing fees.......if you read my post it says so.

I don't mind paying for the printing part.

I realize that they have minimum numbers that must be ordered to justify printing. The lowest I have found so far was #5copies.

What I do object to is having to pay a $30-40 fee to join a site just to type in your recipes. Then paying a printing fee ontop of the site fee. To me, that is stupid.

I'll have to check out the sites you listed. Thanks for the help!

-Jessica

[eKatherine]

My recommendation is that you type the document up in Word. That's what I did. If you want it on a website, buy a domain, use simple html, and learn as you go. Publish each recipe on a separate page.People will be able to access all the recipes, but only print them up one at a time. That would make it possible for you to sell copies of the book to recoup your expenses.