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Stems from my experience putting the Joe Songbook together. I'd suggest doing this the same way. (I do graphic design work, remember. It used to be my business.)

Each of the songs in the Songbook was a word-processing file (MS-Word or WordPerfect); I dumped those into PageMaker, added photos, table of contents, a discography, and links to the songs online, and then converted the whole package to an Acrobat (*.pdf) file and put it on a CD. The 100-plus page book ended up only 1.6MB. Made labels for the CDs, covers and inserts for a standard CD case. Production costs ended up way cheap, which is what I wanted. And no paper--just a computer file configured so anybody could open it, read it, and print out anything they want.

I could do the cookbook the same way. It'd be easy. I'd want the recipes in word-processing documents, and photos of the Whatever-It-Is (*not* photos off the Web--those don't "Acrobat" well). More photos to fill space if and as needed. Since this'd be a promotional tool for the *writers* (since we's all just plain writers who just plain can cook), I would want to include photos of the cooks, and links to sites where one could hear and maybe buy) their music. I'd want photos for the cover, inserts, and label, too. End product would be like the Joe Songbook--an Acrobat file on a CD in a professional-looking case.

There you have it. Might there be any interest in something like this? Production costs would end up under five bucks per, I think. Y'all could sell 'em for a lot more, I think.

Joe
It would seem to me that if this was the way to go we'd just keep it as an acrobat file and sell it direct as a download and cut $5 out of the cost leaving far more for the fundraising project (and saving a lot of wasted CD's etc.)

As for the format, most folks want an actual book to have in the kitchen while you are actually cooking.. sure.. you can print it out but there's more appeal in an actual book I think. However if book costs are too much, there are books on demand options as well that could be utilized. Or we could make it a living breathing cookbook and actually make it pages on the web which people buy memberships too and that way it could be constantly updated.

Lots of options, but I think we need more recipes and we also need someone to actually test all these out. That might be the trickiest part of it all. I've also been thinking of some other creative/fun themes to through out this.

That's my thoughts,

Brian
Brian, you are right. Offer it as a download, and you have saved *all* production costs. What I've noticed with the Songbook is some people still want the physical CD in its case with the pretty pitchers on the cover. I do not know how big a percentage of the market that is--and since I haven't sold any (yet), I also don't know how much of a premium they'd pay for having the physical thing.

Joe
I wasn't quite sure how to do it. I kind of wanted a CD that could show the recipes and photos but I also wanted the people who donated the recipes to be able to put a sample of their music or other creative works on the CD. A website would handle that very well too, but how could we get people to pay for it?

We could put the recipe's and photos on loose leaf cards (like recipe cards come). That could take care of the book binding costs. They would just have to be shrink wrapped or something like that.

I personally like the idea of an inexpensive download. Although I like pretty books to look at, I prefer working with index sized recipe cards in the kitchen or to just print off the page I like and work with that. I get very messy when I cook. smile

Yes, we do need testers. It would help if the cookbook would show up in the what's going on box. I had been trying to copy and paste the submitted recipes in an separate post but I got too busy.

I will try and continue to do it, but it's going to be a sporadic thing for me. I work 6 days a week, and I watch my little granddaughter, and my car isn't working so I have to walk a good distance to take the bus to go to work and to do shopping, so lately I haven't had much time. If anyone wants to take this project over, it's OK with me. I just thought it was a cool thing to do and I would love it if it could help JPF financially.
I have no idea why this board doesn't show up in the what's happening box... I've tried everything short of deleting it and starting over. It's only of only 2 glitches we've ever had on the boards that I couldn't fix (the other is the stuck post with the long interview with Dean on the general board.. nothing I can do short of deleting it will make it go away or be unstuck at the top for some reason and I really don't want to delete it).

Maybe when we finally get this updated to version 8.0 it will work right. The boards will look very different in general so hopefully we can have the same sidebar stuff without too much problem.

Brian
You had mentioned before that perhaps there is a limit to the number of forums that will show up in the shout box. Have you created any new forums after you created the cooking one? If not, maybe try making a new forum just to test and make a post in it. If the new one doesn't show any posts, then that may be the answer.
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