Creating a Cookbook with a Word Processor

The computer opens up worlds of possibilities for projects and at one point I made a German Recipes cookbook that was about 20 pages in length. I was sometimes going to two different German restaurants in the area and had an idea. The goal was to take the recipes that each already prepared over the course of a typical month and to produce a cookbook with those recipes. Being of German heritage this seemed like a natural fit for me. I don't speak or write German, but my brother does speak and write fluent German and his wife has worked as a translator from German to English and English to German.

The one restaurant was inside a mall and the other was a fee standing restaurant. Each had different but similar recipes. I started to work with the one in the mall and produced the cookbook. The idea was that the people that came to the restaurant would want to cook some of the same things at home. In addition there were other things of use in the book. It contained a Table of Contents, a description of Germany, a history of the restaurant, a page on safety while cooking, cooking terms, common measures and their equivalents, demographics of Germany, several main dishes, some breakfast dishes, a complete menu with prices, and some coupons.

The idea was to print this first version in a low number, then add more graphics, more digital pictures, and possibly the same items with instruction in German and English. The idea would be to print the recipe on one side of the page in English and on the next facing page in German. This would be fun for the Americans and Non-Germans to look at to see the German language and would also be fun for the German visitors to see in the English language. More important however is that the use of both languages would now open the sales of the cookbook to all English speakers and all German speakers. If this book were done very well it could become a big seller across the nation and perhaps the world. Cookbooks are very popular books often outselling many other types of books.

The sale of the book could be promoted through German-American clubs as a fundraiser with part of the sales profits going to the club or organization. As new versions of the book were produced these clubs could provide other recipes and information for the books and expand the process. Digital cameras were just becoming popular and I was trying to get both restaurants more involved. As the book expanded the link to the German market could become even more significant because the German market might be interested in some American made merchandise that might be marketed through the book and restaurant, the American market would definitely be interested in products from Germany. The sales of cookbooks and merchandise could expand to such an extent that the restaurant could potentially make more money from these sales than from the restaurant.

The free standing restaurant went out of business before even getting started. Many restaurants do fail in the first few years and times are particularly hard on restaurants at the present time. What many businesses fail to see is the way their business can grow beyond the physical walls of their building. This growth potential has been the result of computers and the internet. The store in the mall did produce one cookbook and it never went past this first cookbook, the potential is still there.

Many organizations simply need to consider how to make the possibility into a reality. You might use a variety of publishing programs or word processors to produce a cookbook. Churches often ask each member to bring in a recipe, take pictures of the members and then produce the cookbook. Some companies will do virtually all the work of production for the organization including binding of the cookbook. A church gains from the process because every member usually purchases a few copies and with a hundred members they could easily reach sales of 300 to 1000 cookbooks.

I would suggest printing the cookbook either as a standard 8 1/2 X 11 page or at 1/2 standard and then printed in landscape format. Once a master copy is produced it can be produced in quantity at local printers. Binding can be accomplished with wire or plastic and the machine to cut the holes for such binding are often available at printing locations. They can sometimes cut the holes in large stacks of paper at one time.

You may want to interview members of the organization for really personalized stories about heir recipe or their past. These stories can add a lot of interest to the cookbook. For example, my grandfather actually did come to America just after the war and told many stories about how he hated the war. You do not often hear about Germans that hated being part of that event in history. Some recipes were developed as a result of poverty, lack of fresh fruits and vegetables, famines, crop disasters etc. Oatmeal was originally not "people" food, it was developed from food for horses.