Just thought I would share with you all something I am doing for Christmas this year. I finally got around to compiling most of my recipes that I have written on my website and put together a cookbook. I went over to cafepress.com and after quite a few hours/days of arranging and getting my cover art done, I was able to create a paperback cookbook that I can buy and give to friends and family for xmas gifts..
Basically, you can use their templates to get the arrangement right, pick a binding (I picked a wire binding cuz I like it when a recipe book lays flat), upload the images for the front and back cover, click submit and buy/sell your book..
It doesn't cost you anything until you actually buy a book. Basically when you go to set the price of your book, they tell you the MINIMUM you can charge (to cover their costs) and if you set it any higher than that, you keep the earnings over the costs.. They will then print the books to order.
So I set my price to the minimum, and basically it costs me about $11.50 per book. I am buying about 10 of them to give to some friends and family who enjoy cooking.
If you want to do it, you should get started soon because it takes a while to get it all together as you basically have to do all the arranging like:
- Making sure chapters start on the right.
- Using proper indents for left and right pages.
- Spell checking and re-reading your content to make sure there are no super errors.
- Getting your cover art together in the right size, DPI, etc..
I always used Cafepress for tshirts, mugs, and bumper stickers, but they really hooked me on this feature..