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    How to Self-Publish Your Church Cookbook

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    Have you seen church cookbooks from other churches and wondered what would be involved in publishing your own? You’re in luck! This article will tell you everything you need to know to get started on publishing your church’s cookbook. You will be pleasantly surprised by how cost-effective and simple it can be-and by how much money you can make for much-needed programs.

    The first step in publishing your church cookbook is to determine the initial budget. You want to be sure you establish a start-up budget that is not overly optimistic. It should be based on real numbers you obtain through research. You will be printing and binding the publication yourself, so you will need to purchase paper and binding equipment. There are many types of binding machines available. You can look into plastic comb, plastic coil, UniBind, VeloBind, thermal, ProClick, and wire binding varieties. While all of the different varieties offer their own benefits, the most common binding for church cookbooks are plastic coil, wire, or plastic comb binding. The machines and supplies vary in price based on their capabilities and capacities. Be sure to choose a machine that can handle the volume of pages you are planning to publish.

    In addition to assembling the right equipment, you will need to organize a project team to help you organize the cookbook. Begin by choosing a chairperson or co-chairpersons to lead the project. Once you have established leadership for the whole project, the next step is to divide it into smaller sections or tasks and assign responsibilities to members of the team. You can divide responsibilities according to document sections or according to task. For example, you can ask people to assume responsibility for the entire chapter on main dishes or desserts or you can divide people by tasks such as typing, editing, creating the table of contents, or designing the cover
    . Some combination of both approaches may yield the best possible results.

    Obviously, to have a cookbook, you will also need recipes. Place a call for recipes in the church newsletter and on the church’s website. Be sure to list the various recipe categories you seek. You will also want to publish any rules you may have for submissions, such as limits on the number of recipes per person or the number of submissions per person per category. You can save some time and frustration by asking contributors to email you the recipes. If they are emailed, you won’t have to spend time typing them. For some older or less technologically proficient parishioners, you should offer to type their handwritten recipes.

    As you begin to sort and type the recipes, you should establish a style guide to maintain consistency across the sections of the publication. The more consistent your choices in font styles and sizes, margins, and the like, the more professional looking your cookbook will be.

    Once you have assembled all of the recipes and sorted them into chapters or sections, you will want to make a table of contents. People love to see their names in print, so consider listing the contributor’s name next to the recipe’s title in the table of contents. Check and double-check spelling and formatting. Word processing programs will catch many mistakes, but not all of them. There is no substitute for a personal review by an expert speller and grammarian. Ask an English teacher from the congregation to lend his expert eye to the editing the cookbook.

    Print the covers and pages and bind the cookbook using the binding equipment you selected. Advertise the cookbook on the church website and in the bulletin. Set up a table at the busiest church events to sell copies of the cookbook. Encourage parishioners to buy copies for themselves and as gifts for their friends and families.

    Self-Publishing Your Poetry – A Few Tips

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    Being your own publisher is easier than you think. Here are some things to consider.

    Gathering Your Material

    The first thing to give some thought to when you are going to self publish your poetry is whether your book will contain a central theme or not. Often, poetry books are centered around a certain time, place or person in the poet’s life. This is a great way to put your book of poetry together, as it is often easier for readers to connect to your work when there is a theme for them to follow. You can also organize very different themes into chapters. There are, of course, no strict rules to follow. You can put your book together however you choose.

    One thing you might want to do is to gather some of your favorite poetry books together and do a little research. Other than the poetry itself, what is it that makes the book work for you? Do the poems flow from one to another, exploring a theme? Do they jump all over randomly like a stream of consciousness? Not that you will be imitating the book in question, just taking notes on how the separate works play off each other to create a poetry collection.

    Putting Your Poems Together

    Now that you have decided on an overall theme, you can start to pick and choose the poems you would like to include in your book. Choosing from your own work can be a daunting task, so you may want to enlist the help of some trusted writer-friends, or others whose opinions you have some faith in. Once you have gone through the process of deciding what stays and what goes, you can start to compile your poems into one word processing document, choosing a nice, readable and appropriate font.

    Now you can write yourself a short bio (including, if you like, a small thumbnail photograph) and any dedications you’d like to make. You should also create a table of contents, including the names of the poems and any chapters you have organized them into.

    You should also give some serious thought to including artwork such as photography or drawings in your poetry book. If you have an artist friend or acquaintance whose work you admire but who is also struggling for exposure, you can do sort of a joint venture by creating a book that includes both of your work.

    Design a cover with a compelling title and artwork.

    Printing and Binding

    You will want to do the highest quality printing that you can afford. If you have decided on a four color process cover, you will want to have it printed digitally, and give some though as to what kind of binding you will be using.

    If your poetry book is more of a simple chapbook, you can simply fold you pages and staple them in the middle. If you are going for something a little more permanent, you could take a look into thermal (hardcover or softcover) binding, which is inexpensive and easy to do yourself.

    Twin loop wire binding is another option, if you want something a little more elegant than a chapbook, but don’t feel that a hardcover is quite right for you. In all of the above cases, the machines that do the binding are fairly inexpensive and easy to use, and will save you money over a print shop if you plan to keep self publishing.