This book is a fundraiser, after all. It doesn’t serve the organization to think small. And let’s not forget that cookbooks are the second-best selling book genre after mysteries. (Have you noticed how many mysteries feature recipes at the end? Coincidence? I think not.)
Some people are timid about the price, recalling another cookbook 30 years ago. “We had trouble getting rid of all the copies.”
That’s backward. The question should be “What was the return on investment?” Before they scrapped the remainders, how much money did the book make?
Here’s why this project is different:
- It’s not your ordinary community cookbook. The cookbook has delicious recipes like sachertorte. It also offers offbeat ones like “goo on rice,” inspiring witty prose, if I do say so myself.
- Many people don’t read cookbooks for the recipes, but for the text that sets the recipes in the local culture. We have a lot of that, as well as pictures, not of the food, but of the community.
- The text doesn’t center around the church, but around the community, Summit, NJ, which should trigger wider demand.
- Yeah, yeah, we should be asking what recent local cookbooks sell for, but I don't think you can compare a collection of recipes to our value-added production. Honestly, if Tabasco still offered its community cookbook award, we'd enter this book, after making sure we had quite a few recipes with Tabasco in them.
- Besides me, the committee has experienced marketers with retail experience. We know how to push and pull, but do we know how to price? We’ll find out soon enough. Advance orders will be available next month, after our pricing meeting.
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