Selling Your Fundraising Cookbook

Cookbooks can be a great fundraising tool. Here are a few tips for getting your cookbook ready to publish, and for selling as many of the books as you can.

Cookbooks can be a great fundraising tool. Here are a few tips for getting your cookbook ready to publish and for selling as many of the books as you can.

Finishing Touches:

It should go without saying, but it is going to be said anyway: before you get to selling your cookbook, before you even print the final version, you need to go through the book with a fine tooth comb and find any and all grammatical and spelling errors. If at all possible, get a number of people with some sort of writing or editing experience to work on this project, or hire the services of a professional proofreader. Print the pages as they will appear in the final version so you can make adjustments for photo placement and margins and whatever else as well. If you are working with a printer or small publisher, they should be able to print up a sample copy for you to look at. Just remember that there is no worse feeling than having boxes and boxes of books that contain some egregious error, and your advertisers and sponsors will be very upset if their ads or pages contain any errors too.

Just remember, the more professional your cookbook looks, the easier it will be to sell, and the more successful it will be as a fundraising tool.

Your First Line Of Attack:

Fundraising cookbooks tend to sell well among those who contributed recipes to the book, because hey make great gifts and allow the contributors to show off a little bit. You may find that some contributors expect free copies of the cookbook for their contribution. If that is the case, just gent;y inform them that the cookbook was created to raise funds for your organization, and that you have a certain amount of costs to cover before the book actually starts to make money. This should be enough for most people, but if it doesn't work, simply tell them that once costs are covered they may have one cookbook for free. Of course, you can help to avoid this situation entirely if you state beforehand that no books will be given out for free.

Local Businesses:

Go back to the businesses that advertised in your cookbook, and if at all possible, ask if they will help you to sell the book in some way. In some cases, they may be able to give you a small display area, or at the very least, you might be able to put up a flier with information on how and where to find and purchase the cookbook. Ask if the businesses have a newsletter and whether they would mind including some information about the cookbook in the next issue. Offer to write the article for them. If your organization has a website, make sure that there is a way for people to order the book from there.

Press Release:

Send out a press release that gives the details about the project, including information about your organization, who contributed to the book, and where it can be purchased. If there was a specific organizational goal that the book was produced to meet, give some details about that too.