Fancy yourself as a dab hand in the kitchen? Well, here’s how to create your own cook book and channel your inner Nigella. You may even end up travelling the world with your own cookery show.
Since Susanne and David Hahn launched Create Cookbooks with their children in 2010, they’ve produced a library of cook books. Here, Susanne shares their story and how they’ve made it a family affair.
Since 2010, Create Cookbooks has helped families and communities around Australia publish over half a million cookbooks and growing. The idea came after creating a cookbook for our kid’s school with just 150 students.
The school originally created a cookbook back in the 80s using A4 photocopy paper bound with a plastic coil. My husband, David (the photographer) and I both at the time were working in the publishing industry, offered our skills to the P&C fundraising committee. With the help of some amazing volunteers, we created a beautiful hardback store-bought quality cookbook filled with food images. Parents supplied the recipes, cooked the food and we styled, photographed, and designed the cookbook. Local businesses were fully onboard supporting our fundraiser and we raised over $10,000 in sponsorship ads alone. Over 500 cookbooks were sold within a few weeks leading up to Christmas. Had we known the cookbooks were going to be such a hit, we would have ordered more.
The business began from a desire to offer anyone wanting to self-publish a cookbook that rivals bookstore-quality cookbooks produced by chefs and celebrities. Whether it be a gift, to share with family and friends, to sell, or to create a cookbook fundraiser.
The process is simple, and everything is online. Sign up is free and the Starter plan has all the essentials needed to create a cookbook. The Premium and Community plan is a lifetime membership with no monthly fees and lots of extra features. We recently launched our intuitive dashboard which has everything you need to create a professional full colour cookbook. Type or request treasured recipes from family or friends or the wider community into the safe and secure recipe library. Choose one of our pre-designed templates, and with a press of a button, your recipes are imported, in chapter order and with font styles as per the template. You can feature any number of personal images and also feature unlimited photos from our exclusive food and background image library. The brains behind the dashboard; our son Lucas who is the newest member of the team.
Creating a cookbook as a fundraiser is one of the top choices for schools, communities, and organisations when it comes to raising much needed funds. We provide lots of information and tools needed to achieve maximum sponsorship and tips on ways to cover most, if not all the printing costs, making 100% profit on every book sold.
Print any number of books from 1 to 1000’s, it’s up to you. All our books are full colour, come in a variety of cover types, premium paper finishes and sizes. We also offer a digital ebook package and design service where “we do the layout”. This is especially great for schools and organisations who don’t have time to put their cookbook together after they’ve collected the recipes.
