How to Make a Blurb Cookbook And Save 15%

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Ever thought of putting your favorite recipes into a beautiful book you can give as a gift or pass down the generations? Blurb is a company that lets anyone create beautiful books from their favorite content, and get those books shipped in any quantity (even just one copy). Not a designer? That’s ok, Blurb’s free BookSmart software is an easy route to a great cookbook.

What’s the best way to get started? Holding off a bit. It’s tempting to want to dive right in, but thinking a bit and getting organized is worth it in the end. Make the most of your time by dividing each step into chunks so you can tackle them at different points in your book-making process. And here we go:

1. Organize: Gather your recipes and do a process of elimination. Once you’ve narrowed your favorites down, you can gather accompanying images—just make sure you’re giving the recipe and image files the same name to make it easier when it’s time to upload. Keep everything in one folder on your computer.

2. Flow it: Next, determine how you want your cookbook story to flow. Do you want to sort your recipes by age, popularity, or even something else? Once you’ve determined the order, you’ll have done the bulk of your creative decision-making.

3. Get the tool: Download our free book-making tool, BookSmart, choose your book size (Standard Portrait and Standard Landscape are the most popular for cookbooks) and input your title and author name. Then choose “Cookbook” as your starting point — this will give you the best layouts for the job. Then pick a source for your images — from iPhoto, your computer, even Flickr or Picasa. Lastly, choose a theme. Now you’re ready to put together your cookbook.

4. Lay it out: This is where the real book-making comes in. BookSmart will provide you with 20 pages in our standard recipe layout, but you’ll find plenty of alternate layouts in the “Choose page layout” panel on the upper left. You can also add additional pages ­­— including photo pages — by clicking “Add Pages” in the top toolbar.

5. Just add copy: Our layouts provide space for stories, introductions, and those all-important ingredients and directions. Paste in your copy and you’re golden. Then garnish with photos. Don’t forget to run BookSmart’s spell check feature.

6. Preview and review: Click “Review book” and go through page by page. If you’re not a natural-born proofreader, ask a friend to take a second look.

7. Order: Make any last minute edits, click “Order,” and follow the prompts to checkout. Remember to order extra copies for friends and family—or sell it in our Bookstore. Create your book now and save 15% on all print book orders through April 30th.

 

This post contains affiliate links. I will be compensated if you purchase through these links.

Comments

How to Make a Blurb Cookbook And Save 15% — 20 Comments

  1. This is such a great idea. Blurb is so great, you can turn anything into a book. I think this is a wonderful to preserve family recipes. Thank you for this post.

  2. Thanks for the great tips! I am seriously thinking about making my own cookbook.

  3. This is a nice way to save and shared our favorite recipes.Right now I have mine stored in a old coffee can.Thanks for sharing I will have to check this out.

  4. I started one of these for our family and never finished it, you’ve inspired me to get back on it. Thanks for the tips!

  5. I wish my mother could have made a book like this with her recipes. I have some, but many she just ‘knew’ how to make and didn’t write them down.

  6. It would be hard for to begin. I’m not very organized and can’t really cook. My daughter is a good cook. Hopefully she’ll do this and share with me.

  7. I would love to create a cook book for each of my kids to pass down to them 3 of them are 18 or older and they would love it. I have had my son over here copying recipes. Thanks for the step by step tips will help so much.

  8. What a great idea~I would love to make a cook book.
    I have all of my Grandmothers hand written recipes that I want to save.

  9. This is such a great idea! I think I will make a Blurb cookbook with all of my mom’s traditional recipes and give it to her and my siblings.