I have heard of a place that publishes cookbooks that you can use as fund raisers. Quail Ridge Press has a Best of the Best state cookbook series and you can use a state of your choice (or as many as you like!) to use to raise money for your organization. That way you can order exactly as many as you need and you don't have to worry about the recipes working!
My son's preschool did a cookbook. It was hard to get people to submit recipes. Then it was hard to sell them. I think they still have some left too. A lot of the recipes were hard to follow or just plain bad. It made me appreciate professionally published cookbooks more. Someone may be a great cook, but getting family recipes down in writing can be hard.
I have seen churches and communities do cookbooks as a community building event. They often charged for them but just to cover costs.
Every group I have seen do cookbooks have ended up begging people to take them in the end because they printed too many.
I have wondered if getting a few recipes from "Guest Chefs" from popular restaurants or adding food coupons would help sales. I haven't seen that done before.
For promotion, they just did word of mouth and flyers to parents. I'm a cookbook nut and have to admit that I'm only interested in amatuer cookbooks from the groups I'm involved with rather than anyone else's.
I haven't personally done a cookbook fundraiser, but I know an organization who did several years back (Don't know who they used). They still have cookbooks...They say, it wasn't worth it. Didn't make much money at all. That's if you want it for a fundraiser. If you want to do it as a nice thing for your organization to put out, then go for it. As far as fundraising, there are easier ways to make the $$$
Ok, I talked to our cookbook chair and aside from a few mispellings, they were very good. The sale of the cookbook was also very good. It wasn't done as a fundraiser but most people did contribute a recipe and bought the book.
I like to knowing from "real" people if they've had good/bad experiences.
Thanks! So far we've looked at Cookbook, Rasmussen, Morris and Fundcraft. I've like Fundcraft, mainly because of the prices and turnaround time. I just hope people chime in with their .02; I like to knowing from "real" people if they've had good/bad experiences.