Any suggestions?   We won't be producing a lot of them, maybe 15 or so.

My husband put one together for his work place. He had a hard time getting people to submit recipes and ended up having to put quite a few of his Mom's recipes in it. His cousin tried to do a family one by gathering the recipes through the mail. She didn't have much luck getting recipes either. I think to be sucessful you need to talk  in person to all the people you want to get recipes from. If everyone is local and you can get together I don't think you will have any trouble. Just be sure to really good proofreading job. Once many years ago he put together a recipe booklet and listed 1 tablespoon salt instead of 1 teaspoon. Later he made the recipe and of course it was inedible. As you can probably tell he is not much of a cook.

Good luck with your project.

Thanks Ronda.  I have already done some  thinking on a ways to make it interesting.   I thought I'd intersperse some household hints amongst the recipes, and find other ways to break up the recipes so that it doesn't seem boring.   One side of my husband's family did a cookbook and aside from the fact that it could have been formated better, it was BORING!   My favorite cookbooks keep a person's interest while showing off the recipes.

I haven't done one, but am interested in one day doing one! I've been looking at Matilda's Fantastic Cookbook  on Amazon. (There might be more recent versions than this one - it's been a while since I've looked.) Reviews are really good on it, and it sounds like it would be good if you're only doing a few copies. Plus I think you can add to it later without having problems.

At one point, I became interested in doing a cookbook. I searched around online and found a place that would take your recipes and create the actual cookbooks. I still have their package (other than the sample cookbook). It contains a price chart.

It's not really appropriate for just 15 or so books, but it does give a good breakdown.For instance, if you had up to 150 recipes and wanted 100-199 books, they would cost you $4.35 each. However, if you had up to 150 recipes and wanted 200-299 books, they'd cost you $2.85 each.

I just found their website again. It's http://www.cookbookpublishers.com. I should have realized it was something easy to remember. Even if you weren't going to order from them, it might be good to take a look. It walks you through things like picking your binding, formatting recipes, etc.

For years I have typed and saved my recipes in Microsoft Publisher. (You could use MS Word or other word processing program)  I made myself a blank recipe form and use it each time I type up a recipe.  I also take a picture of the dish with my digital camera & add it to the page.  I print up the recipe, punch holes in it and put it in a 3 ring binder.  Depending on how long you have to assemble the recipes and how long before you distribute them...this might be more feasible for just 15-20 copies.  I really like having each recipe on a separate page and being able to add to the book with other recipes as I discover them.  You can have a computer folder for your book and separate folders for each catagory.  You can even use the recipe names as the filenames in each folder making it easy to alphabetize before you print them up.

I've been making this book over the years so that one day when my daughter gets married I can print her up her own cookbook.  I intend to find a really nice leather 3-ring binder to put this in when the time arrives.

You can also try Cooks Palate. I did a test quote, and for 25 copies, the total cost was just over $100.

You could also type it up yourself in whatever format you like and have it printed and bound at a copy store. They have spiral binding, glue binding, etc.

My book, "How to Buy a Sewing Machine", is published through lulu.com . You sign up for an account, download a template for the size of book you want, write your book in Microsoft Word using the template, upload the resulting document, and specify the price. (You can also provide covers if you know how to crop the photos to size.) They make it fairly easy. Books may be made in a variety of bindings (softcover with perfect binding, softcover with spiral binding, hardcover with linen, etc) and can be black and white or color. (This changes the minimum price.) The prices aren't as good as some of the options discussed above, but on the other hand there's no minimum order.  Once the book is published, you can just order one for yourself and then give the URL to friends and family and let them order their own copies.

Lulu.com may also choose to make some books available on amazon.com , as they did with mine.

I did a very simple one for my two daughters last Christmas and they loved them. All I did was get a binder with a place for front insert.. I then designed the cover, using graphics from Word for the cover and using each of their names. I had separators and each page was put into those plastic covers. I did about 100 recipes I think. Started with an inch binder than had to get a two inch. I designed the separators with the Title of the section and some graphics. I have to say it was very time consuming, but I loved the end product. And my girls loved them. Funny though, one cooks alot, but the other doesn't..But she still loved it for memory sake..

I am trying to decide on something for this year, but not in the line of cooking..I have done the picture album for one, but not the other two..