You asked, we answered.

We have worked with professional designers to come up with ten font families. Each font family has carefully chosen fonts that coordinate together to create a look. Choose from Classic, Modern, Simple, Traditional, Vintage, Scriptey, Bold, Chalkboard, Block Print and Marker.

*Some fonts require premium membership

We have 7 bindings for you to choose from, in three sizes.

6”x9” books are available as coil bound, wrap around wiro-bound and hard cover wiro-bound books

7”x10” books are available in hard cover and soft cover

5.5”x8.5” books are available for fundraisers in quantities of 100 of more, with a coil binding

You can choose from over 100 different templates

* Each one comes with a professionally designed cover, title page, table of contents page, section divider page and back cover. You can also load your own design into your book.

* Some templates require premium membership

We offer 7 different bindings:

Coil bound books: these books measure 6”x9” and are printed on coated 100lb silk surface paper. They have a white plastic coil and lie flat on a counter when open. The covers are glossy.

Wiro bound soft cover: these books measure 6”x9” and are printed on coated 100lb silk surface paper. They have a white plastic coil and lie flat on a counter when open. The covers are glossy.

Soft cover books: these books measure 7”x10” and are printed on coated 100lb silk surface paper. They have soft glossy back and front covers and a spine. *Matte cover available upon request.

Hard cover books: these books measure 7”x10” and are printed on coated 100lb silk surface paper. They have hard glossy back and front covers and a spine. *Matte cover available upon request

Hard cover wiro books: these books measure 7”x10” and are printed on coated 100lb silk surface paper. The front and back covers are hard glossy covers. They have a silver metal coil and lie flat on a counter.

Fundraiser books: these books measure 5 ½”x 8 1/2” and are printed on coated 70lb silk surface paper. They have a white plastic coil and lie flat on a counter.

All of our books (with the exception of fundraising “silver” level books) are printed on thick glossy 100lb silk surface paper. This is our standard paper, and is thicker than even the premium paper our competition offers. Plus, it’s standard, with no upcharge. The paper is thick and resilient, and I’ve been told holds up well to even the occasional splash.

If you are making a book as a fundraiser, you have the option to print your books (quantities of 100 or more) on 70lb silk surface paper for additional savings. This is still thicker than most on the market!

For coil, wiro, hard cover wiro binding, the minimum is 20 pages.

For hardcover or softcover, the minimum is 80 pages.

You will find them here. If you would like to use them in your book just copy and paste them into your book. You will also find some designs in our image library.

To load your cover choose the custom design template (free). This design allows you to upload a jpg file onto the cover. You will need to combine the picture and text in the same file using a photo-editing program. (there are several great free ones online, just google search “free online photo editing”). Some members have enjoyed using www.ipiccy.com or canva.com.

This option for a cover also lets you create a custom title page (that is the first page you see when you open your book), table of content, dividers and back page. When designing your dividers, remember that the designed jpg you are creating will replace any section name and you may therefore want to incorporate the section name into the design of that image. If you don’t create a custom divider, the name of the section will appear.

You must make sure that your cover, title page and divider files are 300 to 600 dots per inch, dpi, or the words in your image could be fuzzy

Certain designs or fonts require a premium membership. Premium memberships cost $29.95 a year. If you are not already a premium member, you will be charged at checkout, or you can upgrade your membership to a paid one at any time by going into your account and switching your account to premium.

Once you have a premium membership, you have access to all cookbook designs and fonts, as well as one free ebook (per year, per membership purchase). A premium membership also gives you access to your own digital recipe box where you can store your recipes so you can access them anytime and easily import them into your books.

There are two levels of membership. A free account allows you to create as many books as you want using one of 10 free templates (including load your own) and our Traditional font family (based on Baskerville). You have full access to our image library and all bindings.

A premium membership gives you access to over 100 templates, and all 10 font families. On top of that, a premium membership allows you to get one free eBook (PDF) with your printed book order. When you have a premium membership, you also get access to your very own digital recipe box that allows you to load your recipes into your recipe box so you can easily access them remotely and import them into your books.

To reorder a book, log in, go to your order history, and click re-order.

You can always reorder books, even if your premium membership has run out. We keep your book on file for 2 years. You don’t need to have an active premium membership to reorder books, even if your books were made using premium features. If you want to make changes to your book before you reorder, you can email me to waive the premium membership fee for a few days so you can make changes without renewing your premium membership and place a new order. Otherwise, if you edit your book and go through the order process again, you will be charged for a new one year premium membership.

Click here to download our free fundraising guide

A recipe box is a place to gather and store all of your recipes outside of your book. You can store all your recipes there so you always have them on hand, whether you are making a book or not.

Once your recipes are in your recipe box, you can easily import them into a book.

You can invite contributors to work on your book with you. They will get an invitation with their own log on. With that, they will be able to see the book and add their own entries, but won’t be able to change other people’s entries, or the design of the book.

There is no limit to the number of people you can invite to help you.

If someone does not receive the invitation it is because their email filter blocked the invitation. You will need to remove them and invite them again. They should check their spam folder. They can also add [email protected] to their email safe list or address book or the email will not get through.

HELPFUL CONTRIBUTOR HINTS:

1. Make sure that you let everyone know what abbreviations you want to use. For example, do you want to use: tsp. or Tsp. or Tsp or tsp?? All are correct but whatever you choose should be standardized in your book.
2. If you wish to block the access to your cookbook by the contributors or remove them, you need to click on the X to the right of their name to remove them from the contributor list. Their recipes will still be in the book.

To achieve the best print quality in your cookbook, consider these tips when choosing which photos to use.

Don’t trust your monitor’s colors. Every monitor displays colors slightly differently, and none is truly accurate.

Don’t trust your monitor’s resolution. The resolution of a printing press (the amount of detail it can reproduce) is much higher than a monitor’s, and may reveal a lack of detail in a picture that looked fine on-screen.

If your digital photo software lets you check it, strive for a resolution around 300-400 dpi (“dots per inch”). Less may look fuzzy or blocky when printed; more will only make the file larger and slower to send.

Pictures seen on your monitor look brighter than they will look when printed as your monitor backlights them so be sure that your pictures are well contrasted, crisp and bright. If your pictures are a bit fuzzy and faded they will appear more so when printed.

Not too dark, not too light.

Avoid enlarging. Enlarging a picture reduces its effective resolution. For example, a picture blown up 300% prints with the quality of a picture at one-third the resolution. Small changes in size are fine, but large changes may affect the quality. If you want to use a very small picture you must scan it at a much higher resolution – 600-800 dpi.

Watch for patterns. If you’ve ever seen a herringbone jacket “squiggle” on TV, you’ve seen what’s called a “moiré pattern.” It happens (sometimes) when a finely-detailed geometric design is reproduced using dots, such as on a TV screen or a printer.

Try these tips for making food photography a snap:

Arrange food on plate in a manner that showcases the strengths of a dish and its high-value ingredients. Keep items bigger- small things tend to get lost!

Garnish the dish to enhance the color. Adding chopped parsley gives spaghetti green specks that bring out the red color of the sauce. Adding a lemon wedge to a glass of iced tea takes a drab glass of brown liquid and gives it some juice. Or, consider ladling a sauce on the plate underneath the food, or over the items on the plate.

Place the food on a dish which will enhance the food’s color. Obviously, placing a green salad on a green plate will create an amorphous lump in a photograph. Consider a yellow dish to bring out the green of spinach leaves, or a red dish to bring out the green of the lighter romaine leaves.

Place your dish in a setting which will enhance the dish’s overall appearance. Place the dish on a flat-colored background, such as a one color table cloth or table surface. If taking a picture from a side-angle, make sure the picture’s background will not distort the food in the foreground.

Use as much natural light as possible. A camera flash will actually distort food pictures more often than it will enhance them. Try moving your dish into a well-lit area and have a portable lamp close at hand to prop above the dish. Be careful of the color temperature of the light bulb though. Generally, artificial light is a bad idea for food. Diffused daylight is best.

It’s always nicer to light food from behind, so it looks more three dimensional. Avoid blaring light in the back though- just some nice back-fill.

Stabilize your camera. Use a tripod, or prop your camera on a high-back chair to help reduce the photo’s blurriness.

Carefully choose the best angle for taking the picture. Examine the shape and features of your dish, to determine whether it looks best from overhead or from a side angle. Often, taking straight on shots of a dish doesn’t highlight the dish’s more appealing features, unless it’s a really tall dish! Try a more modern approach, and shoot the food from straight overhead! This is a great way to make a great shot, even if your food styling is not quite pro! Choose nice tablecloths or linens, and interesting shaped dishes. Avoid tall objects.

Most importantly, zoom in so the dish fills as much of the picture as possible.

Take a look at our pinterest page to see lots of great food photography!