Back in 1998, the USAF had just moved me to Eglin, AFB, Florida
where I had hoped to retire… and did!
I had started building an internet-based business in 1996, and
now wanted to create my first product.
So, I decided upon a cookbook, sharing the foods and recipes that
I had grown up with on a tobacco farm in Fairmont, North
Carolina.
Interesting statistic… on a per capita basis, Fairmont led the
entire NATION in tobacco production.
I built a website, where I freely shared a few recipes, and
invited people to join my recipe exchange email list.
Tens of thousands did, sending in their recipes or requests for
recipes, which I compiled into an email list which continues to
this very day.
Members of my list enjoyed the recipes so much, and associated
the experience with me so much, that they asked if I had a
cookbook.
I replied no, but that I would write one if they really wanted
one. I put up a pre-order link, and fairly quickly accumulated
over 100 orders… so I figured that maybe I should start writing
🙂
I made a list of recipes that I figured fit the category of “soul
food,” or “southern foods” and began compiling the recipes.
Many recipes, I wrote from memory; others I tracked down online,
and tested and tweaked to make them my own.
Working from my kitchen table in base housing, I WROTE a
cookbook, then using a Xerox Docuprint N24 printer that I
purchased off eBay, I printed the first few hundred copies of my
cookbook.
I visited a local printshop and got them to do my full color,
very crude front and back covers.
The owner of the printshop bought a copy of my cookbook
incidentally 🙂
I used a collating machine to assemble my cookbook, and sold them
to my subscribers.
After I had made enough sales, and saved up some money, I went to
Rose Printing in Tallahassee, Florida to have them professionally
print… 5000 copies of my cookbook.
I’ve gone back to them numerous times since for more copies!
In recent years, I’ve studied diseases that are ravaging America,
and many “developed” countries in EPIDEMIC numbers… Diseases
ALL largely attributable to our diet such as obesity, type-2
diabetes, dementia, many cancers, and digestive disorders.
As I looked at the FACT that many of these diseases are
reversible by just changing our diets, I felt that my cookbook
encouraged “my tribe” to eat many foods that have proven not
healthy.
So, as I ran out of copies of my self-published cookbook, I
decided NOT to reprint the original version… despite strong
demand for it.
Instead, I decided to spend some time, perhaps a few months,
revising my recipes, creating healthier versions of them.
I also looked at the FACT that people will eat whatever they
want, even knowing that many of those things are unhealthy, so
I’m considering selling reprint (PLR) licenses to my original
manuscript. If I do, I won’t sell more than 100 copies, but
whoever buys those licenses should easily make 100 to 1000 times
the price that I sell the licenses for.
That’s all still up in the air.
At the moment, I cannot, and will not, continue selling cookbooks
containing recipes that I know KILL “my people.”
Willie