When I first started writing this cookbook over four years ago…I had no idea that it would take 4 years to complete!! If I had known, I might have convinced myself to not do it, LOL.
I’m being silly, of course. There is no way I could have torn myself away from this goal! It would just sit there and eat at me…like all the unfinished craft projects in my closet.
So…despite numerous challenges, a VERY steep learning curve and lots of hurdles to jump I am so pleased to say that we are almost there.
The project is more than just a cookbook though, it is actually an exercise in branding. Because all of the recipes come from the show, they all link to their originating episode in the book. This means that there is also a boatload of work to do to prepare the episodes. You would think it a simple thing to link to the episodes…but no! There is so much more to it…
We were going to link directly to YouTube – but it felt…well…so YouTubey. Then we decided to link to Blip’s (our video host) individual episode pages. Unfortunately, their players are not 100% compatible with all mobile devices – whereas YouTube is. So scratch that idea off the list. (Too bad we did not know about compatability issues until after we painstakingly linked every recipe in the book!)
So, ultimately we decided to use our website. This of course means that a video page must be created for each video…and while we are at it we would be wise to optimize them for SEO. (Go big or go home, right?)
So every description has been written, keywords chosen, SEO tool installed on wordpress, Links to videos acquired….and more. Maybe just another 15 hours of work ahead before we can turn over the manuscript for final conversion. It will be published as a PDF and eventually a printed book (need to raise funds to make that happen)
We sure hope that you all like it! It has been hundreds of hours of hard work, many strained emotions, and lots of hope and dreams poured into the cookbook.
Reserve your copy today.