the anarchists' cookbook

sometimes james and i wonder about making a cookbook. we made that veganisn't cooking zine, -- which was fun and actually seems to be pretty popular -- in the first month that we were dating. much more recently we kind of had an actual book deal with ak press, but they wanted what they described as a vegan "joy of cooking", and frankly we just don't have the time or resources for that kind of thing right now. we do have some ideas (as well as a lot more recipes) for a cookbook that i think could be pretty innovative and cool. however, the more i learn about it, the more writing a whole cookbook seems kind of crazy, at least as a money making venture.

ak press was going to give us %10 of sales as royalties, which seems to be pretty much the going rate. even if the cookbook cost $20, which is a lot, %10 would only be $2 per book sold. i've looked a little into self-publishing, print on demand options like lulu, which also seem fine but would still make it pretty hard to earn more than a couple of dollars per book sold. this is strange because veganisn't currently sells for about $3 and costs about 50 cents to print, so it's actually about as profitable as selling a whole book, and a lot less work. on the other hand, we have to sell it ourselves. i wonder if being able to sell a book on, say, amazon would make enough of a difference to be financially worthwhile.

of course, money isn't the only reason to write a cookbook. but we are kind of unemployed at the moment, and need some income producing projects, and for a while this seemed like a good one. maybe we should just make veganisn't 2 instead, or print our entire cookbook at kinkos.