Читать книгу One Thousand Ways to Make a Living; or, An Encyclopædia of Plans to Make Money - Harold Morse Dunphy - Страница 43

Table of Contents

There are cook books and cook books, but we know of only one in which thousands of housewives, who contributed recipes to it, took that deep personal interest which made them feel that each one positively must buy a copy of it.

This one was thought out by a young man in a middle western state, and literally “takes the cake”—and the cash.

If there is any place where the ordinary woman likes to see her name in print, outside of the society columns of a Sunday newspaper, it is in a book, and especially in a cook book.

This young man was aware of this fact, and out of his knowledge he evolved a plan that paid him many thousands of dollars. First, he obtained from directories and mailing lists the names of several thousand women, and mailed to each one a letter, stating that he was about to publish a cook book, and asking them to send in such recipes as they personally knew to be exceptionally good. He told them that each woman so contributing would be paid a royalty, based upon actual sales of the book, and also have her name and address printed in it. The price of the book was to be $2.00 per copy, but those contributors willing to waive all claims to royalty would be supplied at $1.00 per copy.

He also offered each contributor a commission of 50 cents on every sale of the book she made. The letter was carefully written, and brought answers and recipes in a perfect avalanche, practically all the letters contained orders for a book, so that he knew it would require 10,000 copies to fill all the orders.

Then he got busy with the national advertisers, manufacturers of, and dealers in, kitchen specialties, household supplies, flour and yeast dealers, etc., and, having proved to them that his first edition would be 10,000 copies, he secured advertising enough to pay the entire cost of publishing the book.