Create and print family recipe book- advice

[Marshbird]

I’ve been gently pestered to gather old family recipes for a number of relatives . Mainly my mums and grans recipes.
so, I thought I’d do this and get it made up into proper printed book form for part of these folks Xmas present
ive been looking at sites that do this - bloody exp at £25 a copy!
looked at photo book sites- cheaper but not obvious before I committ to download editing tools they provide, that I can easily type in recipes as well as including odd photo of my mum and gran , or of food item, or an image of recipe itself in all its decades of notes/ splatters etc

anyone advise me on good sites/ on line print services they’ve used to do this? I need -5 copies only, and there’s about 60 recipes plus the images . So quite a few pages if 1 recipe per page

Following as this is a lovely idea!

What a lovely idea.

I've used this company in the past when I did a family history book and was very pleased with them.
Mixam UK | Premium Quality Printing at Affordable Prices | Mixam
You can play around with all the variables to see how the price varies.

I've just tried inputting details for a 76 page A4 colour booklet with cover and 11 copies would cost £65.50 (for some reason you seem to have to have to 1, 11, 21 etc copies), so around £6.50 a copy. The maximum number of pages for a booklet is 76, which sounds as if that would be enough for you, but if you wanted more it would be classed as a book.

The team were very helpful when I had queries on certain things. Once you've decided exactly what you want you put in your order and then submit your work as a pdf document. Are you familiar with Microsoft Word ? I wrote my book in it, including inserted pictures, and then used the 'print as pdf' option to create the pdf for uploading. You can then see an online proof before you submit it for printing. The team were very helpful in answering any queries that I had during the process.

Hi, thanks for the information. I only need 4-5 copies! Small family 🤷🏼‍♀️🤣
I had a look at maxim as that was one of them that came back on search- £25 per book…I really can’t afford that…I’ll check again though , but I’m hoping I can find something closer to £10 per copy e.g. less than £50 for the 4 copies.

Otherwise they may just get it home printed🥲

I think that I must have done something wrong before because I can now input 5 copies. They quote a price of £31 for five 72 page A5 colour booklets stapled with cover, whcih is just over £6 a copy. (I think you have to pay for delivery as well, but it wasn't expensive as far as I remember)

Play around with the options like paper weight, colour / greyscale etc to see if you can get an acceptable selection in your price range. It's amazing how sometimes what seems like a small change really bumps the price up or down. e.g Do you need A4 size or would A5 be ok ?

If 72 pages (plus a four page cover, or 76 pages without a cover) is going to be enough, have you considered the booklet, magazine or catalogue options rather than books?

One of the things I really liked about Mixam's site was that you could do all this and see the price straight away without actually having to contact the company - several others I went to needed you to input your details an then they'd e-mail you back with a price.

Thanks that’s so helpful for you to have gone to that effort for me 💐

I'm doing this also for my two adult children but I'm just typing them up and printing them off. I'm going to put them in a ring binder so they can add their own special recipes as time goes on.