Suppose you have not read part 1 of this story. I suggest reading that first to get some context for the second part of this story.

After creating the cookbook, I was happy with the layout, flow of the recipes, and the full context of the cookbook. However, it was now time for editing. I have never claimed to be great at spelling or grammar, but I love to write recipes, so this was a bit of a problem. As many of you may know, when you write an essay or paragraph yourself, it is much harder to catch your own mistakes than to look at someones else’s paper and see what is wrong. This roadblock is the issue I ran into with The Cut Cookbook. It did not matter how many times I looked through it. My eyes became too bind to many mistakes. I had to find an editor.

Luckily for me, my family and friends are very supportive of my cookbook, and my mom, aunt, and a friend of the family all took the time to pain mistakenly edit the book for me. I was truly amazed by all of the issues I could not see. So if you ever write a book, I highly suggest a fresh set of eyes look over your book. The editing stage is the reality of creating your work of art. Small details are not so fun, but they must get done to achieve a final product. This process took a long time, but I am grateful I had help to get through it.

Next came the process of printing the books. This step was also a challenge, believe it or not. I am not a large company publishing thousands of books. It was challenging to find a printer within my price range to print the limited quantity of books I needed. With that said, I hope someday to be printing thousands of books, but you have to start somewhere. Do not ever be afraid to try even if you feel like your business won’t make a dent. It will make a small dent in your world, and then you grow from there. Eventually, I found an editor. Like with anything in entrepreneurship, when you work hard enough, something will eventually come along that fits your company. If you give up at attempt 1000, you will never know if attempt 1001 was your shot.

Even after finding the printing company, we needed test copies sent to us to assure the book looked great and there were no problems. But, of course, there were problems. When the books arrived, we found more spelling errors, issues with the text size, and formatting that wasn’t right, but that is why a test copy is necessary. I continued to push forward and make the required changes to get the cookbook printed by the holiday season. Nothing ever goes right to plan. Initially, I planned to have the book printed and for sale at the beginning of September. The release date ended up being November 15th for preorder, and the books arrived December 1st.

Challenges are inevitable, but if you genuinely believe in your business, you will make it happen for yourself. This story is still not complete. I plan to write more as my business continues to develop. Starting your own business is never easy, but I love sharing my struggles with you because it humanizes the company.

Buon appetito,

Madison Marsh