This is a True Story – Crazy Cookbook

Have you ever meet someone who, if you called them stupid, you would actually be complimenting them? I know a few like this.

This True Story is about one of these type of people, a former client of my mother’s, who had ‘her own’ cookbook.

About two years ago, Thanksgiving time, this client told us that every year at the Holidays she ‘publishes’ her cookbook. My mother honestly believed she published a yearly cookbook. I had my doubts.

Turns out, what she meant by ‘publish’ is that every year she sends a list of her recipes by e-mail to her family members throughout the country. She honestly believed sending out a personal e-mail made her a ‘published’ cook.

My mother, being the nice, kind, gentle soul that she is, offered my services to this woman as a publisher to actually publish her cookbook. Doing this was not something I wanted to do, but something I somehow got railroaded into.

I figured it might be worth a shot, and could make some money. I had a long talk with this woman, broke down the expenses of self-publishing, and told her what the costs would be, and my fees. I wasn’t doing this for free.

I told her the first things she needed to do was gather all her recipes into a folder or something similar so we could look at what she had and see what I had to work with.

She couldn’t seem to grasp three simple concepts:

• I have published books in the past.
• Self-publishing cost money, and I wasn’t fronting the money for this.
• When we covered expenses, she that thought was what I was paying her. I was doing work-for-hire here.

She also couldn’t seem to grasp the simple concept of original ideas and ownership.

After about three weeks she finally presented me with her ‘cookbook.’ I admit, from the beginning I never wanted to do this, and didn’t feel comfortable dealing with someone so stupid. ‘Her’ cookbook was simply a scrap book of recipes torn out of cookbooks by famous chiefs. Rachael Ray, Emeril Lagasse, Giada De Laurentiis, Paula Deen, Martha Stewart . . . nothing in this book of hers was hers.

Plus, she wanted to publish it ‘as is,’ meaning she actually wanted to use the pages, images and everything that she ripped out of those cookbook. Because she liked them.

I tried to explain to her that not only wouldn’t I do this, I couldn’t do this. All these recipes were the property of other people, we couldn’t legally publish them as belonging to her, and we sure as hell couldn’t use the pages from other books.
I wasn’t going to work on or put out a book that violated copyright laws, trademarks, intellectual property laws and out-and-out plagiarism with my name attached as publisher.

To this past Thanksgiving, she still doesn’t understand why I wouldn’t publish the book.

If you think I am being harsh on her, consider this: her seven grandchildren have started a rock band called The Rolling Stones. Honestly. They named themselves after her favorite band. Neither she, her son nor the grandchildren see a problem with using the name Rolling Stones.

Ace