Designing 'Soy Sauce, Sugar, Mirin'.
If you’re new here, allow me to recap:
Since COVID-19 I started sharing a series of ‘social distancing’ recipes with my friends on social media. I’m now in the process of materialising the recipes into an A5 wire-bound cookbook.
Why the name ‘Soy Sauce, Sugar, Mirin’?
Those are the three ingredients you need to make teriyaki sauce. Trust me, I went through a list of many meta / edgy / COVID related titles, but in the end, if you’re not going to buy the book, at least learn a recipe from the title.
Why self-publish?
I have author friends (cookbook and non-cookbook) and am familiar with the ‘getting published’ process. To pitch a cookbook the publisher would request 100 recipes - all written, tried and tested. That’s IF they decide to go with you. Also, I don’t have 100 recipes. I’ll end up including ‘ boiled water’ to squeeze in the word count like a PhD assignment. It also takes years to find an agent, negotiating a contract. I know I just don’t have the patience. The chances of any publishing house taking a risk on a cookbook by a no-name Asian during these ‘unprecedented times’ is slimmer than slim. The other benefit of self-publishing is the creative control over design and content. Also, the nice lady at Books for Cooks gave me some good advice. One is to halve the expectation, then halve again. She said one would be lucky to sell over 3-400 books at launch, so I told my friends I’m aiming for 250 while secretly planned to print 125. Really sound advice. I know it doesn’t seem ‘proper’ without a barcode and ISBN, but a creative director friend of mine said: “fuck proper, all that matters in a cookbook are the recipes.” Read this to find out why even the best restaurant in the world chose to self-publish.
The design
So I knew from the very beginning I want the book to be wire-bound, like a crappy notebook from uni. One that won’t take itself too seriously like a coffee book. I want the reader to go ‘yea I like this one’ and rip it out without hesitation then stick it on the wall/fridge. I started with a type-only cover (if you really want to know the original title was the ‘anti cookbook book’) but once I decided on Soy Sauce, Sugar, Mirin my inner photographer just had to put a picture on the cover.
I went with A5 size because I know shipping is the biggest hurdle with online shopping. My wife manages a Japanese language school and she’s been packing and sending textbooks for online learning. I don’t want to deal with 300 padded bags, man. if I could get the book to fit within a mailbox slot, then it would be considered as a ‘letter’, and not a ‘parcel’, saving everyone heaps of trouble.
The layout is pretty vanilla - text and image set on a grid. A friend suggested using QR codes to share references and YouTube videos. I would’ve barfed 12 months ago but in this COVID19 world where everyone has a QR scanner built in their phone camera, it’s actually ingenius.
Why don’t you print in China? It must be like, $0.01 a book right?
The issue with mass-production is that unless you have someone to oversee QC, you’ll end up with 50% defects out of 15000 books and in the end, more manpower wasted dealing with the aftermath. I’m so glad COVID19 has taken that option out of the table. I’ve obtained quotes from 3 different printers and decided to go with the one within the 5km radius from me. Who knows how long stage 4 will last, right? The original plan was to go all black and white to keep the cost low. Even then, we’re looking at $10 per unit without GST. The good thing is I save on photography and design fees. Now that I’ve hit my target of 150 names on the mailing list, I might be able to go colour on the photographs. Maybe even spot varnish on the cover photo. Oh lala. More print chatting.
So where are you now?
The design is done, I just need to finalise recipes and photography. (Believe it or not, I don’t have a photo of a bowl of miso soup.) I will still need to print the copy out and proof-read them. At some point, the printer will provide a hard proof of how the book will look. We actually haven’t decided on the binding - spiral, coil, plastic, metal, black, white etc. I’m hoping to get it out before black Friday. Not only because it’s black Friday, but also because that would make a great birthday gift for myself.
Shipping is going to be fun. (/s) I heard from the wife that Auspost actually has a system now. You can print labels on the go. And if you send x number of parcels within y time frame you’ll get some sort of discount. we’ll see.
Once that is sorted, then I’ll look into uploading to Amazon as an eBook. Maybe run a special 24-hour sale to gain traction and pray for good reviews before the actual launch. The eBook I’m not as hard-pressed. Do people give eBooks as Xmas present?
What I’m enjoying about this project, is how tight the brief is. Even if I’m my own client, many choices have been made for me. I actually have less time to hit the ‘doubt’ button and learn to trust my snap decisions.
Thanks for putting your name down on the waitlist.