Cooking

Our Grannies’ Recipes – book sales!

~ Eoin Purcell ~ 4 Comments

Eoin Purcell

Our Grannies' Recipes
Our Grannies' Recipes

I edited a book!
I might have mentioned it before, it is called Our Grannies’ Recipes and it has been on the market for 5 weeks. Somewhat amazingly it is selling very well and is currently sitting very nicely at Number 8 on the Food & Drinks list, just before Rachel’s Diary 2009 and just after Grandma’s Best Recipes (I’m pretty sure that is only selling because of Our Grannies’ Recipes but I’ll be damned if I can prove it!)

This is an incredible performance for a book that isn’t written by a celebrity chef (I’m very, very sure I don’t count as a celebrity) and isn’t massively illustrated with lavish photography. What it does have it is great recipes submitted by real people and wonderfully simple design.

I know I am biased but I think it is a wonderful book that makes an excellent present. What is more, every single copy sold means that Age Action Ireland will get €1*. If that doesn’t seal the deal, I don’t know what will.

Age Action sticker
Age Action sticker

Buy it on Amazon, Easons or Books Unlimited.
Go on, buy a copy or two, you’ll enjoy it!
Eoin

* I’ve given my full royalty to Age Action so I get no benefit from the book except extreme pleasure from being associated with such a nice product serving a good cause!

PS Sorry for the shameless plug but every now and then I think you have to!

Murphy’s Ice Cream Book of Sweet Things

~ Eoin Purcell ~ 3 Comments

Eoin Purcell

What a week
And a great ending too. Thursday evening saw me fly from Dublin to Kerry and then driving to Dingle for the launch of Murphy’s Ice Cream Book Of Sweet Things. Kieran has a great pair of posts on the two launches but I thought I’d post some of my own.

I couldn’t be more happy with the book (a reflection on the excellent team at Mercier Press) and working with the Murphy’s has been a delight from start to finish.

Go and buy it
Eoin

Our Grannies’ Recipes Launches

~ Eoin Purcell ~ 2 Comments

Eoin Purcell

Something web-to-print sir?
About eight weeks ago we had a brain wave in work. Why not publish a book of favourite traditional Irish recipes, the recipes that our grandmothers, mothers, fathers and grandfathers cooked for us when we were young (or even when we were older and just home for some spoiling).

The issue then became, how will we collect all those recipes? And with a bit of help from the rest of the team at Mercier I realised, you use the internet. Thus was born: OurGranniesRecipes.com which has gone live today with two new posts.

Rapid launch
From concept to site has taken about eight weeks. After thinking the process through i thought it best to use freely available templates and software and to customise a theme rather than design a whole new one (if only because I have not yet even close to the level of confidence I’d need to do that). As this is the first project by Mercier on its own on the web, it has been a fairly steep learning curve. It has been enormous fun and I think it will continue to be as well.

There is more to come
Mercier is not the first to use web to print (not even in Ireland) and I’m sure others are doing cooler, better things than we are. On the other hand, this is exactly the type of project that people can get involved and excited about.

It is also exactly the type of project that publishers (even the least web savvy) can get involved in. It takes a little learning and maybe a little stress but it is time hungry rather than capital hungry and the support of the web community can be rewarding and exciting.

Here’s to hoping it comes together
Eoin

PS Feel free to submit a recipe here