[Sca-cooks] Spiral Bound or Perfect? One Book or Two

[David Friedman]

The tenth edition of the _Miscellany_ is going to total about 370 
pages, of which about half is recipes and closely related articles. I 
plan to produce it via a POD online publisher, which should be both 
less expensive than Office Max and save me all the trouble of filling 
orders. Two questions:

1. What looks like the most attractive of the publishers only 
publishes perfect bound books; past editions of the Miscellany were 
"spiral bound," which makes it possible for the book to lie flat 
fully open. That's an advantage for a book used in part as a 
cookbook. How much does it matter? Should I limit myself to 
publishers that offer such binding as an option?

2. Should the _Miscellany_ be published as two volumes, one on 
cooking and one on everything else? The arguments in favor of that 
are that one volume is going to be awfully big and that there is no 
reason to have something used as a cookbook half of which has nothing 
to do with cooking.

The arguments against are, first, that two volumes are going to be 
significantly more expensive than one, and second that the present 
arrangement puts non-cooking stuff that I would like people to read 
into the hands of people who buy the book mainly for the recipes.

One alternative is to publish the all in one volume, plus a separate, 
possibly spiral bound, volume that's only recipes--for people who 
aren't interested in the rest of what is in the _Miscellany_, most 
obviously cooking enthusiasts not involved in historical recreation.

Opinions? What would people here prefer? What do they think the wider 
audience would prefer?
-- 
David/Cariadoc
www.daviddfriedman.com