Oh, I think people will buy cookbooks and pay a reasonable price anytime.  I don't think most people think they have too many and if they see one they want they will buy it. 

This church made a cookbook for a fundraiser years ago and they sold out very quickly.  I think if they did a reprint and raised the cost they could still sell them.  They were very popular and lots of people in this town do cookbooks. 

I had a woman who writes about cookbooks for a national publication call me not long ago to tell me that she had seen a copy of the cookbook this church did and she wanted to buy a copy, plus she wanted to review it for her publication.  I told her it was out of print and she said that was a shame.

Around here they put cookbooks out on the counters at stores and restaurants and sell them that way.  I think Morris did the one here.  I remember it took a lot of work by a lot of church members to get it done and it was worth the money they made.

Oh, yes.  I like your idea of the memorial section very much.  I don't think I've ever seen one with that but that would be a great addition.  In this church, people still talk about certain cakes or something that only "Mrs. so and so" made for years.  I know here people would really like that and if they do another cookbook I may suggest that.

we actually published our own in house

We collected and printed on nice 24lb paper, laminated covers in color pictures on card stock and used our comb binder to bind.
It went really nice and cost about 2.00 each to make we sold for 10.00 donation and all 150 went in 1 day

we had volunteers for typing and laminating & binding
Did it all in a week after all the recipes were collected and typed.
it was kinda awesome!

Thanks for the responses. I found G & R Publishing. I can set it up so that our members can go to the website and enter their own recipes. Which I like very much. We have several computer savy members that I'm hoping will help me enter the recipes.

I see you asked this question in March. How's it going?

In 1996 I published a family cookbook through Cookbook Publishers in Lenexa, Kansas. http://www.cookbookpublishers.com/  That was one of the most fascinating things I have ever done -- I did make money from it, although that wasn't my goal. I collected recipes from family members and included family stories and pictures of family homes. My Mom was alive then and she illustrated it with original drawings. It was a lot of work but well worth it.

I must say, I think it's a great project for churches. I wish I could convince a group here to do it but they have their own fund raisers that they love to do and they're happy with the proceeds so I'm not going to push it.

I think there's a way Cookbook Publishers can set up your project online so you can have people contribute recipes to it directly, then you can go in and edit. They also suggest prices -- they have a price structure that you pay them for so many cookbooks and they suggest what you can charge. That way you can see how much profit potential there is.