Frequently Asked Questions

Every book is different, and the price depends on the type of book that will work best for you—a glossy, coffee-table book; a cookbook with dozens of recipes with lavish imagery; a softcover book with few illustrations—along with the number of copies you’ll need.

We don’t create books by cookie-cutter templates. Each of our books is unique and produced exactly to client specification and approval. And for those clients who intend to sell their books to the public, we don’t take on projects if we don’t believe there’s a market for them. To that end, we sit down with clients to determine how many books they can reasonably expect to sell and then price the project accordingly.

For details of our process and pricing, please take a look at HOW WE WORK: Publishing Your Book with Story Farm. While this document is primarily geared toward cookbooks for chefs/restaurants, it will answer many questions you might have about custom publishing and how it can work for you.

Printing is an economy of scale — the more you print, the less each one costs. While we’ve printed as few as 600 books, we recommend higher print runs, say, at least 2,000. The sweet spot for beautiful, coffee-table style books is 5,000 copies. It allows for you to pay for the project after selling 2,000-3,000 books and leaves room for a significant profit.

None. Clients hire us to create their books. And our clients receive all profits.

That’s up to you. Most Story Farm clients sell their books directly to their customers and fans, either at their places of business, through their websites or as part of special events and promotions. But Story Farm can help place your book for sale through Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other chain bookstores, independent bookstores and book distributors.

Yes, by all means. As part of our standard services, Story Farm works with you to develop a marketing strategy for your book. This includes creating digital flipbooks that can be sent out in advance of publication for promotional purposes, writing press releases, and creating promotional materials like posters and postcards. We will also help plan a launch event to make sure your book hits the market with a bang.

You can be engaged in every part of the process, from outlines to rough drafts, design templates and final page proofs. We do not go to press until you have given your approval on the text and design.

This depends, of course, on the nature of the book. How much research is involved? How many interviews are required? And how extensive are the needs for photography and artwork? We’ve created some books for clients in as little as two months, while others have taken two years or more. For most of our coffee-table books and cookbooks, we generally plan for at least one year, which includes three to four months for proofing, printing and delivery.

Again, that’s up to you. If you want your book to also be available in a digital format, we can help make that happen.

Story Farm will take care of all that for you. We will register your book with the U.S. Copyright Office and the U.S. Library of Congress. We’ll also register you ISBN (International Stand Book Number) and generate the bar code for your book.

Yes, of course, we’ll be happy to take a look at your manuscript. We can provide editorial services, suggest a format and design, and work within your budget to create a book or other publication that will be the best possible vehicle for your story.

Sorry, but that’s not our line of work. We recommend that you hire an independent book editor who specializes in providing pre-submission services. Best of luck.

Thanks to Story Farm’s origins—creating gorgeous cookbooks for chefs and restaurants—we specialize in providing services to culinary clients. But we’re generalists and quick studies. The skills we’ve honed in marketing, promotion and social media can apply to a wide variety of potential clients including hotels and resorts, retail stores, professional associations, trade organizations and the luxury real estate industry.

Yes, we’d be delighted to work with you on a short-term basis. This might involve everything from general collaboration and brainstorming, to tweaking your website, conducting media outreach, planning events, helping with social media campaigns and doing anything that needs doing.

Yes, we’d be delighted for you to speak with our current clients. Contact us at info@story-farm.com or 407.304.6991 and we’ll make introductions.