Since 2008, The Southern Lady Cooks has been sharing classic, down-home recipes to their fans around the world, the kind of heartwarming food “you may remember your grandmother or mama making.” Started by Judy Yeager and now run with her twin daughters, Anne and Leigh Walkup, this is indeed a family affair! Since its humble beginnings, the business is now widely beloved, attracting over one million followers across their various social media channels. But much like home-cooking has a special ability to bring people around the table, so do print publications. Read on as Anne shares insights about publishing three cookbooks and a quarterly magazine along with what she’s learned about blending the best of past and present to make something that will last well into the future.

How did The Southern Lady Cooks get started? What led you to venture into print after the website was established? 

The Southern Lady Cooks has been an online presence since 2008. We have always enjoyed being able to deliver our recipes online and with that ability, digital came very naturally to us. We are so fortunate to share our recipes with our wonderful community! 

But since we are a recipe website, people constantly asked us to put out a cookbook. We self-published our first two cookbooks about 10 years ago. Moving into print was a lot of work and had many learning curves. One of those was how much inventory to start with and how long it takes to sell it. We also had to set up shipping, figuring out the best packing supplies, etc. While these books were a success, we produced and shipped the product ourselves, which took up a lot of time. 

Over time, our audience kept asking us to do another cookbook. We evaluated what the best process would be for us. We are a three-person, family business and though we really wanted to put together another cookbook, we didn’t want to deal with the daily process of packing and shipping (not to mention everything that can go wrong at the post office).

We had been using Blurb for our magazine for almost a year and naturally gravitated toward the possibility of using Blurb for our cookbook, too.

What were some of the benefits, even joys, of working in print after being “online-first?” What about some of the challenges?

Some of the challenges are as simple as learning the process of building something from scratch. The hardest part is getting started. But once you dive in, you start to see your vision come to life and it can be really rewarding. 

Seeing your product in print is like nothing else—it feels very official to HOLD your work and then be able to deliver it in that format to your audience.

Plus, when you have a print product, you have a lot of creative control. This is one of our favorite parts of our business: having control over social media, our recipes, our ebooks, and now, our print magazine and cookbooks. We have ownership over every aspect of our business—we don’t even hire out our graphic work. Leigh does all the writing while I learned the design myself by trial and error and paying attention to what our audience responds to. All of this experience really helped in designing our cookbooks and magazines.

Actually producing the print publication—that is where Blurb came in. Blurb has been a game-changer in our business by doing all the heavy work. We especially loved the PDF to Book option because we design everything as a PDF, so this was a no-brainer for us. After I completed the design process, Leigh and I got in the office and looked at all of our options with Blurb. We loved that we could offer both hardcover and softcover options. Blurb handles ALL the shipping, which allows us to focus on promoting our products and connecting with our community.

Once you learn design, the next step is to learn how to actually produce the product—that is where Blurb came in. Blurb has been a game-changer in our business by doing all the heavy work. We loved the PDF option because we design everything as a PDF and this was a no-brainer for us. After I completed the design process, Leigh and I got in the office and looked at all of our options with Blurb. We loved that we could offer both a hardcover and softcover cookbook. Blurb handles ALL the shipping and we just promote our products. 

Your social media feeds are such a hit. It’s amazing how your mom Judy has played such a big part in that! Can you share more about how you all approach the business’ online presence and how you think about playing to the strengths of social media vs. the permanence of print?

Our mom started this website many, many years ago and it has grown so much since then! But she has remained involved every step of the way. We divide up who works which social media platform so no one gets overwhelmed. She has always naturally worked well with Pinterest and enjoys the short conversations on Twitter. Since she is so good with Pinterest, we recently added Flipboard and she is having a blast growing that too! She loves to grow things, just like she did with this business, so a new traffic source is always fun for her.

We have always viewed social media as a tool and a way to gauge what our audience responds to. It’s also a great way to build a community and invite a conversation. What is wild is how each social media avenue really brings something different to our business. For example, most of our sales come from Instagram and I believe that is because it’s a visual platform that allows us to showcase our products in a real, authentic way.

Tell us more about the magazine, Front Porch Life. What did the magazine format afford you that wasn’t available in book form but also wasn’t satisfied by online publishing? Again, what were some of the successes/pleasures of producing a magazine and what were some lessons learned along the way?

We started Front Porch Life six years ago as an extension of our brand. We wanted this addition to showcase things we enjoy and share more about our lives outside of the kitchen. We’re country girls and love sharing our farm life with our audience. But Front Porch Life is also a lifestyle publication showcasing others who are creating lives they love. We love to spotlight people who are succeeding in business in unique ways, all while living a simple, country life. The magazine was initially a quarterly digital magazine you could buy online. It started out at 45 pages per issue. It quickly grew into a product people wanted to be able to subscribe to and many people asked us to provide a print issue. 

At first, the thought of print seemed very difficult, especially because our subscription base wasn’t big enough to warrant a huge press run. Add in a printing house, managing a shipping list, etc. When we found Blurb, the printing problem was immediately solved! Now we are able to offer a print option with our magazine (along with the digital version), so that people can choose which version they prefer. Our magazine is now close to 100 pages (with no ads!) and is a coffee table quality publication.

The big lessons we learned in transforming our magazine from digital to print was the layout. Figuring out the correct page count and that each issue flowed correctly. You really don’t have to worry about that as much with digital but it’s very important when designing for print. As with everything in our business, there was a learning curve, but it has been very worth it because people are so pleased with our print publication. Thank you Blurb!

Finally: enough business, let’s end with something nice for the holidays! What’s one recipe that you’re especially excited to be sharing for the end of the year? And what about one family tradition (doesn’t have to be food-related)?

Our family tradition is to make our Southern Jam Cake, this recipe has been in our family for almost 80 years. We make it every Christmas and we all really look forward to it. It’s also one of the most popular holiday recipes on our website and that just warms our hearts. To know a recipe that has graced our tables for three generations is now a favorite among our followers is so wonderful! 

As you can see, our traditions revolve around food. But, after all, we firmly believe the best memories are made around the table!

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Blurb is a print-on-demand company built for independent creators and small business owners like Anne and Leigh. Want to make your own cookbook? Here are some tips to get you started. Inspired to create something different? Share your creativity—in the form of photographs, poems, illustrations, short stories, or travels. Blurb makes it easy to self-publish your own book, whether it’s to print a few copies for your loved ones or to sell to your customers. Get started today!