One Recipe per Recipe Book Books
Every now and then I have a million dollar idea. This one is different: this is more of a cultural idea. And maybe it will make somebody ten bucks.
I live in a touristy area, and there are a lot of caring folk that like recycling and lending and things like that, so there are plenty of book exchanges and lending libraries dotted around, and little roadside stalls, mainly selling flowers. It's nice. It brings the community together, because people will ask "have you been to the book exchange at the bus stop? It's good." Or they'll say, "it's Valentine's day tomorrow, there's a house on Johnson st that sells the most wonderful flowers, just leave five bucks out."
And so you get these little adventures around your community, and you get to meet the people that tend to the book exchanges or grow the flowers. It makes the world feel smaller.
But what if we did this on a massive scale?
Wait. Come back!
This isn't a plan to commercialise and corporatize the roadside stall. Quite the contrary: I think we all should do it. And I think we should do it with books. We could call them Community Books: books that are only available in your community (actually, only available outside your house).
Imagine if every house had a little bookstore by their letterbox, with books that they've made. And people can come and pay five or ten bucks and collect a book whenever they want.
The idea that came immediately to mind was a recipe book, but with only one recipe in it. Most recipe blogs already pump out a novel for each recipe, so it wouldn't be much of a stretch. Imagine if you could walk down the street and get the World's Best Spaghetti Bolognese recipe for a few dollars? It would just be written from somebody's Nanna, resting by her roses. Wouldn't that be something?
Or maybe a gymbro has their own special work-out plan, and they sell them outside their car whilst their working out in the gym.
Or a traveler has written up their journal of their trip around Africa, with photos.
Or you're camping, and there's a biker with his little bookstore about how to cook fish on hot coals, or maybe ghost stories to scare children after dark.
Just think of how the community would change if everybody sold a book outside their home? You could be at work, and somebody would tell you, "oh, the best curry book is at 85 Lonsdale st in Balwyn. They sell a spice pack, too. You have to try it." And you drive off to Balwyn and get the book and the spice pack. And then you find a manifesto next door for a new political order and you grab that, too. And you get chatting with the political manifesto guy and smile and nod and back away slowly, because he's got a book on religion, too.
Or you're on holiday and you go for a walk down the street to collect a couple of local novellas about a crime fighting duo living in the same beach town as you are relaxing in.
What would this mean? Less TV, less internet. You'd be less angry, less frustrated. Your world would feel smaller. You'd read things about immigrants and 'others' online but you'd think "hang on, that's not right, because I've talked to these people and read their words and none of what these people are saying online is true." The lies wouldn't spread because we would all see that they are lies, because we would actually know people.
The streets would feel safer because people would actually live in them.
And we would all have so much more to read. What's not to like?
And so you might have a few questions?
Isn't this just a blog gone offline? Yes, absolutely. This idea is pretty much just the equivalent of a printed blog -- and it's not like there is any shortage of blogs. But making it analogue gets you away from algorithms and ads and AI and all the other junk that comes with it. How would your consumption change if there were no like buttons? Or you couldn't subscribe? And you didn't get a notification for a new post? What if you found something that nobody else had ever found? What if that became your favourite book, and you only found it because you went for a walk down a strange street and only a few people in the world had ever read the same book. Wouldn't that add a bit more magic to your life?
Why make people pay? Why not make these books free, like a lending library? Because it's nice to pay people a few dollars. And it encourages a sense of value and worth. Sure, people like to give things away for free, but making a culture of actually seeing value and spending a few dollars on your neighbours would bring everybody together. And it would mean we all have less money to spend on the corporates. Instead of paying Netflix or Disney, you can give the same money to random houses (not Random House!) for their ideas.
Why short books? Because anybody can write a short book, so everybody can get involved. There's less commitment for everybody involved, and there is something inviting about a short book that would encourage reading and creating. Imagine your grandpa making a few bucks with his diary from the original Woodstock? Twenty pages of history right there.
Isn't this just a zine? Yes, and no. This is certainly zine-adjacent, and I would think people could sell zines for cheap, especially if they are just starting out. Zines have a thriving counter-culture; I think the zine makers would thrive in this environment. But with print-on-demand becoming available in more places, it wouldn't take much effort to get these community books looking amazing.
Anyway, ideas are a dime a dozen. And this one was free.