Carla Emery: Author of the Old Fashioned Recipe Book
(Page 7 of 17)
May/June 1975
By the Mother Earth News editors
PLOWBOY: And what about the book itself? Do you consider it finished?
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EMERY: No! It's different from other books in that respect. The fifth edition contained 600 pages and the new sixth edition that's just coming out has 700 pages and weighs five pounds. I'm not scared by the notion of a big book. I just want to keep making this one better and better. People write to me, I talk to people and, as fast as I learn something new, I put it in the book. I still keep my free newsletter going too so, as soon as we add a new supplement to the Old Fashioned Recipe Book, all the earlier buyers know about it and they can order it if they want to. So when someone buys the book it's kind of like they're getting a free subscription to an ongoing adventure.
PLOWBOY: That is unusual. And you're certainly on your way to a very large mimeographed book.
EMERY: Yes. My understanding is that I'll be in the next edition of the Guinness Book of World Records three different times. First, for publishing the biggest mimeographed book in general circulation. Second, for having sold more copies of a self-published book—15,000—than anybody else in history. And, third, for being the first author in history to have three babies while writing a book. I could have had a fourth record if I'd have wanted it—for having more typographical errors in a single book than anyone else—but I just couldn't face the thought.
PLOWBOY: Let me ask you about those children, Carla, because I know that many of our readers are going to think you've got some nerve to write about self-sufficiency and the wise use of resources on one hand while, on the other, you have five children.
EMERY: Well, as an only child—and as the daughter of an only child-growing up isolated on a mountain ranch, I'd have given the world for a sister. You see, our family is Rh negative and we've never been able to have more than one living child in past generations. So I don't think I have to feel too ecologically guilty here because I'm living a very special circumstance. And I was so lonely growing up that I didn't want my children to grow up that way too. But we've got a large enough family now and we don't plan to make it any bigger.
PLOWBOY: All right. Now tell me, if you will, how you managed to sell all those books. Many of the world's biggest publishers, you know, have publicity agents and salesmen and trade reps and full-page ads in newspapers and magazines working for them . . . and still don't manage to sell 15,000 copies of about 90% of all the books they release.
EMERY: Well I had the little ads in Organic Gardening, of course. And if it hadn't been for the first two hundred people who ordered the book from those ads, I'd never have gotten any farther than that. But the sales of the Old Fashioned Recipe Book didn't really take off until some college kids in Moscow, Idaho invited me up to a street fair they were having.
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