Cast Your Bread Upon the Waters Cookbook
OBJECTIVES:
The name Sister Schubert is synonymous with mouthwatering homemade frozen dinner and cinnamon rolls that you can pop in your oven and look like a hero around the dinner table; they are often devoured well before the meal is done! This Kappa Delta Southern belle hailing from Andalusia, Alabama, is the real deal. This beautiful woman is a go-getter, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and humanitarian—we should all have half of her energy and enthusiasm!
She started out making rolls in her kitchen for church bake sales and turned that enterprise into a company worthy of frozen food giant Marzetti, who purchased it for over $40 million, retaining Sister Schubert as the face of the brand. When we met Sister, she asked CMA to publish and design a hardcover coffee-table cookbook of recipes handed down to her from her grandmother; and so we did!
All proceeds from her book benefitted Sister’s Ukrainian orphanage, Sasha’s Home. This 160-page luxury glossy cookbook was to emulate a Martha Stewart vibe, and since we endearingly referred to Sister as the Martha Stewart of the South, we knew just what to do!
TARGET AUDIENCE:
Sister’s very well known sorority, Kappa Delta, held large-scale luncheons where she was the guest speaker. Once her book was published, she marketed it to her sorority sisters at various events. Her readership consisted of her established fan base from Sister Schubert’s rolls and her notoriety as a motivational speaker, entrepreneurs, and religious affiliations.
STRATEGY:
As publishers of Cast Your Bread Upon the Waters: Recipes for Success, Cooking, and Living, we felt this was both a marketable and appropriate name. Since Sister is Christian and credits all of her success to God, she has built an empire extolling that it was her faith that brought her to where she is. She wants to—and does—give back to people and organizations everywhere she goes. This includes Sasha’s Home, founded while Sister was on a trip to Ukraine several years ago, where she fell in love with one of the children with clubfeet; Sister took him home, officially adopted him, and fixed his feet! Since she “walks the walk,” many are fascinated with her story, which brings us to the book’s title—from a branding perspective, we felt it was perfect!
We published the book, from concept through completion, in nine months. That included photo shoots for the cover and interior pages, working alongside other well-known contributing photographers, graphic design, printing oversight and selection, editing, naming the book, establishing the price, registering and copyrighting with the Library of Congress, and scheduling events and book signings throughout the South.
We created a website for Sister’s book, complete with a shopping cart enabling her to sell it at full price rather than sharing half the price with bookstores. This allowed our client to make more money, which she was able to pour into Sasha’s Home.
RESULTS:
The first print run of Cast Your Bread Upon the Waters was 80,000 copies with a price tag of $40 and sold out in eight months, warranting the need for a second print run of another 80,000 copies that sold out the following year! This was a big success raising both money and awareness—and allowing many to cook their own food using Sister’s recipes! Book and media tours across the Southeast and Midwest, as well as national NPR radio interviews and television segments, propagated the book and its sales.
Since its release in 2009, Cast Your Bread Upon the Waters is still being sold on Amazon, in Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million, and at other bookstores.
