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Recipe for Success
Gwen McKee's Cookbooks Sizzle!
By Kendeyl Johansen
Gwen McKee didn't know she'd end up as "The Cookbook Lady" on the QVC Shopping Network, but she always loved cooking. "Women get no credit for cleaning commodes, but if you cook a really good meal you get lots of credit so that's my forte," laughs McKee, editor and owner of Quail Ridge Press and publisher of the Best of the Best State Cookbook Series and the Recipe Hall of Fame Series along with a variety of other books.
McKee started her successful publishing business on a fluke after falling in love with a 12 Days of Christmas cookbook manuscript. She didn't let not knowing how to publish a book stop her. "I told my husband 'I can learn how to do this' and I did," she laughs. "We faced this monumental decision at the time 'should we publish 5,000 copies or 3,000,' so we published 4,000."
As the mother of three grown children and six grandkids, McKee has always believed in family helping family, and her brood didn't let her down when it came to selling the Christmas cookbook. "We sold it in schools, at carwashes – everyone in the family helped," she says. To her amazement the books sold out in only three weeks.
The next year Quail Ridge Press published two cookbooks, and then three, then four. Soon McKee found herself a successful publisher as well as the owner of the nickname "The Cookbook Lady."
McKee's national best-selling Best of the Best Cookbook Series