'Cookbook Lady' Sells 3 Million Plus; New Zine Features Her Success Story

The Home Business Gazette makes its online debut with a story on JoAnna Lund of DeWitt, Iowa and how she became a highly successful, self published cookbook entrepreneur. The new zine regularly features business success stories with accompanying analysis by an MBA and a psychologist.

Contact:
Susan Klopfer
Editor and Publisher
The Home Business Gazette
http://homebizgazette.com

If you've ever driven through Iowa, you've seen tons of cornfields -- so much corn that it almost makes you dizzy and you feel like you're falling off the Earth.

DeWitt, Iowa, a town of about 4,500 people, is one of the cornfield towns and is the home of JoAnna Lund, the "cookbook lady" who has sold over 3 million cookbooks; she has appeared on CNN, Home Shopping Club, and most recently wrote a cookbook published by a major publisher.

Lund was once a farmer's wife, and she knew how to spread a fine table whenever neighbors gathered to help with a big farming project. But following a divorce, she gained 60 pounds and became depressed.

JoAnna realized she wanted her health back and began creating healthy recipes for herself. She wanted to cook healthy food that looked, tasted, smelled and felt like what she had always eaten. But without the calories and fat.

When she started following her own cooking advice, JoAnna lost 130 pounds. Her recipes are not exotic. They are not what you find in a gourmet cookbook, and they are not complicated. They simply represent good heartland cooking without the sugar and fat that take their toll.

Once JoAnna lost her weight, she wanted others to know they could eat common, good food and maintain a healthy lifestyle. So she set out to self-publish containing her low fat, low sugar, and good-tasting recipes.

Her bank loan of $1,000 was a three-month open note -- it was paid off in one month through JoAnna's perseverance. She got the word out by talking to people, speaking to clubs and organizations, taking her book to stores, and getting good publicity through hard work. Her first cookbook sold over 70,000 copies and her second cookbook did even better.

The last time I spoke with JoAnna, she was heading to New York to meet with three top publishers -- all vying to publish her next book. Random House won out! This was after accomplishing major sales on the Home Shopping Club.

Why is her business thriving? Here are 3 top reasons:

1. She treats customers the way she would like to be treated. She invites readers and listeners to become part of the Healthy Exchanges Family. It is not a diet, she explains, it is a way of life. This philosophy comes from her heart and it is her way of business life -- this is her bottom line.

For example, when her new cookbook was printed, JoAnna offered her existing customers 17 new pages (for $2) that could be inserted into their old cookbooks. She gave instructions on how to insert the pages.

2. New products and business plans are based on listening to her customers, discovering their needs and then responding. JoAnna listens with her heart as well as with her ears. Projects are not planned in isolation; she knows her customers and works to meet their desires. "As long as it is ethical, practical and enjoyable, I will do it," she said.

Once, speaking to a group of Jewish senior citizens, she was asked for healthy kosher recipes. A new book was soon on the way to the printer!

3. JoAnna sticks to doing what she does the best -- creating recipes, sharing hope, marketing, doing her radio program, public speak, writing, and appearing on television.

She quickly turned bookkeeping and accounting over to professionals. "I've known of small businesses that have failed because the owners tried to do everything themselves," she said.

JoAnnas home business success story is featured in the debut issue of The Home Business Gazette http://homebizgazette.com. The new online publication regularly features stories of successful home businesses that use the Internet. Each article includes business analysis on why the featured business is meeting success.

(Publisher Susan Klopfer is an award-winning journalist. She has worked as an acquisitions editor for Prentice Hall Computer Books and her own computer book, Abort! Retry! Fail!" was a Book of-the-Month Club alternate selection. She invites contributors in selecting successful online home-based businesses to be featured in the Home Business Gazette. Email Susan Klopfer at susanklopfer@homebizgazette.com ).

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