The Hawley Cookebook, a spiral-bound soft cover giveaway that Hawley-Cooke Booksellers in Louisville, Ky., offered to customers at last year's annual November sale, proved so popular that co-owner Martha Neal Cooke and her marketing, promotions, and public relations staff are following it with a larger collection of locally gathered recipes entitled Helpings.

Instead of being a customer-appreciative appreciation premium, the new $13.95 community cookbook will be a fundraiser for the Louisville area's Metro United Way. It will be sold only at the store's two locations, in the Shelbyville Road Plaza and Gardiner Lane Shopping Center. Helpings will go on sale in mid-November, director of public relations Melissa Bernstrom told PW. The book is a joint effort between Hawley-Cooke, Metro United Way and Publishers Printing Company in nearby Shepherdsville.

While all sales proceeds will go to Metro United Way, each partner on the innovative project has been enthusiastically cooperative, said Scott Coffman, Hawley-Cooke's assistant manager and editor of Helpings. Metro United Way staffers encouraged recipe submissions from member agencies, and worked closely with Bernstrom to get generous coverage on local TV. And in addition to Publishers Printing's painstaking cooperation with Coffman and Hawley-Cooke's graphics designer, Candy Ailstock, the company's employees provided dozens of recipes. "We have taken that original idea [of The Hawley Cookebook]," said Coffman, "and, like all good cooks, improved the recipe."

Coffman, an accomplished cook, selected recipes submitted by customers as well as other Louisvillians. Community outreach was extended further by a contest to choose the art for the cover of the spiral-bound, 220-page cookbook. Louisville graphic artist Jen Jones was selected at a reception at the Gardiner Lane store. She received a $100 Hawley-Cooke gift certificate and some 35 attendees sampled party fare prepared from Helpings. "We felt the multicultural theme best conveyed the idea of the community coming together," said Coffman. "Which, of course, is our common goal with the cookbook."

Helpings's first printing has been set at 3,000, which is twice the print run of The Hawley Cookebook.