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Their big break, however, came in 1997, when folks from the QVC network came to town. “They were traveling around to various states looking for products from those states to sell on TV,” said Gwen. She took the books for an audition, and they chose the Best of the Best from Mississippi, which soon got Gwen on live TV. “I had no idea what I was doing. There was a little band playing in between sales, and when it was my turn, I began to comment on how much I liked the band. I realized later that each second counts.” The folks at QVC liked what they saw—both the book and Gwen. She was invited to go to the QVC studios in West Chester, Pennsylvania. “We were lucky to sell 5000 copies of a book in two years,” said Barney. “But on QVC, we sold out the 2000 books we had in two minutes. The QVC folks said it was one of their fastest sellouts ever. That destroyed all the metrics and changed our way of doing things. We now give QVC first look at our cookbooks to see if they would like to have it on air.” Gwen said that QVC knows that Quail Ridge Press cookbooks will always be of the highest quality. “We have a fantastic designer, Cindy Clark, and our cookbooks always look really nice and are easy to cook from.” Quail Ridge Press has since published several other state cookbooks, and Gwen has appeared on QVC many, many times selling her state cookbooks, and has since created cookbooks especially for them. “We still do about half of our sales through QVC.” She laughed when she recalled preparing the food for some of the early QVC segments. “We had a friend who lived in town, so we bought our own groceries and prepared the food in her kitchen. I didn’t know anything about food styling for television. We did it ourselves for a year or two before we discovered professional food stylists.” After their success with the Twelve Days of Christmas Cookbook, the same author wrote Seven Chocolate Sins and A Salad a Day. They then branched out with a Mississippi State/ Ole Miss Joke Book, which was also a great seller. But it’s the “best of” cookbook series that have been the most successful. “After the success of the Best of the Best of Mississippi book, we went to Louisiana, and that book did fantastically well,” said Barney. “We then went to Texas where we did two books. By 2004, we had completed a cookbook for every state. In all, the company has published nearly 200 books, and 150 of them are still in print. “We just enjoy seeing a book professionally developed and produced,” said Barney. Our latest book is The Crown of Southern Cooking: Recipes from the Birthplace of the Blues. The book is by Evelyn Roughton, owner of the Crown Restaurant in Indianola for nearly forty years. “Evelyn had never published her own personal restaurant recipes,” said Gwen. “But it looks like it was written by a seasoned professional.” While the books have sold great on QVC, the “best of” series also sells well in Cracker Barrel restaurants and regular book outlets. “We sell a good many from our company website too,” said Barney. “We charge a flat fee of $5 for shipping, no matter how many books are ordered. We are focused on customer service.” While cookbooks are the mainstay of Quail Ridge Press, the company does publish other titles including A is for Angels: A Bible Alphabet and Cat Hymns, a beautifully illustrated book that comes with a musical CD. Beach Verses is a book of beautifully written Haiku verses by George Thacker describing the grandeur of life and nature of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. For more information on Quail Ridge Press, and to see their entire list of books, visit their website at www.quailridge.com <strong>Hometown</strong> <strong>Brandon</strong> • 19