have you made photo books with lots of text?

 Here goes !

For photos - generally aim for between 250 and 300 pixels per inch.
Bookwright should put an exclamation mark in the top right hand corner of the photo if it thinks the resolution is too low.
If you click on the exclamation mark , it should resize the picture to the largest size that will reproduce well.
The maximum size is 75 mega pixels.

For combining photographs with lots of text -
In bookwright you can add text boxes where ever you want on the page using the text tool. Then you can cut and paste text from Word into the text box and format it however you want.
Click on the T option and then draw a box on the page.

Layouts can be modified so if you choose the template that isn’t quite right, you can resize text boxes or delete them and draw your own, and the same can be done with photo boxes.

Once you have modified it to create your own you can click on save layout and use it for future pages.

At the top of the interface there is a selection called text files.
It gives you details on how to import text from Word.

Alternatively if you design your cookbook with photographs as well as text in Word, you can save it as a PDF, and use the blurb option where you upload a PDF file from any application to create the book.

www.blurb.co.uk/pdf-to-book

He found that after ordering the print book an option was available to create a PDF for an e-book.

Hope all this makes more sense to you than it does to me !

edited to add
My husband used a computer programme called Affinity Publisher to lay out the book and create a PDF , he said it cost under £30 to download from Serif.com and has lots of video tutorials on You Tube . It made it easier to flow lots of text between different pages and around photos. 

Blurb has details on its website of how to set up margins and page sizes et cetera in Affinity Publisher.