One of the Pioneer Woman’s perennially popular cookbooks and a sweet taste of the South are just two of top-selling titles on PW's cookbook bestsellers list for June. (See the full list here.)
#2 The Southern Cake Book
The editors at Southern Living magazine compiled more than 150 recipes for some of the South’s (and America’s) most iconic cakes and treats, and the result is The Southern Cake Book, which was released by Oxmoor House in May.
According to the publisher, cakes are Southern Living’s forte. “Cakes are about hospitality, which is where Southern Living shines,” said Courtney Greenhalgh, associate director of publicity for Time Home Entertainment. The book was released in May, in time for those who may be baking for bridal showers, Mother’s Day, or other spring/summer celebrations that call for a special cake. Bakers seem to have taken notice, and the book has sold more than 16,000 print copies in its first months on sale, according to Nielsen BookScan. Cakes and other treats are broken out into categories like Party Cakes, Sunday Afternoon Cakes, and Bite-Sized Bits of Cake, and recipes include such favorites as Red Velvet Cupcakes and Ambrosia Cake as well as the more daring White Ale Cupcakes and Pineapple Upside-Down Carrot Cake.
The book has been getting a good deal of exposure from Southern newspapers, with coverage in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Times-Picayune, as well as bloggers testing recipes, including The Cake Blog and The Bake More. According to Oxmoor House, The Southern Cake Book saw a bump in sales after it was featured in a segment on QVC’s In the Kitchen with David Venable, during which Venable did his “happy dance” after trying the Peanut Butter Chocolate Cake.
#6 The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food From My Frontier
Ree Drummond began blogging in 2006, and has come a long way in eight years. Aside from the enormous ongoing popularity of her Pioneer Woman website, there’s her cooking show on the Food Network, her Charlie the Ranch Dog children’s book series, and her substantial social media presence. Drummond has more than 240,000 followers on Instagram, has more than 1.9 million likes on Facebook, and more than 480,000 followers on Twitter.
Then there are her cookbooks, and her 2012 release, The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food From My Frontier (William Morrow), continues to sell strongly, landing at number six on PW’s June cookbook bestsellers list. It’s the second of her three cookbooks, all of which continue to pop up on various bestseller lists, years after their initial publications. Drummond’s first cookbook, The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes From an Accidental Country Girl, was released in 2009 and her most recent, The Pioneer Woman Cooks: A Year of Holidays, was published last fall. Print editions of all three titles have sold more than 1.5 million combined copies to date, according to data from Nielsen BookScan.
While Drummond hasn’t been doing any recent events for Food From My Frontier, her publisher said she is always promoting her books when she can—and given her many outlets online, this is a constant possibility.
