Since the first title in Phyllis Good’s Fix-It and Forget-It series was published in 2000, the cookbooks, which collect accessible slow-cooker recipes, have sold more than 11 million copies. The first title alone has sold more than five million copies in two editions. Despite the success of the series, the future of the line was put in doubt in December 2013, when its parent company, Good Enterprises, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. As part of the liquidation process, Good Enterprises assets were put up for auction, and, in fall 2014, Skyhorse Publishing made the winning bid for its book inventory, which included the Fix-It and Forget-It titles. Now Abigail Gehring, associate publisher at Skyhorse and editorial director at Good Books, and her team, have been tasked with continuing the Fix-It and Forget-It tradition, while also appealing to new customers.
Skyhorse plans to kick off the relaunch with a new title, Fix-It and Forget-It Slow Cooker Magic, which goes on sale in August with an announced first printing of 160,000 copies. Revised versions of the previously published Fix-It and Forget-It Lightly (which features low-fat recipes) and Fix-It and Forget-It Diabetic Cookbook will both also be released in August in a new, larger format, with 100,000-copy print runs. The next title in the series is slated for release in January 2016, covering a new slow-cooking topic.
As it revives the series, the Skyhorse team finds itself in the balancing act of preserving the salable, down-to-earth simplicity of the cookbooks while also bringing the line into the social media age. “It’s a real challenge to take a wildly successful superbrand like this and make it even more successful, but that’s exactly what we plan to do,” said Gehring. “There is no reason why Fix-It and Forget-It can’t become an even bigger phenomenon, if we do it right.”
The Fix-It and Forget-It Facebook page has more than 790,000 “likes,” and Good Books is working to expand its Pinterest presence, according to Gehring. “We are excited to empower this online community, as well as the team of recipe contributors and testers, to become brand ambassadors,” added Gehring. “More than any other kind of advertising we can do, mobilizing these individuals who are already committed to the brand has the potential to take Fix-It and Forget-It to the next level.” As part of the makeover, Skyhorse began converting the Fix-It and Forget-It backlist into e-book when it acquired Good Books last fall, and all subsequent titles will also be released digitally.
When Phyllis Good started the series, she reached out to friends and family she trusted as cooks for recipes, and then asked them to recommend their friends and family with the best kitchen skills, eventually forming a group of recipe contributors known as Team Fix-It. Skyhorse stuck to this tried-and-true method to gather recipes for the new books. “When we were ready to begin collecting recipes for Fix-It and Forget-It Slow Cooker Magic, Team Fix-It had been dormant for over a year, and it was a bigger challenge than we were expecting to get it up and running again,” Gehring said. Gehring briefly considered reaching out to Fix-It’s sizable Facebook community with Good’s daughter Kate. “But it was important to us to maintain the quality of the original series, which was established by accepting recipes only from people who came recommended by someone already part of the team,” Gehring said. Believing that, at its outset, a core segment of the Fix-It and Forget-It audience wasn’t quite web-savvy, Good Books tried an “old school” approach, according to Gehring, to collect the new recipes. They sent out more than 2,000 physical letters to Team Fix-It (which Phyllis Good still oversees), letting them know that Fix-It and Forget-It is alive and well and is again soliciting participation. “Since then, I’ve been getting calls and letters from people all over the country who are excited to share their latest slow-cooker creations,” Gehring said.
Lauren Burnstein, senior publicist at Skyhorse, characterized the marketing effort as reintroducing a traditional brand to modern families. “In addition to mobilizing a built-in fan base via social media, the goal is also to create new fans by reaching them through more traditional means, including outreach to national broadcast, magazines, food writers, and bloggers,” Burnstein said. She added that the publisher will be offering free slow cookers to members of the media, “So they can test for themselves just how foolproof these recipes truly are.”
In their previous iteration at Good Books, the titles consistently sold well in bookstores and mass merchandisers, and Bill Wolfsthal, Skyhorse v-p and executive director of sales and marketing, expects that to continue. “To date, all the chains that have carried the books in the past have expressed interest in carrying them again,” Wolfsthal said. And while the cookbooks are taking on new trim sizes, concepts, and social media fans, Good’s role as an author and steward of a growing culinary community has remained largely unchanged. “I am absolutely devoted to helping people cook at home where they’re in control of what they’re consuming,” Good said. “And I’m always thinking about whether a recipe I just made could be made in a slow cooker. I also keep on experimenting with how to make a slow cooker do its best work. People want and need convenience, but they also want tasty food. That’s the spot where I focus my energies!”
