At Brookline Village, Mass.-based America’s Test Kitchen—also home to Cook’s Illustrated and Cook’s Country magazines and the eponymous PBS cooking program—cooks have helped make it one of PW’s fastest-growing small presses for each of the past three years. So much for spoiling the broth.
What distinguishes ATK from other cookbook publishers is not only its popular TV show (with a second one in the works), but the fact that it develops its cookbooks from scratch. “A manuscript doesn’t land on an editor’s desk,” says Elizabeth Carduff, editorial manager, books. “We do books from the ground up, and the quality control is extraordinary.” So is the sight of 25 cooks with Polder timer necklaces as they stir, braise and check ovens in the company’s 2,500 sq. ft. kitchen. Currently five of those cooks are assigned to the book team, which also includes three editors.
From the beginning, ATK has worked with its subscribers, book readers and TV viewers to provide the best recipes for the food people eat, like macaroni and meat loaf. “We spend a lot of time researching,” says chef/founder Christopher Kimball. “We send out surveys and do a lot of focus groups. We’re not throwing books out in the marketplace. These are books that people want.” Kimball has made a conscious decision not to cater to hobbyist cooks. The statistic bear him out. ATK’s very first book, published in 1999, The Best Recipe, sold 350,000 copies; last fall’s new edition has sold 165,000 copies to date.
Even so, Kimball refers to this fall’s publication of The America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook as both “a massive Excedrin experience” and “the watershed book for us. It’s gotten us into Target and Sams.” The November release, which Kimball is trying to position as a worthy successor to TheJoy of Cooking, will launch with a 150,000-copy first printing followed by a second printing of 100,000 copies before publication. All the recipes have active cooking times of 45 minutes or less and all are illustrated with color photos (1,500 in all). To promote Family Cooking, Kimball and three other cooks will rotate on a 30-city tour.
“Last year books were about equal to the magazine business,” says Kimball, who would like to continue to grow the book sales. In the coming months ATK will begin staffing up its cooks to make the transition from seven or eight books a year to 20 by 2007.
