Costco, the huge warehouse club chain that has a substantial book section, is trying on a new hat—that of publisher. The company has printed 100,000 copies of Entertaining the Costco Way, a "cookbook and practical guide to the art of entertaining." It is a project Costco has taken on entirely on its own, acting as publisher, distributor, packager and, of course, retailer. The company currently has no plans to make the book available to wholesalers or other stores.
Almost as notable as the fact that the retailer is experimenting with publishing is that many of the book's 300 recipes come from sponsors who paid to have their brand names used in concoctions like Snapple Marinated Chicken Wings.
"My hope is that rather than being a detrimental factor, the brands will actually be an enhancement," said Dave Fuller, the editor of the company's member magazine, the Costco Connection, whose staff oversaw the cookbook project.
The sponsor payments covered the entire cost of producing the book, ensuring that the retailer can charge a low price ($9.99) and still earn delectably fat margins. And with the brand names, Costco has helped its business in other ways—by creating a kind of marketing closed loop, wherein shoppers buy Costco products, then buy the Costco book that helps them make use of the Costco products, then buy more Costco products that the Costco book encourages them to use.
Costco emphasizes that Entertaining is not the beginning of a larger publishing program. "We don't see ourselves as a book publisher at all," Fuller said. "What we're trying to do is provide a good cookbook for our members to use with all the great food products they're buying from us." Fuller allows, however, that at some point in the future the company would be open to another cookbook or a title built around a different line of products.
