Things are heating up at America's Test Kitchen's book unit. Founder Christopher Kimball expects sales to grow by 11.5% this year, and he is looking for 14% sales gains in 2004. Most ATK books use many of the same testing techniques that have made the television show Kimball hosts, also called America's Test Kitchen, the number one cooking show on PBS. And up until now, books have been published with minimal glitz, like the black-and-white bimonthly magazine Kimball edits, Cook's Illustrated, also part of the ATK brand.
But with the addition of Elizabeth Carduff, formerly associate publisher at Perseus Books, as ATK's editorial manager for books earlier this fall, its book program will take a more aggressive marketing approach. An early priority is to tie the book and television show closer together by replacing the original name of the publishing unit, Boston Common Press, with the America's Test Kitchen name on the spine of its books. And one of Carduff's first assignments has been to help plan the marketing for what could be ATK's biggest book, Baking Illustrated: The Ultimate Kitchen Companion for the Home Baker, which is set for an April release with an initial first printing of 100,000 copies. To promote the title, ATK will take its test kitchen on the road for the first time to 15 cities, from New York to Seattle. "We're hoping to drive this with events that aren't just signings or cooking demos," said Carduff. "We're thinking of doing a chocolate tasting, which is what we do here all the time: test recipes and ingredients."
To pave the way for the trip and for other new ATK releases, including the launch of Pocket Chef, a series of short, single-subject trade paperbacks, in fall 2004, the company has begun reaching out more to independent and chain booksellers. ATK recently signed on as a Book Sense partner and advertised in many regional association holiday catalogues. It also had a booth at a number of regional shows this fall—all with a staff of two sales representatives. "We don't have to have a big sales force," said Kimball. "First of all, we want to have the relationship with bookstores directly. And second, the business has changed. With consolidation, fewer people are making the buying decisions."
To date, ATK's book group has done very well by focusing on only a few titles; it will publish only seven this year. Its association with a successful cooking magazine, with a subscription base of nearly 600,000, gives the company an advantage in the marketplace, one that has helped it sell 350,000 copies of its first book, The Best Recipe. "What publishers have always wanted is the names of customers," said Kimball, "and that's what we have." However, what ATK lacks is individual authors. Most books are group efforts from the editors of Cook's Illustrated, except for a few non-series titles like Kimball's own The Kitchen Detective, which is based on a food column he writes for The Tab newspapers in Boston. "The challenge for us," said Kimball, "since we don't have different authors, is how do we create different cookbooks?"
That issue could be coming to a head as ATK experiments with new formats and price points with Pocket Chefs and future projects based on two new magazines. The company is already halfway through the testing process for one of the magazines; both may launch as early as next year.
