"In my 25 years of teaching I have tried to make people realize that cooking is primarily fun and that the more they know about what they are doing, the more fun it is." So James Beard observed nearly 30 years ago in his Theory & Practice of Good Cooking, but even the master couldn't have imagined how many books eventually would come to be published in a frenzied effort to convince home cooks how jolly it is to learn new aspects of recipes and techniques.
It is a tired truism to note that the market is filled, perhaps even sated, with cookbooks. Almost without exception, editors in the field remark that competition has never been keener. Similarly, many confess that it's difficult to achieve initial sales figures equal to those of years past. As a result, rigorous selectivity in acquisition, creativity in presentation and packaging, and diligence in seeking alternative and nontraditional retail outlets are universal objectives across the entire spectrum of cookbook publishers.
One of the present directions in a currently rather trendless field has more to do with attitudes toward cooking than with ingredients or equipment. "In all the years I've been talking to Publishers Weekly, it's a lot harder today to discuss anything that's going on," says Nach Waxman, whose store, Kitchen Arts and Letters, is a cookbook mecca in New York. "But what I've been seeing in some of the newer books and in some of the older books that show continued strength is a hint of a trend. What strikes me is an increasing concern with the fundamentals of cooking: knowing your ingredients and getting down to the basics of cooking."
Those basics are evidently critical on the West Coast, too. According to Ellen Rose, whose Cook's Library bookstore is in Los Angeles, "Essentials of Cookingby James Patterson [Artisan] is a good illustrated book to learn from. We could use more books with photos for beginners."
Making Things Easy
"Easy" is a word used frequently these days, as in, for example, Italian Easy: Recipes from the River Café Londonby Rose Gray and Ruth Rodgers from Clarkson Potter. "This is an example of taking something familiar and giving it a fast and easy twist with incredibly sophisticated results," says Potter's editorial director Pam Krauss. (Krauss just signed a superstar chef to a major contract—the Los Angeles Timescalled the recent Rachael Ray deal "a multimillion-dollar, multibook deal that is one of the largest in cookbook history.")
For years, one of the major cookbook subcategories has consisted of those written by chefs, books frequently stuffed with difficult recipes that challenge any home cook, not just neophytes. That may be shifting. "Chef books have slowed down quite a bit," says Bill LeBlond, editorial director, cookbooks at Chronicle Books, which will nevertheless publish The Spiaggia Cookbook by Chicago chef Tony Mantuano in December. "Part of that may be due to the slowdown in the economy."
Addressing this reported decline, many chefs are offering food that is simpler to prepare. "Jacques Pépin has spent his life mastering cooking techniques," says Rux Martin, Houghton Mifflin's executive editor for cookbooks. "In Jacques Pépin Fast Food My Way, he's basically revealing what he does at home. And what he says is, 'Simplify, simplify, simplify.' " Martin adds that both accessible and sophisticated recipes fill the 1,100-plus pages of HM's major fall title (250,000-copy first printing), The Gourmet Cookbook, edited by Ruth Reichl, which culls the best from the 60,000 recipes that have appeared in Gourmet magazine over the past 60 years.
At William Morrow, cookbooks editorial director Harriet Bell reports, "I have three restaurant chefs cooking at home on the fall list—Emeril Lagasse, Alfred Portale and Michael Lomonaco [Emeril's Potluck, Alfred Portale Simple Pleasuresand Nightly Specials, respectively]. Not one of them includes restaurant dishes. Emeril's book, in fact, is a complete 180 from what we did last year with From Emeril's Kitchens: Recipes from Emeril's Restaurants."
"I'm sort of against gourmet cooking. It can be very difficult," says Christopher Kimball, whose Cook's Illustrated titles, formerly published as Boston Common Press titles, are now issued under the America's Test Kitchen imprint to cement their kinship to Kimball's popular PBS series. "People want cookbook recipes that work, and everyone knows that most of the time they don't. If any other industry failed 50% of the time, it would be out of business." America's Test Kitchen is releasing The New Best Recipe: Revised and Expanded by the editors of Cook's Illustratedmagazine. "We're doubling its size," says Kimball. "We're adding a lot of new recipes because we want it to be as comprehensive as The Joy of Cooking."
"Everyone's talking about simplicity, whether it's ingredients or techniques. People can't or don't want to spend all that time in the kitchen," says Natalie Chapman, publisher for Wiley's culinary line. "The Simpler the Better: Sensational Home Cooking in 3 Easy Steps by Leslie Revsin takes that direction, and so does Jennifer Bushman's Kitchen Coach: Weeknight Cookingand Weekend Cooking from the Kitchen Coach. There's even a swing toward simplicity with seafood, as Laurent Tourendel does in Go Fish: Fresh Ideas for American Seafood."
A notable participant in this "casual cookery" movement is Thomas Keller, whose French Laundry Cookbook has been such an upscale success for Artisan. Keller's new book is Bouchon, which be released in the same trim size and with the same price as his earlier book, but the contents will be quite different. "Bouchon is the name of his restaurant where he goes to eat after work [in Napa Valley]," explains publisher Ann Bramson. "It's a type of Lyonnaise restaurant, a homey place, akin to a bistro. The nature of the food is simpler—quiche, onion soup, moules meunière—but Thomas being Thomas, the standards of execution are important to him."
Elevated standards of execution are explained as well in Workin' More Kitchen Sessions with Charlie Trotter. Kirsty Melville, Trotter's publisher at Ten Speed Press, tells PW, "We published Charlie's first book in 1994 and he continues to sell, both to home cooks and to the professional market, where chefs buy books to see what other chefs are doing." In this fluctuating moment, Waxman confirms that the market for high-end chef books remains potent: "Last year was unbelievable for us with chef books. They were like manna from heaven with people like Charlie Trotter and Marcus Samuelsson, who gave us Aquavit [Houghton Mifflin]. Some stores can get really grumpy about chef books, but the fact of the matter is, they have an audience and a significance in the field. It's where a lot of innovation takes place."
Nevertheless, even the Naked Chef is diving into homier waters with Jamie's Dinners: The Essential Family Cookbook (Hyperion). "Jamie Oliver's earlier cookbooks fit in with his lifestyle at that time," explains editor-in-chief Will Schwalbe. "Now he has two children, and he's turning to great stuff to make for the family. I think high-end cookbooks will always be there, but one of the trends for the fall is catering to people who have to cook for their family every night, as is the case with Kitchen Life: Real Food for Real Families—Even Yours!by Art Smith."
Both Oliver, a Food Network regular, and Art Smith, Oprah Winfrey's personal chef, enjoy TV fame, which is just about the most desirable platform for cookbook writers. "The ones running away with sales are the celebrities," notes Susan Friedland, director of cookbook publishing at HarperCollins. "I think chefs are cooling off. They think of cookbooks as part of their self-promotion, to sell products, and that's not what a cookbook should be."
For further evidence of high-profile figures turning to simpler fare, consider Rick and Lanie's Excellent Kitchen Adventure (STC) by Rick Bayless and his daughter Lanie, and You're Cookin' It Country (Rutledge Hill Press) by Loretta Lynn. "That's about as down-home as you can get," says associate publisher Bryan Curtis. "We've also got Wolfgang Puck Makes It Easy, our line's biggest foodie, with recipes for classic food, although it's classic food in easier versions, with easier techniques."
Classic food from these shores is the core of Good Housekeeping Great American Classics Cookbook(Hearst). "This is a totally brand-new book," says Sterling president Charles Nurnberg. "It's turkey. It's apple pie. It's truly traditional American cooking with lots of color, lots of tips, even little bits of history."
A quintessential example of home cooking is Ground Beef Cookbook (Reader's Digest Books) by the editors of Taste of Homemagazine, a five-million circulation publication that contains no ads and publishes only recipes from its readers, thus boasting that it is "edited by a thousand country cooks." "We acquired Reiman Publications in 2002," says Dolores York, executive editor, adult trade publishing, "and this really fits in with our program with practical, useful, tested down-home recipes. This is the first of the cookbooks we'll be doing with Reiman."
What's New in the Kitchen
In surveying the cookbook domain, we encountered a number of new ventures. Keeping with the easy-to-do program, HP Books launches a series next month with Half-Baked Gourmet: Dessertsby Tamara Holt and ...Party Foods by Jan Turner Hazard. "These are all quick recipes with some elements in them prepared for you, like a canned sauce or ready-made pastry," says publisher John Duff.
Taunton Press, known primarily for its titles on woodworking, home design and home improvement, is also the publisher of Fine Cooking magazine, and in September the house will release its very first cookbook, Cooking New American: How to Cook the Food You Love to Eat. "Fine Cooking celebrates its 10th anniversary this year," explains editor-in-chief Maria Taylor, "and the company has been talking about publishing a cookbook for a while. But the book division here is pretty small, and we didn't have a good distributor until we went with PGW five years ago. Today's palates are ever more sophisticated, and yet our cooking ability is not so good. There's a great yearning to learn how to cook. People want to learn the techniques for doing something different or something better."
An old technique receives its full due for the first time with All About Braising: The Art of Uncomplicated Cooking by Molly Stevens. "This is a subject that has never had its own book before," says Norton senior editor Maria Guarnaschelli. "So much of today's cookbooks are about being fast and quick and easy. Braising is easy, too, and it is very forgiving."
Oxmoor House is continuing its association with Williams-Sonoma to make something old new again. "[Our parent company] Time-Life Books has published Williams-Sonoma books for years," says Bob Doyle, editorial director of Sunset Books. "And remember the Foods of the World series that Time-Life did a few decades ago? That was a landmark in terms of capturing traditional cuisines in various countries. We're now going to do the same thing in an Oxmoor series that begins in October with Williams-Sonoma Foods of the World Barcelona, ...Florence, ...Paris and ...San Francisco. The originals were done in two-book sets, but that was during the golden days of selling books through the mail at Time-Life. This new incarnation will be in one heavily illustrated book. Another aspect that's different is that we'll be doing city by city, rather than trying to characterize cuisines that can be so varied throughout an entire country."
Bulfinch Press, which is known more for illustrated books than cookbooks, is heating up the latter. "We're publishing Patrick O'Connell's Refined American Cuisine: The Inn at Little Washington in October," says associate publisher Karen Murgolo. "This is a whole new focus for us, and I expect that we'll do one or two heavily illustrated cookbooks a season. We'll be looking for authors with high profiles or a very thoughtful, good book in its category. Patrick O'Connell is very well respected in the food world. He's also a self-taught chef, so he's very good at writing recipes that anyone can use."
Not a new player in the field, having been founded as an exclusively cookbook publisher in 1999, Silverback Books has recently opted to take a more aggressive approach to the book trade. "We've been emphasizing kitchen gourmet stores and gift stores," says president Peter Dombrowski, "with illustrated books published for younger adults in the 25—35 age range. They know good food and they're health conscious, but many don't know how to cook, so we've got our Basic series, with books like Basic Cooking, which is like a hip Joy of Cooking. But we're also publishing now to people who are passionate and who already know how to cook. We need to be as broad as possible or we can't grow. We're publishing 26 titles this fall."
Another company altering its traditional program is Harvard Common Press. "The fall list represents the direction we're moving toward, which is four-color books," says president Bruce Shaw. "This will enable us to sell more successfully to the gourmet and gift market. One of the problems with this market is that you can only go to it once. Backlist doesn't work. They want something new. But even if it's a subject that seems kind of silly on the face of it, when you put it into four colors, it can move. Deviled Eggs by Debbie Moose, which we did last spring, sold extremely well. We had to go back to press within three weeks." For the fall, Shaw is pinning his hopes on Pie: 300 Tried-and-True Recipes for Delicious Homemade Pie by Ken Haedrich and A Baker's Field Guide to Chocolate Chip Cookies by Dede Wilson.
Crazed About Carbs
But aren't pies and cookies utter no-nos today, given the American obsession with low carbs? Indeed, as Brad Thomas Parsons, senior editor at Amazon.com, says, "Diet-based cookbooks are still dominating our bestsellers list in Cooking, Food & Wine. Usually there's a post-holiday spike in these titles, but the low-carb craze has kept these books among our bestsellers throughout the year. Two of the big winners are The South Beach Diet Cookbook [Rodale] and The Ultimate Weight Solution Cookbook [Free Press]."
Among the upcoming titles playing to the carb-averse are The Low Carb Gourmet: 250 Delicious and Satisfying Recipes by Karen Barnaby and Low Carb 1-2-3 by the 1-2-3 doyenne herself, Rozanne Gold. "Rozanne's book is completely compatible with Atkins and South Beach," says Margot Schupf, executive editor of lifestyle books at Rodale. "It's low calorie, low saturated fat, no trans fats, white flour or white sugar. And unlike her previous books, this is a one-color trade paperback. That's what she wanted to reach more people." By the way, Rodale's aforementioned gourmet cookbook shouldn't be confused with The Low-Carb Gourmet: Recipes for the New Lifestyleby Brigit Binns, a September release from Ten Speed Press.
But still, what effect has the fanatical counting of carbs had on dessert and baking books? "People say that baking books don't sell, but it depends on the book," says Simon & Schuster senior editor Sydny Miner. "The Magnolia Bakery Cookbook [by Allysa Torey and Jennifer Appel] has been one of our best-selling cookbooks, which is why we're so happy to have More from Magnolia [by Torey] this fall." "We're actually anticipating a backlash against all the low carb," says Leslie Stoker, Stewart Tabori & Chang publisher. "Alton Brown's I'm Just Here for the Food sold more than 200,000 copies, and we believe that his November book, I'm Just Here for More Food[subtitled Food × Mixing + Heat = Baking], will do well, too. He takes a revolutionary approach and deconstructs baking by organizing the book around mixing methods."
"Baking is a problem," concedes Norton's Guarnaschelli. "I worked on the King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion[Countryman Press] and learned that even flour sales are down. People don't have time for baking, but if there's a chance for a baking book, I think The Weekend Baker [by Abigail Johnson Dodge] is the one. Abby's book stands out because it's organized by time, and many of the recipes can be done in under an hour."
And then there is that notorious carb villain, chocolate. In the listing of new and forthcoming cookbooks, nine books on chocolate sweets and desserts are waiting to be carried into the kitchen and splattered with some bittersweet stuff. "We've really done a job on the production of Pure Chocolate by Fran Bigelow," says Jennifer Josephy, executive editor of cookbooks at Broadway Books. "The photography is so amazing it's being called 'chocolate porn.' "
If chocolate is ubiquitous, other ingredients make for singular single-subject books. Examples of three on fruit alone are Fig Heaven by Marie Simmons, The Berry Bibleby Janie Hibler (both from Morrow) and Pomegranates by Ann Kleinberg (Ten Speed). "Pomegranates are the fruit du jour," says Melville, "and this is the first book of its kind." "Single-subject books make something of a trend," says Morrow's Bell, "but only if it is a very comprehensive treatment of that subject."
"When we started publishing the Williams-Sonoma Collection cookbooks in the fall of 2001, people told us that single-subjects were a bad idea," says Suzanne Donahue, Free Press associate publisher. "Well, we've probably sold over two million books in the series, the three most popular being Soup, Pasta and Chicken." The series, published under the Simon & Schuster Source imprint, will top out at 32, with American, Sauce, Soup & Stewand Steak & Chop due in November, and two more next spring. Incidentally, as the series retires, so will the S&S Source imprint.
Assessing the popularity of ethnic cuisines, some editors report that Italian has finally peaked. On the other hand, Nurnberg at Sterling says, "Italian continues to be number one for us." At HarperCollins, Friedland anticipates a good deal of attention for Marcella Says... Italian Cooking Wisdom from the Legendary Teacher's Master Classes, with 120 of Her Irresistible New Recipes by Marcella Hazan, which will reportedly be her final book.
"Italian cookbooks are old favorites for us," says Hippocrene associate editor Rebecca Cole, "particularly regional books, like those on Sicily and Calabria. We also definitely see a trend in Latin food. We just published Secrets of Colombian Cooking [by Patricia McCausland-Gallo]." Norton's Guarnaschelli promises that an as-yet-untitled book by restaurateur Maricel Presilla, due next spring featuring recipes from Mexico, Brazil, Ecuador, Chile, Paraguay and other Latin American locales, will be "a revelation." Also due next spring is La Cocina de Mamáby Penelope Casas. According to Josephy at Broadway Books, "This is great home-cooking from Spain, really simple recipes from big-name chefs and the country's mamas."
Additional lead titles on other cuisines include Indian Home Cooking in America: A Fresh Introduction to Indian Food, with More than 150 Recipes by Suvir Saran and Stephanie Lyness (Clarkson Potter) and The Breath of a Wok: Unlocking the Secrets of Chinese Wok Cooking Through Recipes and Lore by Grace Young and Alan Richardson (S&S).
Then, too, there appears to be a rejuvenated interest in things French, despite the recent political dust-up. "Like everyone else, we're doing extremely well with Patricia Wells's Provence Cookbook," says Nach Waxman, "also with Guy Savoy: Simple French Recipes for the Home Cook from STC. It's interesting that French books should be on the list, but I think people are beginning to rediscover some of its pleasures, the simplicity that can apply to it." Artisan offers Provençal-influenced food in Frank Stitt's Southern Table: Recipe and Gracious Traditions from Highlands Bar and Grill by Frank Stitt, who brought his experiences working with Richard Olney in France back to his restaurants in Birmingham, Ala. Even Ina Garten is exhibiting a French accent with Barefoot in Paris(Clarkson Potter). Potter's Krauss says, "We did really well with The Balthazar Cookbook.Those flavors are calling out to us again, and the food doesn't have to be overly complex." Other French food titles are found in our online listings.
Perhaps what we are seeing everywhere is what Martin at Houghton Mifflin calls "the mainstreaming of ethnic recipes." And concerning the eternal search for trends, she concludes: "I don't think it's about trends. Successful books have to do with good individual books that make their own trends."
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"This book is the story of my life as it relates to the subject of food," says Pat Conroy, who sets out to regale his readers with memories of meals at home and abroad. The Pat Conroy Cookbook (Doubleday/Nan A. Talese, Oct.) "is a book that he's been ruminating about for quite a while," says Doubleday publisher Steve Rubin. "That singular voice is unmistakably Conroy, and comes through in a most charming fashion." Conroy's culinary adventures include learning to cook for his kids, dining on an elegant shrimp dish in England and finding wonderful Italian food in Rome while writing The Prince of Tides. According to Rubin, "Pat's food memories and recipes range from Alabama to Bangkok to the Dordogne Valley in France. For example, he remembers his time in Italy, and then follows that with Italian recipes."
Although the cookbooks Kyle Cathie has published from her eponymous house in England have long been available stateside, she announced recently that NBN will henceforth be her primary distributor here. In her move to go direct, Cathie has also shortened the imprint name to Kyle Books. In the past, U.S. houses have purchased rights for American editions (Simon & Schuster's The Great Curries of India, for example), and Trafalgar Square has been the major importer of her cookbooks—and still will be for "the odd very British-based title," she says.
As if the political race wasn't hot enough this summer, two cookbooks are positioned to play directly into the highly politicized days ahead.
