The Joy of Writing a Great Cookbook: How to Share Your Passion for Cooking from Idea to Published Book to Marketing It Like a Bestseller

by Kimberly Yorio, Jamie Oliver (Foreword by)

Overview

With more than 20 years in publicity under her belt, Kim Yorio has worked with the biggest names in the food world, including Julia Child, Jamie Oliver, Ina Garten and Rachael Ray, as well as esteemed brands like Calphalon, Sur La Table, Nudo Italia and Taste #5.
Now, with this must-have guide to success, you can get the secrets on how to make your cookbook stick out from the pack from a culinary marketing master. Whether you're a restaurateur looking for promotions or a great home chef hoping to share your exceptional recipes, with Kim's years of knowledge printed on the page you'll be able to create the bestselling cookbook of your dreams.
Kim instructs on everything from what cookbook concept is right for you, how to select the perfect recipes, how to have a captivating voice on paper and of course, how to market your book once its published. With The Joy of Writing a Great Cookbook, Kim Yorio leaves no stone left unturned, putting you on the straight path to a bestseller.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781624140662
Publisher:	Page Street Publishing
Publication date:	05/12/2015
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	160
Sales rank:	470,450
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Kimberly Yorio is the co-founder and president of YC MEDIA, and author of four books. With more than 20 years in publicity, Kim has worked with the biggest names in the food world, including Julia Child, Jamie Oliver, Ina Garten and Rachel Ray, as well as esteemed brands like Calphalon, Su La Table, Nudo Italia and Taste #5.

Jamie Oliver is a global phenomenon in food and campaigning. During a 20-year television and publishing career he has sold over 46 million books worldwide, and achieved an estimated global TV audience reach of 67 million across 182 territories. As a result Jamie has inspired millions of people to enjoy cooking fresh, delicious food from scratch.

Through his organization, Jamie has set an ambitious goal to halve the level of UK childhood obesity by 2030, and improve everyone’s health and happiness through food. His belief that business can be a force for good in driving positive change saw the Jamie Oliver Group achieve the prestigious B-Corp status in July 2020.

Jamie has published more than twenty best-selling cookery books, making him the top-selling non-fiction author in UK history. Jamie’s 2019 title Ultimate Veg has sold over 1M copies worldwide and is now the UK and Australia’s best-selling vegetarian cookbook since records began.

Alongside his work in TV and publishing, Jamie also connects with audiences across multiple digital platforms, creating and appearing in exclusive content for his website, the Jamie Oliver YouTube channels, and a variety of social platforms.

His portfolio of successful restaurants now spans 21 countries around the world, and his growing range of food and kitchen products features everything from kitchenware and utensils to various food products including herbs&spices, pasta, sauces and much more.

Read an Excerpt

The Joy of Writing a Great Cookbook

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By Kimberly Yorio

Page Street Publishing Co.

Copyright © 2015 Kimberly Yorio
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-62414-066-2

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CHAPTER 1

The Successful Cookbook

I worked on my first cookbook in 1993 BFN (Before Food Network!) as a senior publicist focused on cookbooks at William Morrow—the most successful cookbook publisher of the time. Morrow had published numerous New York Times bestselling authors ranging from PBS star Graham Kerr, The Galloping Gourmet and legendary Louisiana chef Paul Prudhomme, to microwave maven Barbara Kafka, syndicated TV cook Mr. Food, esteemed cook Lynne Rossetto Kasper and product hawker extraordinaire, the Juiceman. These cookbooks sold millions of copies each.

Cookbooks have traditionally been very good business for publishers. Unlike the latest novel or nonfiction titles, which have limited life spans, cookbooks can stay relevant and marketable for years. Success for a cookbook can be more than financial, too. According to bestselling cookbook author Michael Ruhlman (Ruhlman's Twenty, Charcuterie) in a blog post on Ruhlman.com (a blog to read regularly if you don't already):

"As far as I'm concerned, what makes it [a cookbook] successful is the fact that it encourages people to cook. That's my main goal. If I can inspire more people to cook, the book is a success. If it furthers and spreads valuable cooking information it's successful. If it adds something new to the world of food and cooking, then it is successful. Those are my definitions of success. They are not regardless of financial success—to me financial success is an indication that people are buying it and spreading the information, and it gives the publisher the confidence to keep investing in me. But a book that makes a lot of money but neither adds something new nor encourages people to cook is not a success in my book."

About his book Charcuterie (W.W. Norton, 2005) he continued:

"This is a success that I am perhaps most proud of. Brian and I were paid a very small advance for what amounted to two years' work ($50,000, split in half, less 15% for the agent, less, oh, at least 15% for taxes. So that's netting $18,000 spread over two years; authors only get half up front, a quarter on delivery, a quarter on publication, typically). We wrote it because we loved the subject, no other reason.

"Its success is almost bizarre. It is a book reliant on the two main ingredients that throw fear into most Americans' hearts: animal fat and salt. The recipes don't take 30 minutes, but rather days and even months. If you do them wrong, some of them can kill you.

"The book has sold more than 100,000 copies, and its bacon recipes [have], according to readers and Twitter, changed lives.

"That, to me, is a success more gratifying than any six-figure advance."

When surveying the industry about cookbook success for her blog, Will Write for Food (diannej.com), writer and author of Will Write for Food (Da Capo Lifelong Books, 2010) Dianne Jacob received a wide variety of answers. From "earning out my advance" to "positive reviews on Amazon," respondents cited a number of factors. Bestselling author Deborah Madison (Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone) offered this:

"You know your book is a success if it accomplished what you wanted it to. It could be different things: selling a lot of copies; getting a lot of print; launching a next step, like a movie; informing and inspiring people; righting a confusion.

"I think of books I've written that have sold a lot and those that have gone out of print or haven't earned back. Local Flavors, for example, has never earned out but is, miraculously, still in print. It was a little ahead of its time, but as the interest in farmers' markets has caught up with it, it has really come into play; I'm asked to weigh in on articles on the basis of the book, it's given away at conferences and farmers' markets, so I consider it a success even if by some standards it isn't. Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone has been a success financially, but what's most important to me is that it has introduced people to vegetables and other plant foods whether or not they're vegetarian, and when I get e-mails and letters from readers expressing their appreciation for that, I am so gratified. The book did what I hoped it would.

"Another book [Seasonal Fruit Desserts] in which I had a mission was in print only for a little over a year. I feel it was a failure even though it was a good book because it didn't get to do what I had hoped, which was to focus on fruit and inspire people to understand and offer ways to enjoy it that were more health supportive than usual. So when you're writing a book and visualizing your audience and thinking about what it is you want the book to say, and if it ends up doing that, it's a success. If it makes a lot of money and gets a lot of print at the same time, that's also a success. But if it doesn't, it's not necessarily a failure.

"The Internet has been a great tool for feedback. Sometimes I feel discouraged about the apparent lack of success of a book, but then I get an e-mail from someone who is a die-hard fan of that book and who really understands it, and that makes it feel like a success."

How do you find the readers who will really understand your book? From the beginning of cookbook publishing in this country, identifying the target market for a book was the key driver for its publication.

Written and self-published in 1931 as a way to support her family, by a completely novice cook and St. Louis housewife whose husband had committed suicide, The Joy of Cooking: A Compilation of Reliable Recipes with a Casual Culinary Chat, as it was originally titled, has been in print continuously since 1936 and has sold more than 18 million copies.

Ms. Rombauer recruited her daughter, Marion Rombauer Becker, who taught at an art school, to do the cover, interior design and illustrations. Working on weekends from 1930 to 1931, Marion designed the cover, which depicted Saint Martha of Bethany, the patron saint of cooking, slaying a dragon. She also produced silhouette cutouts to illustrate chapter headings. Ms. Rombauer hired a local printer who made labels for Listerine bottles to print the book.

In 1936, an expanded edition of her book was published by the Bobbs-Merrill Company in Indianapolis. Mrs. Rombauer had no agent and did all of the negotiations herself. The resulting contract, in which Bobbs-Merrill was granted the copyright not only for the 1936 edition but also for the original 1931 version, was the beginning of many years of bitter battles between author and publisher.

The 1936 Bobbs-Merrill edition was like no other commercial cookbook of the time. They chose to retain Mrs. Rombauer's folksy style and anecdotes and her unique style of recipe writing. Instead of listing the ingredients for a dish at the top with preparation directions following, the recipes in the 1936 Joy unfolded as narratives, with the ingredients indicated as the need for them arose, with each placed in boldface on a new indented line—preserving a conversational tone throughout the recipe, now known as the action method. Bobbs-Merrill also mounted an aggressive sales push and by the end of 1942, the second edition had gone through six printings and sold 52,151 copies.

Her next book in 1939, Streamlined Cooking, was a collection of recipes that could be prepared in less than 30 minutes, with an emphasis on the use of canned and frozen foods. Never a commercial success in its own right, many of the book's recipes instead became part of the next edition of Joy that was published in 1943. This edition included material aimed at helping readers deal with wartime rationing restrictions. Mrs. Rombauer was always conscious that cooks would have more success if they had a friend in the kitchen. Sales of this edition were phenomenal: From 1943 through 1946, a total of 617,782 copies were sold, surpassing sales of the main competitor, The Boston Cooking School Cook Book by Fannie Merritt Farmer.

In 1946, Joy was revised again and this sixth edition removed the references to wartime rationing and added in more of the Streamlined Cooking recipes. At this point, Mrs. Rombauer was 69 and her health was in decline. Still battling with the publisher, she wanted to ensure that Joy remained in the family and negotiated a contract that made her daughter Marion sole successor of any future editions.

Relations between Mrs. Rombauer and Bobbs-Merrill continued to deteriorate and her daughter had to step in. Marion gradually assumed more and more responsibility, at first regarding the book's design, and eventually its content. The 1951 edition was published with Marion Rombauer Becker listed as the coauthor, and she received 40 percent of the royalties.

Marion was a passionate advocate of healthy eating and "her" 1951 edition removed most of the canned and frozen foods from the recipes. She increased the emphasis on whole grains and fresh produce. Throughout this entire time, the Rombauers and Bobbs-Merrill continued to battle in courts. Bobbs-Merrill wanted to add photographs to the books but the Rombauers refused. As a compromise, they added line drawings. Perhaps because of all of the legal tension, the 1951 edition was rife with errors and a corrected edition was issued in 1952 and another with a new index in 1953.

Mrs. Rombauer died in 1962 and Bobbs-Merrill released a new edition without Marion's consent. Marion corrected the book in 1963 and 1964 and arranged for Bobbs-Merrill to exchange copies of the 1962 edition for later corrected ones for any customers who requested them.

The 1964 edition marks the debut of the two-volume mass-market paperback edition that is still widely available in used bookstores. The 1964 edition was also released as a single-volume, comb-ring bound, paperback mass-market edition in November 1973 and distributed into the early 1990s.

The 1975 edition was the last to be edited by Marion and remains the most popular in the marketplace. More than 1,000 pages long, it became a staple in kitchens throughout the country. Though many of the sections may feel dated, the 1975 edition remained in print, primarily in various inexpensive paperback editions, until the "75th Anniversary Edition" was released in 2006.

After the 1975 edition, the Joy remained unchanged for close to 20 years. Publisher Simon & Schuster now owned the Joy copyright and wanted to relaunch an all-new, totally modern Joy in 1993. Under the supervision of Marion's son, Ethan Becker, award-winning and dominating cookbook editor Maria Guarnaschelli, formerly of William Morrow, conceived the 1997 edition and published the Scribner imprint. This edition proved to be hugely controversial as it completely reimagined what Joy could be. They used the concise style of Mrs. Rombauer, but dropped the conversational first-person narration. And instead of a dedicated home cook, Guarnaschelli tapped an extraordinary team of esteemed professionals to pen sections of the book. The 1997 version, originally sold with the title The All-New, All-Purpose Joy of Cooking, was reissued in February 2008 with the title The 1997 Joy of Cooking and is comprehensive, targeted to a modern, sophisticated home cook. The dream team of contributors was listed in the introduction and it included many of the biggest names in the field, including Marion Nestle, who contributed the "Diet, Lifestyle & Health" section, Peter Reinhardt on "Yeast Breads," Dorie Greenspan on "Pancakes, Waffles, French Toast & Doughnuts" and Alice Medrich and Emily Luchetti on "Quick Breads, Pies, Tarts and Cakes." (This is the edition I cook from and this coincided with my entry into the cookbook world. At one point in cookbook circles the only question people had was if "you were working on the New Joy." Love her or hate her, Maria Guarnaschelli knew how to create news. The New Joy, as we called it, rocketed to the top of the bestseller lists with as many articles written about the behind-the-scenes drama as there were about the actual book.)

To right the perceived sins of the 1997 edition and perhaps more likely to generate another huge wave of sales, Scribner published the 75th Anniversary Edition in 2006. This massive eighth edition includes 4,500 recipes and returned Mrs. Rombauer's original voice to the book. The new/old version returned many simpler recipes and recipes assisted by ready-made products, such as cream of mushroom soup and store-bought wontons, which had been removed in the 1997 edition. The 2006 edition also brought back both the cocktail and frozen desserts sections, and restored much of the information that was deleted in the 1997 edition. They added a new section of "Joy Classics" that contains 35 recipes from 1931 to 1975 as well as a new nutrition section.

Both versions of The Joy of Cooking continue to sell to this day and an active web community has been launched by both the Becker and Rombauer families at www.thejoykitchen.com. You can also find them on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Lists: Bestselling Cookbooks of All Time

According to SeriousRankings.com, "The Top Ten Bestselling Cookbooks of All Time" are:

1.Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book (1950)—65 million

2.Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book (1930)—40 million

3.Joy of Cooking, Irma Rombauer (1931)—18 million

4.The American Woman's Cook Book, Ruth Berolzheimer (1939)—8 million

5.In the Kitchen with Rosie: Oprah's Favorite Recipes, Rosie Daley (1994)—8 million

6.Crockery Cookery, Mable Hoffman (1975)—6 million

7.Fix-It and Forget-It Cookbook: Feasting with Your Slow Cooker, Dawn J. Ranck and Phyllis Pellman Good (2000)—5 million

8.The Fannie Farmer Cookbook (1896)—4 million

9.Better Homes and Gardens Eat and Stay Slim (1968)—3.9 million

10.The New American Heart Association Cookbook(1973)—3 million

And The Village Voice ranked the "Best Cookbooks of All Time"

1.The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan (Knopf, 1992)

2.Mastering The Art of French Cooking by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck (Knopf, 1961)

3.The Joy of Cooking (Scribner, various editions 1931–2006)

4.James Beard's American Cookery by James Beard (Little, Brown and Company, 1980)

5.Land of Plenty: A Treasury of Authentic Sichuan Cooking by Fuchsia Dunlop (W.W. Norton, 2003)

6.One Spice, Two Spice: American Food, Indian Flavorsby Floyd Cardoz with Jane Daniels Lear (William Morrow, 2006)

7.All About Braising: The Art of Uncomplicated Cookingby Molly Stevens (W. W. Norton, 2004)

8.Authentic Mexican: Regional Cooking From the Heart of Mexico by Rick Bay less (William Morrow, 1987)

9.The Boston Cooking School Cook Book by Fannie Merritt Farmer (Originally published in 1896. Gramercy, 1997)

10.The New Book of Middle Eastern Food by Claudia Roden (Knopf; Revised edition, 2000)

Not all great cookbooks are bestsellers. I have worked on many brilliant books that don't create traction in the marketplace. And sadly a great number of mediocre books achieve extraordinary commercial success because of the profile of the author. This author hopes you will strive for greatness in your work, but in the meantime, we will get to work on building your platform.

CHAPTER 2

Build Your Platform

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Selling your first cookbook won't be easy. Chances are you'll have worked for years in the food industry before you get your big break. The cookbook business becomes more competitive each day with publishers desperately reading the tea leaves to try and figure out where to place their bets, whether big or little. Kids are graduating from culinary school and looking for jobs as celebrity chefs. No one wants to be a cook anymore—oh no, people want to be stars. And stars get big book deals. Well, very many stars have to align for all those dreams to come true, so let's focus on what you can do, and that's building a platform.

The term platform came in vogue in the early 2000s—and what it refers to is a marketing platform. In Writer's Digest, Christina Katz describes it this way: "Platform is a simple word to describe a complicated process—a process that's been shrouded in mystery until recently. If you're wondering what the difference is between a completely unknown writer and a well-known writer, I can tell you. The well-known writer has influence. In order for you to build influence, you need to create and launch a platform that communicates your expertise, credibility and integrity to others quickly and concisely."

To start developing your platform, you'll need to make some important choices about your topic, audience and the ways you interact best with them. I have identified the five critical planks you need to build a solid platform.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from The Joy of Writing a Great Cookbook by Kimberly Yorio. Copyright © 2015 Kimberly Yorio. Excerpted by permission of Page Street Publishing Co..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Foreword by Jamie Oliver,
Introduction,
PART ONE: Selling In,
1: The Successful Cookbook,
2: Build Your Platform,
3: Get Focused,
4: Proposals and Professionals Who Get Deals Done,
PART TWO: Creating,
5: Write, Test, Repeat,
6: More Words—What Else Do You Need to Include?,
7: The Art Program,
PART THREE: Selling Out,
8: The Social Media Revolution,
9: Old School: Book Tours, Nationals and the Brave New Frontier of Traditional Media,
10: E-books and Innovation, Plus Just a Wee Primer on Self-Publishing,
Acknowledgments,
About the Author,
Index,