Cookbooks, a new category at Andrews McMeel Publishing, are particularly close to Melville's heart. "I think of them as titles that tell stories and can be gifts," she said. "They can sell in many different places in different ways." She noted that while cooking information is easily found--there are plenty of recipes online--cookbooks have broader ingredients unavailable elsewhere. "You can tell great stories through cookbooks," Melville said. "People have a very deep emotional connection to food and a sense of place, and they have an emotional response to these books. In this digital world, what you can hold and feel and experience is what works."
AMP's cookbook titles range from regional to kids to serious baking, and represent "an opportunity to do thoughtful publishing in a way that's consistent with the rest of the business," Melville said. The company published eight cookbooks last year, and 20 will be out by the end of this year.
One of Andrews McMeel's main cookbook dishes this season is My New Orleans: The Cookbook by chef John Besh, published last month. It's an October Gourmet Cookbook Club pick, a lavish title that contains portraits and essays on the author's favorite parts of New Orleans and recipes handed down for generations. "It's the kind of book I love," Melville said. "There's a sense of place about New Orleans, about food, about the man, about history." She noted the "emotional connection" many Americans feel with New Orleans.
My New Orleans, which was "a labor of love" for Besh, is an example of what Melville called "a defining characteristic" of Andrews McMeel Publishing: "We give our creators the creative freedom to create the books they want. Sometimes the salespeople get annoyed that we finesse so much, but in an era when too many books are being published, we have to make sure they're good." (In fact, the company does talk about "creators," not authors.)
Another item on the cookbook menu is Cake Wrecks: When Professional Cakes Go Hilariously Wrong by Jen Yates, published in September and a New York Times bestseller. The book got its start online, at Yates's blog, CakeWrecks.com, which focuses on all kinds of cake disasters. Yates has a "devoted following online," noted Kathy Hilliard, publicity director, so she sent e-vites to her followers, which has led to overflow crowds on the Cake Wrecks tour (Shelf Awareness, October 20, 2009).
Amy Worley, v-p of marketing, said that the goal of marketing and publicity efforts for Cake Wrecks is "to stay within the audience for the book but find all the different groups that would be interested and make it as broad as possible." This has entailed reaching out to "mommy" and food blogs, several "geeky dad" and "geeky guy" blogs and various pop culture blogs. The humor in the book broadens its appeal beyond that of many cookbooks, she noted.
Another major fall title is My Nepenthe by Romney Steele, published this month. The book is set in the "exotic bohemian world" of Big Sur, Calif., where the author's grandmother bought a cabin from Orson Welles and created the Nepenthe restaurant. "It's a story of place and family and time, with food woven in," Melville commented. "The setting is gorgeous."
Other cookbooks include such solid backlist titles as Falling Cloudberries: A World of Family Recipes by Tessa Kiros, "a keepsake cookbook" published last spring, and The Art & Soul of Baking by Cindy Mushet, who has "a great voice and sense of humor." Mushet's book, a Gourmet Cookbook Club selection and winner of an IACP Cookbook Award (and a James Beard nominee), was one of a series done with retailer Sur le Table, considered "a trusted authority."
Besides the IACP and Gourmet Cookbook Club, the company's cookbooks have been recognized by food bloggers, who are "a tremendous source of feedback," Melville said. Hilliard called foodies "a very passionate and involved group of people." In general, she noted, online "there are so many more places and people to talk to, and so both the authors and we have an opportunity to have a broader and closer relationship with readers."
The company is also doing more book videos for readers and fans to share with each other and post on websites or their Facebook pages. It has also introduced the websites andrewsmcmeel.com and cookbooks.andrewsmcmeel.com. The company provides places where authors can blog without creating a separate site. Worley described these blogs as "a way for people to get to know an author and what they're doing and thinking without the author having to take the time, effort and cost to create a blog, and not keep it up after the book is done."