How I Got My First Cookbook Deal
Have you always dreamed of writing a cookbook? Do you always have it in the back of your mind that the job you want involves bringing cookbooks to life? Do you have a treasure trove of recipes so good that you can’t wait to share it with the world? Do you read any food-related thing that comes your way?
In this post, I’ll tell my story about getting my first first book deal in 2006, and how publishing has changed since those days.
I can relate. In 2006, while living in Chicago and working for a restaurant trade magazine, I set my sights on writing a cookbook. I had the perfect project in mind—a book about A16, a restaurant in San Francisco. I had worked as a line cook at A16 before moving to Chicago, and I knew that the restaurant was the kind of place that would make for a great story. (It might not sound all that crazy now, but in the mid 2000s, an Italian restaurant that didn’t serve a “greatest hits of Italy” menu and focused instead on regional food and wine was a revelation—and it didn’t hurt that the pizza was great.) I talked with the restaurant about my idea and received a quick reply: figure out how to make a cookbook happen and we’ll do it.
Then it sunk in. Where to start?
I turned to my small-but-growing network of contacts in the restaurant and food media world. While my job sometimes involved writing stories about frozen yogurt machines or food safety strategies, it also required me to interview a lot of chefs and food professionals. At some point, I had talked with a journalist at a newspaper about a piece she had reported to get context for a story I was writing. A week later, I heard she had taken a job at Ten Speed Press, a publisher of beautiful cookbooks. I emailed her at her new Ten Speed address out of the blue (a “hello, it’s me again” type of message) and asked what she thought of an A16 cookbook. She said she was (understandably) overwhelmed getting up to speed at her new job, but promised to pass my query along.
A week later, I got a call from Ten Speed’s executive editor as I was leaving the office to head home for the day. I was shocked.
He was interested in the book (wow! cool!), but before he could give us a cookbook deal, he needed a proposal. A proposal? “What’s a proposal?” I asked.
“Okay, let’s back up—here’s what I need you to do,” he said.
As he listed off the things he wanted me to write up about the cookbook idea—essentially, he told me what he needed to see in a proposal. I scrambled to find a notepad to take notes, holding the flip phone to my ear (it was 2006, after all). After I hung up, my mind started racing.
The next day, I popped into my editor’s office and asked her if she could find time to chat with me about an extracurricular project. Pat Dailey not only liked the idea but also shared what she had learned from her experience writing her own cookbooks and working in the Chicago Tribune’s food section. She pointed out a few resources to look into that could give more context to my conversation with Ten Speed. One agency had an outline on its site about what it wanted to see from cookbook submissions, and I used it to round out the notes I had taken.
After back and forth with my future co-authors at A16, we had a proposal that included an outline of the book and a list of recipes, and more information about the restaurant and what made it unique. The final proposal wasn’t perfect—not even close—but it got the job done. We had a deal. And two years later, we had a book that ended up taking home the award for Book of the Year from IACP and the Julia Child First Book award. Writing this book was my How to Write a Cookbook school, so to speak, and I learned by muddling through each step. I wrote at dawn before work, I wrote on weekends, I cooked my way through the recipes in a bare-bones Chicago kitchen (thank you, Nora, for being a patient roommate). There were painful moments, but I got through in one piece.
A lot has changed since then. In 2006, I lucked out: I cold-emailed Ten Speed and a week later received an informal tutorial about how to write a proposal. It helped tremendously that A16 was already on their list of restaurants they wanted to work with, and I emailed at the right time. Today, I probably wouldn’t have been so lucky applying the same approach.
Back then, Ten Speed was a small publisher best known for the What Color is Your Parachute series. Now Ten Speed is part of Penguin Random House, which also publishes Clarkson Potter cookbooks. And a LOT of other books. The contracts that authors get from publishers have changed, the amount of time that editors have to spend coaching up a new author have diminished, and overall everything has become more and more competitive.
At the same time, the cookbook market is way more exciting, with stories about African grandmothers, Palestine, and Indonesian food all in the same year. In many ways, it’s a great time to pitch a book that goes beyond what sold well in the past, but it’s also become a lot harder to navigate this world and stand out.
I wanted to write this post because I’m often asked how to get started in cookbooks and I think everyone has a different story about their first break. Because people helped me when I was starting out, I’m paying it forward by sharing tips of the trade in posts that I hope can be resources for aspiring cookbook authors.
If all of this interests you, see my next post on the key components of a cookbook proposal.