April 14, 2025 • 33 mins
Writing a cookbook is only one part of the process. And we should know! We're Bruce Weinstein & Mark Scarbrough, authors of over three dozen cookbooks under our own names, plus more for celebrities and GI doctors.
It's a long process to get a cookbook into a bookstore (and into your hands). We thought we'd take the time and explain why it takes about two and a half years for a cookbook to finally be for sale.
Join us for an insider look at the steps to creating and publishing a cookbook. Plus, a one-minute cooking tip. And the answer to "what's making us happy in food this week?"
Would you like your own copy of our latest cookbook, COLD CANNING? Click this link right here.
Here are the segments for this episode of COOKING WITH BRUCE & MARK:
[00:58] Our one-minute cooking tip: Freeze fresh ginger to keep it tasty!
[02:54] An insider look at the many steps to get to a cookbook: from proposal all the way to publication.
[31:08] What’s making us happy in food this week? Citarella for gefilte fish and goose eggs!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Bruce (00:01):
Hey, I am Bruce Weinstein, and this is the Podcast
Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
mark (00:04):
And I'm Mark Scarbrough, and together with Bruce, my husband, we
have written three dozen cookbooks.
We're about to publish our37th this summer, cold canning.
We've been talking about that on thepodcast, and we're gonna talk about
cookbooks, but not about cold canning.
In this episode, we're talking about theentire process of writing a cookbook.
This came up a couple weeks ago ina previous episode, and a listener.
(00:27):
Contacted me and said, but youdidn't make clear what the whole
process is from developing theidea through finding it in a store.
And I was like, okay.
Well we can on your seat belts.
Yeah, buckle up.
'cause this is a long process, but we'regonna detail what that process actually
looks like in terms of writing a cookbook.
Of course.
We've got a one minute cookingtip and we'll tell you what's
(00:48):
making us happy in food this week.
So let's get started.
Bruce (00:56):
Our one minute cooking tip, it's not me, mark did it.
You go.
mark (00:59):
Yeah, it is me.
So here's a one that you mightnot know, but it's kind of crazy.
If you buy Fresh Ginger, it can go very.
Boggy and a hydrator after a couple weeks.
Or it can get very dried outand it can get very stringy.
Mm.
So here's a tip.
Wrap it tightly in plastic wrap andfreeze it because if you freeze it, it
will retain more of it spiky flavor.
(01:22):
It won't develop those mushyspots, it won't dry out.
And here's a bonus.
You can use a grater, particularlythe small little holes on your
box grater to just grade it.
Frozen.
Bruce (01:35):
Yep.
Right from the freezer.
Wrap it back up and put it back in.
And you can peel it if you want,before you freeze it or not.
I tend to not peel it.
If it's very fresh ginger and Iuse the peel and you don't even
know what's in there, or if it'snot the freshest before you freeze
it, peel it, and then freeze it.
What he's
mark (01:50):
saying is if you buy ginger in an Asian market, you
probably don't have to peel it.
If you buy it in a.
Standard North American, uk, orCanadian supermarket, you probably
do have to peel it because it's driedout and gotten that husky outer skin
to it, whatever that theme is.
And if you grow it
Bruce (02:05):
yourself, then you don't need to grow.
Oh, well, whatever.
I mean,
mark (02:07):
if you grow it yourself, you're not listening to cooking with Bruce and
Mark, so whatever you might be, doubt it.
Okay.
Let me say that we do have a newsletter.
It comes out very sporadically atthis point, about once a month because
we're both so busy with everythingelse you related to do with work.
But if you'd like to be a part of thatnewsletter, which is not necessarily
connected to this podcast, you can signup on our website, Bruce and mark.com,
(02:32):
or cooking with Bruce and Mark dot.
Com, they both go to the same place.
If you drop down the landing page,you'll see a place to sign up.
Just to remind you, I don't captureyour email and I do not capture your
name, nor do I let the provider do that.
So your name and email can't ever be soldand you won't be spammed out of existence.
If you want that newsletter,that's the way to get it.
(02:52):
Just go to our website ifyou're interested in that.
Okay.
Up next, the processof writing a cookbook.
Bruce (03:01):
It all starts with an idea.
Doesn't everything startwith an idea, I guess?
mark (03:06):
No, but Okay, go on.
Bruce (03:07):
But we have to develop the ideas, right?
Yeah.
So we have to come up withsomething that we like, right?
Something that we thinkour agent will like.
Yep.
And something that we thinkour publisher would like.
Yep.
And something that we think ourpublisher's marketing team will like.
Yes.
And once we get an idea that wethink they'll all like, we start
putting it down on paper andpushing it through the system.
mark (03:29):
Okay, so let me back up and talk about this.
Developing an idea.
So basically what Bruce and Iare talking about is how we,
after 37 cookbooks, how we do it.
And we do it in this way.
If you are a brand new cookbook writer.
You basically have to start with a writtenbook, a written manuscript, unless you are
an influencer with 50 billion followers.
Mm-hmm.
Or unless you're a celebrity, you haveto start with the actual book itself.
(03:54):
So we are actually,
Bruce (03:56):
I'm sorry for you if you to do that.
I know.
And
mark (03:58):
we're actually in the envious place of, we no longer start with a written
manuscript, so we have to develop an idea,and this will take several months to do.
In fact, we're currently workingon this and we have multiple gate.
Keepers to get through.
As Bruce said, we have to get itthrough our agent and that's where we
currently are in our new idea process.
We're working with our agentto come up with an idea and
(04:20):
she is our first gatekeeper.
We have to get through, she has to likesomething in order to want to sell it.
Then we have an additionalgatekeeper who is our publisher.
We are fortunate to have thesame person is our editor and our
publisher, and then he has gatekeepers.
In our case it's a him.
He has gatekeepers, which is themarketing team at the publishing house.
(04:41):
This idea is gonna have to get throughthree different levels of gatekeepers.
And uh, I think for us, themost fraught one is the agent.
But that's what I think becausethe agent is, um, she's just
getting a bunch of random ideas.
I mean, literally she's being bombardedwith ideas via email and she's kind
of, kind of sort through these andsome I end up writing a couple pages
(05:04):
on some, I just send her an email on,or Bruce will even call her about.
She's just getting barraged by ideas and
Bruce (05:11):
it's hard because we're not necessarily giving her, you
know, blown out thought through.
Here it is.
Here's how the whole book looks.
We're just throwing aquick idea at her now.
We've been with her forover 30 years, right?
So she has been a longtime relationship with us.
We do kind of understand how weall think together, so it is, we do
easier, we do than, you know, a lotof other agent client relationships.
(05:36):
Um, but it is frustrating 'cause there'llbe times Mark and I think we have a
brilliant idea and we'll run it by her.
And then the words that comeback is, I don't get it.
And then we have a choice we couldtry and make her get it right.
Or we can drop it.
mark (05:52):
Right?
And just to say, uh, you know,you may think, uh, wow, you, so
you're the creative and you haveto pass this through an agent.
But to be honest with you, she'sgot a lot of credits behind her.
She's been in the businessfar longer than we have.
She was the acquiringagent for the Color Purple.
She was the acquiring agent atSimon Schuster for the world of.
According to Garp.
So let's just say that she's got a lotof traction behind her and she does
(06:17):
understand what sells and what doesn't.
So it's not as if we're up againstsomebody who's kind of on our level.
We're up against somebody who we are,who's slightly above us in terms of
what can sell and what can't let,
Bruce (06:27):
let me say this about agents for a second, and that is they know what
will sell, but they will know what willsell to their group of editors, right?
Our agent doesn't have a relationshipwith every single editor in New York.
She has a relationship with alot and a big pool of editors at
a big number of houses, but shedoesn't know each and every one.
(06:50):
Correct.
So she knows when shesays, I don't get it.
It may be in response to an initial,well, I probably can't sell that
idea to the 15 editors I'm thinkingabout right off the top of my head.
Right.
But that doesn't mean that therearen't other editors out there who
might buy it, but that's the deal.
You sign, you work with an agent,and that agent, of course works
(07:10):
with just a bunch of editors, right?
And it doesn't work with everybody.
mark (07:13):
Ours has been in the business long enough that she has a relationship
with lots of editors and publishers.
And particularly with publishers.
She is, but still, nonetheless,we have to get it through her.
And so I wanna just say thatthis is the initial stage, and
this takes multiple months.
We've been working on this withour agent since the first of 2025.
Right.
So since I broke my leg months ago mm-hmm.
(07:35):
We've been.
This process, and we're about to enterthe second part of the process, which is
presenting these ideas to our publisher.
And once that happens, andonce he, and we and the agent
agree, then he has to sell it.
Bruce (07:49):
Now, let me say we are in a fortunate position that we can just
bring ideas to our publisher, right?
. Many people don't have longstandingrelationships with a publisher, so they're
gonna sell an idea to their agent and thentheir agent is gonna run ideas by three
or four different editors of publishersaround town to find one interested
enough to take a meeting to discuss it.
We are very lucky.
(08:10):
Our current publisherhas published our last.
Eight books.
And so we are looking to continue to worktogether and it's on both directions.
He wants to work with us,we wanna work with him.
So we are very fortunate thatthe next step for us is a meeting
with him to discuss these ideas.
Right.
mark (08:23):
So let's assume that's already happened and let's assume
we've all agreed on an idea over
Bruce (08:29):
lunch.
Usually Chinese food.
mark (08:30):
Yeah.
That.
Which our kosher agent can'teat, um, yet we keep doing it.
Let's assume that the four of us havecome to some kind of understanding.
Now the question is selling the idea, andhere's where it gets a little bit more
fraught, and that is, it falls on me.
I'm the writer in theteam of the four of us.
It falls on me to develop a proposaland it is a formal business proposal.
(08:52):
I have to write a 40 to 55 page,somewhere in that range, 40 to 55
page business proposal of why this.
Title will sell and Icome up, draft up that.
I come up with thatproposal, I draft it out.
I of course work on it for a while.
Then I give it to our agent.
She sends it back to me with comments.
(09:12):
Then finally, once she and I like it,then it goes off to the publisher.
He sends it back to me withcomments . And finally, at the end of.
All of that, he can take that giantbusiness proposal to his sales meeting.
So if developing the idea takes, mm,let's say three months, this is about
a two to three month process as well.
(09:35):
This idea of developing the formalproposal to get ready to sell the idea,
Bruce (09:39):
and lemme say what is.
In that proposal is really interestingbecause it is a description of
what the book will be, of course.
Yeah.
Yep.
But it's also a description of the market.
What other books have ever been writtenthat are kind of like this, if any?
Maybe we're lucky enough tocome with a brand new idea.
Rarely.
Um, rarely.
So we have to do a history of whatare the books have been written,
how did they sell, and how were theymarketed and who were their audiences?
(10:03):
And then we had to talk about.
Our audience.
So who do we think is theaudience for our book?
And we need research for this.
And also if the book is related toan appliance, like we wrote all these
instant pop books and air fryer books.
In those cases we had to lookat trends, projections and sales
projections of those appliances too.
'cause they directly related to our book.
And,
mark (10:23):
uh, part of the proposal too, and I should add this part of the proposal is
coming up with a recipe list for the book.
Mm-hmm.
And so it, part of this proposalis what our recipes are gonna
be included in the book.
And I wanna say.
Um, and this seems really crass, but therecipe list that appears in the proposal
is, uh, shall we say, tangential to whatwill become the final recipe book in list.
(10:44):
In the book itself.
I mean, it's a idea.
I use it as a guide, right?
It's an idea to beginning, but it barerarely bears very close proximity.
What to what actually getspublished on the line.
Bruce (10:54):
Let me say that the new book called Canning, that proposal
had about 200 recipe names in the.
In the recipe list, in the proposal,the final book had 425 recipes.
I mean, most of the recipesthat are in our list tend to
make it into the book, but
mark (11:10):
yeah, it, it's funny, it depends on the books.
Uh, we, if you look back at abook ALA mode, uh, which we wrote
years ago at when we were at St.
Martin's, uh, that's a book with dessertsand ice creams to go with those desserts.
Mm-hmm.
The recipe list bears no resemblanceto the final book at all.
So it's weird.
Um, so, okay, so now we've got a fewmonths developing the idea, a two to
(11:33):
three months selling the idea, writingthe proposal, and let's assume it sells.
Let's assume that our publishergoes off, do a sales meeting.
It sells.
They make offers.
The offers go back andforth between our agent.
You know, it's the whole negotiationthing, which is why you have an agent
once you sign the contract, you actuallyhave to write the thing itself and set
about making that proposal good as a book.
(11:53):
And that takes.
What, nine
Bruce (11:56):
months?
10.
And it depends.
Your contract will tell you howlong you have to write the book.
It does.
I mean, our contract will tellus how big the book is gonna be.
It'll tell us how many recipeshave to be in that book.
Right.
It will not describethe table of contents.
It will not tell us howmany chapters we will work.
On that as we create the book,but it will tell us how many
words the manuscript can be,
mark (12:18):
right?
Bruce (12:18):
And how many pictures will be in the book.
Right?
And most important, it'll tell uswhen that is due to the publisher.
mark (12:24):
Okay, let me explain how the due date works.
Basically, they take Google keywordsearches and they try to figure out
when is a particular topic popular.
In the course of a year,they find out, let's say.
For example, our co upcoming book, coldCanning, they discovered that canning
searches happen the most amount oftime in late June through early August.
(12:50):
So therefore, they set the publicationof the book in July of 2025, and
generally they set the due date.
A year before that.
So they work backwards a year from whenthey think they wanna put it on sale.
That doesn't always holdout, but that's how it is.
Now, I should tell you that we'vecrashed books and in publishing,
(13:10):
crashing means you're, you'rewriting it with absolutely no time.
What so.
Ever.
Yeah.
Bruce (13:17):
Where usually publishers give themselves a year from when
you turn it into publishing.
When it's crashed, you might turn it inand they'll publish it within six months.
That is really fast for them,
mark (13:26):
they used to, in the old days, called them blue files back
when manuscripts came in as, as,uh, actually print offs and people
would work on them and blue, theywould be put into blue files.
And a blue file meant when it hits yourdesk, you can't work on anything else.
You must only work on this bookin the publishing house because
they're trying to push it out.
When we wrote the Great AmericanSlow Cooker book, we had, I don't
(13:48):
even remember, five or six monthsto create 500 recipes for this book.
It was a.
Unbelievable.
I, we had basically had to put ourlives on hold to create this book.
Bruce (14:00):
On any given day.
I had 10 to 12 slow cookersgoing insane all day, all day in
mark (14:05):
the kitchen.
Insane.
You've never seenelectric bills like these.
And um, and uh, just to add tothe misery here, my laptop crashed
halfway through writing this book.
Well, more than halfway,we were about done.
It crashed because the.
Book crashed it because it was too big forthe ram to hold, and so I had a print off
(14:26):
of it and I had to retype an a thousandpage manuscript back into my laptop.
It was before you could digitize pages.
It was.
Insane the amount of work that was.
Okay, so you have a fewmonths to develop the idea.
You have two to threemonths to sell the idea.
Then you get, let's say nine monthsto a year to write the book, and now
(14:46):
you enter the dreaded editing process.
You turn the book in
Bruce (14:51):
and my job is done.
I'm out of the kitchen andMark goes into hell time, and
I get to spend time doing other
mark (14:58):
things.
Yes.
If your publisher or editor accepts thebook, now you enter the editing process.
Oh, if.
If that's an, if they have, that's
Bruce (15:05):
right.
They can look at it and say,Nope, you need to fix it.
We've had books sent back to us.
Of course, everybody has early on inour career where they didn't, the editor
didn't like the way recipes are formatted.
They didn't like the waywe worded certain things.
And rather than make that changein every recipe as they edited.
They just sent the whole thing backand said, no, restructure this.
And
mark (15:24):
Let me say that when you sign a contract to publish a book, you get a
chunk of money right at that moment ofsigning, and then you get another chunk
of money at what in publishing is calledDNA, which means delivery and acceptance.
Bruce (15:37):
It's that acceptance part that's key.
It's the acceptance because
mark (15:39):
uh, if they kick it back in any way from editing,
they have not yet accepted it.
So your payment is being delayed in thisprocess, which makes it very frustrating.
So you go into the editing processand editors, of course, my editor
has a lot to say about the book.
He goes through it very carefully.
He looks at it all.
Say very carefully.
(16:00):
Sometimes he tells me I'msitting in the parking lot of
Home Depot editing your book.
I'll get a text like that.
But he's going through thebook on, um, his laptop.
He's looking through it.
He's Or his phone.
Or his phone.
He is making all kinds of changes to it.
But I, you should know.
Here's one of the things that'sinteresting is editors don't copy.
Edit.
And I think that people still thinkthat editors sit there and say,
(16:20):
this verb does not go with thissubject, or whatever, you know?
Okay.
Well
Bruce (16:24):
now you have to explain in more detail.
Okay.
What's the difference betweenediting and copying it?
mark (16:27):
Copy editing is the granular bit, like, uh, you've used the
present tense and now you suddenly.
Switch to the past tense in this hahead note or, um, you've used this
word too many times or this old editingthing of, I'm not quite sure this
sentence makes sense because you'vegot your clauses in different orders.
(16:47):
That doesn't happen with editors anymore.
Editors are looking at the macro of it.
So they, what they're asking youat this point mostly is, are the.
Order of the recipes, right?
Do the headnote actually, does itintroduce the recipe despite the
granular grammatical problems?
Does the headnote set up andmake me wanna make this recipe?
Are you selling eachrecipe in the headnote?
(17:08):
These are all thequestions that editors ask.
Does the introduction to a chapteractually set up the chapter?
Do you need to refocus this chapter?
Do you need to put more informationin the introduction to open the book?
Basically, they're makingall kinds of changes in.
Focus and even recipe layout,the order of the recipes.
They might
Bruce (17:25):
say let's pull these recipes outta this chapter and
make it its own separate chapter.
Yes, they might.
That's something that can happen.
mark (17:31):
We wrote sheet cakes and slab pies.
We were still at St.
Martin's at that point.
Our editor took my recipe list and the wayI set up the chapters, and she completely
rearranged the book and kicked it back,and I had to write new introductions
for the chapters she had created.
Out of our recipes.
So my chapter introductionsdidn't really fit anymore
(17:51):
because she rearranged the book.
Bruce (17:53):
Now you have the right to fight back against that a little.
You can say, I don't agree with you.
You can have a discussion about it.
You don't have to.
You can't to just lie down andlet them walk all over you.
mark (18:02):
You can, but you're also trying, you know, you're trying to be a compliant.
Uh, writer, you're trying to getanother book down the line and
you don't wanna be a problem.
So they expect pushback,but not dramatic pushback.
So that's gonna take three to four monthsto get it through editing, and after that.
Now they've accepted it.
(18:22):
Now you get your next payment ofmoney and then you, the book goes
into copy editing, which is whereit all hits that granular level.
And I will say that I have a copyeditor who we've worked with for
almost a dozen books now, and I.
Love her so much that Iessentially require her to be a
(18:43):
named commodity in the contract.
I mean, I want her to work on our books.
I trust her.
But you have a
Bruce (18:48):
volatile relationship with her too.
Very volatile, has relationship,has strong opinions, and sometimes.
We agree with them and sometimes we
mark (18:54):
don't.
I, that's why I like her.
Uh, I always say about my copy editor,and she may be listening to this episode,
and I always say about her that she's notfor the thin skinned, but that's okay.
I'm not thin skinned.
And, uh, she can come at me with, uh,what she's got and I am more than willing
to say no or to push back and say,no, that's really the way I want it.
I want it to read like that.
(19:16):
Uh, so we have a, we don'thave a combative relationship.
We have actually a very friendlyrelationship, but we're very.
Blunt about what thebook should have in it.
And this is all of thisgranular, grammatical stuff.
She's catching problems.
Like, , you said a teaspoon of,or a tablespoon of ketchup was
15 grams a hundred pages ago, andnow you're saying it's 13 grams in
(19:40):
this recipe she's keeping track of.
All of those crazy details inorder to make the book consistent.
Bruce (19:46):
Somebody has to, 'cause the last thing I want is a book
that's messed up and confusing.
Yeah, it's, and not consistent.
It's
mark (19:52):
insane.
Like, uh, like she'll say, you know,you said a large Cleve of garlic
minced up was a tablespoon andthis recipe, but, uh, 200 pages
ago you said it was two teaspoons.
So which is it?
And make it consistentthroughout your book.
And it's that, make itconsistent throughout your book.
That is not for the thin skin.
No.
Bruce (20:09):
And while the copy editing is going on, the designer is
working on the layout of the book.
The designer is choosing the font, thecolors, the designer is deciding how
the recipe title goes, how the head notegoes, what the ingredient list looks like.
Is it in a column, is it straight across?
And all that's being designed asthe book is being copy edited.
mark (20:30):
Right?
And I think a lot of peopledon't know this, but.
All books are designed, I meaneven novels, history books,
narrative nonfiction, anythingyou read, it's designed.
Somebody chose the font, somebody chosewhat the titles of the chapters look like.
Mm-hmm.
Somebody laid out the table of contents.
All of that is part of the design.
Somebody decided, oh, Ihow big the margins are.
(20:51):
These were all decisions that arebeing made around the copy editing
of the book and cookbooks are.
Just, what do I wanna say?
Heavily designed,uniquely designed objects.
They're very
Bruce (21:03):
heavily designed.
If you open a cookbook, there areso many elements there, right?
There's every step in the recipe.
There's the ingredient list, there'sa headnote, there's the title, right?
There's tips and tricks.
All of those pieces have to be puttogether on a page in a beautiful,
artistic and pleasing way.
mark (21:18):
Right?
And I see a lot of cook.
Books out there.
And we don't let this happen to our books.
And fortunately we work with really gooddesigners from the publishing house.
We don't hire them, but we have gooddesigners because I see cook books where
it's basically thrown on the page mm-hmm.
Where somebody chose a font andthen, you know, recipes end, um,
I don't know, you know, two inchesdown the second page and then there's
(21:39):
just all this blank page below it.
There's nothing
Bruce (21:41):
worse than blank page.
No,
mark (21:43):
I'm not.
Totally afraid of white space,but at the same time, I do wanna
look like the book is full.
Mm-hmm.
And it doesn't just havebig gaps in it anywhere.
'cause I feel like that's almost a,I don't know what a cheated project.
Bruce (21:56):
Right.
And that's part of fitting the copyedited manuscript into the design.
Yeah.
Which is the next.
Step, and it takes about a month for Markto go through with the designer and make
sure that it fits and it looks right,and that the designer might say to Mark,
you know, I need you to cut two sentencesout of this to make this all fit.
Mm-hmm.
Or Can you write me another two sentencesso this looks better on the page?
(22:17):
Mm-hmm.
So that's making good design choices.
Based on how the recipe is written.
mark (22:22):
And let me also say that publishers cost out books by the number of pages
in a book, and I, this is gonna bereally esoteric for you, but they cost
that out in intervals of 16 and 32.
That's basically the giant sheet ofpaper where a book gets printed on it
printed on both sides and thenit gets cut down and folded
and turned into the bookthat you hold in your hands.
(22:46):
So it comes in 16 or 32 pageincrements and they worry about how
many, here's the big word signatures.
That is pa stacks of pages occurin a book, and once we published
a book in which the designer,uh, laid it out and the publisher
decided it ran one signature.
Over.
So I had to sit in a Vancouver, BritishColumbia hotel room for three days
(23:10):
and cut 32 pages out of that book inorder to, for it to fit the signatures.
But it's not uncommon.
Bruce (23:18):
No.
And it wasn't necess for me to cut stuff
mark (23:20):
out of a book.
Bruce (23:20):
But it wasn't necessary that you be in Vancouver to do the book.
No, we just happened to be waiting for.
A cruise to Alaska with your parents.
And so we have to be in Vancouver.
So cutting signatures out of a book doesnot require that you be in Vancouver.
No,
mark (23:33):
but at least I got a really good dinner each night at the end
of a hard day working in Vancouver.
But it was ridiculous havingto do all of this for the book.
But it's not uncommon for me oncethe recipe hits the page and it's
designed for the designer to say,um, cut four lines from this recipe.
Mm-hmm.
And I've gotta cut them fromthe headnote or from a back.
Part of the recipe somewhereto make it fit on that page.
(23:54):
Or the designer will say to me,this recipe is running short.
Can you fill this space in some way?
So I'll have to come up with anend note, or I'll have to add more
material to the head note to make itfill out, to actually fit the page.
And that process takesabout another month.
So just think where we are, a few monthsinto developing the ideas, a couple months
(24:16):
to selling it, nine months to writing it.
Three to four months to.
Editing it two to three months to copyediting it while it's being designed.
About a month to fitting the copyof Edit manuscript into design.
And then you get this bevy offinal questions and queries.
This is all before theyhit the word print.
And believe it or not, this is the pointwhere a manuscript goes to a proof.
(24:39):
Reader.
Mm-hmm.
And a proof reader proofs the text
But once your book is edited andbefore it goes to copy editing your
editor, let's go of your book andit turn is turned over to a managing
editor who sees it through production,which is the copy editing, designing.
All of that stuff is happeningthrough a managing editor.
And that last month with themanaging editor and the proofreader,
(25:01):
I basically can't move from mydesk because they need my answers.
Uh, that day when they querysomething and say, uh, you say
table salt in every recipe, but inthis one recipe you just say salt.
Can you fix that?
Or should that be fixed?
Basically they give me, youknow, 20 minutes to answer that
question so that they can get it.
'cause they're just racing.
(25:23):
Mm-hmm.
To hold their fingerover the print button.
Mm-hmm.
Bruce (25:26):
and it's during that point that we'll start to see cover designs as well.
And we'll see the frontcover and the back cover.
Yeah.
They both have to be designed.
Yeah.
Um, we will probably earlier onhave been sending out, um, PDFs.
Of what the book is gonna look likewith content to people, we hope
will give us quotes for the book.
And so then at that point, thosequotes will be incorporated
(25:48):
into the front cover, right?
Or the back cover of the book.
And then finally they hit print.
And guess what?
It's gonna take up to six monthsbecause usually it's printed.
In China.
And it'll be interesting to see whathappens now with tariffs that are in
place about the printing in China.
Yeah.
'cause usually books areall printed in China.
Yeah.
'cause it's so much cheaper.
Yep.
I don't know that it'll be cheaper anymoreand perhaps books will start being printed
(26:11):
here where it's more expensive, but itmay be cheaper than paying the duty on it.
It may be.
I
mark (26:16):
know that the, some publishers are looking at.
Finland where the tariffs are lowerand there are so many paper and pulp
factories in Finland, but it's stillmore expensive than China, no doubt.
Bruce (26:26):
Because wherever it's printed, it has to come on container ship.
mark (26:28):
Yeah, and just to say the, that the container ship is the
important part of this because
. Really the print button, pressingprint, and it prints in China.
I don't, that does not take much time.
A few days for your book to beprinted and collated and put
together and bound and put in a box.
Bruce (26:45):
Even 10,000 copies.
It just takes a few days.
Yeah, it is that container ship problem.
There's the problem getting it.
Into the us getting it into thepublisher's warehouse, getting it
distributed to its distributors, gettingit to the retailers who had asked for it,
getting it to places like Amazon, and thenin the end, getting it into your hands.
mark (27:04):
And the question is always,
Bruce (27:06):
how many books to print, Yeah, the first printing they go
at is a huge decision and a very,very fraught one for the publisher.
Yeah, because they want tomake sure they have enough.
Books in print to meet the demand.
Yep.
The last thing you want is to runoutta books, and it has happened
to us with the Instant Pop Bible.
mark (27:25):
We actually ran out of, the instant Pop Bible as Bruce says.
On Black Friday?
Yeah, the day, like two days before BlackFriday sales, they ran out of this book
that they expected to sell thousands andthousands of copies of through Christmas.
And our book, which was designatedto go through the Christmas sales
season, was not available until what?
(27:46):
Christmas Eve or something.
Yeah, it was,
Bruce (27:48):
it was nightmarish.
I believe they printed them in the USto get them in really quickly and yes,
you, they were shipped, I think on theday after Christmas if you bought them.
But people were unable toget them for Christmas day.
It was a
mark (28:00):
stabbing problem.
Mm-hmm.
And to be not for sale and being told it'sback ordered on Black Friday was terrible.
So this is.
All of that fraught processof getting a book out.
And if you listen to everything we'vesaid, you should realize that what
we've been talking about is abouta two and a half year span from
developing the idea all the way fromto the book, appearing on Amazon for
(28:23):
sale, or being in a store somewhere.
We're talking in normal production about.
Two and a half years.
And there's a trueproblem with that, right?
It's trying to guess when you sell a book.
Yeah.
What will sell two anda half years from now.
Bruce (28:40):
It is hard.
Which is why you want ideas that arenot necessarily stuck onto trends
you want ideas that have a longlife that can, that will be.
Exciting to people now, but exciting topeople in two years and hopefully exciting
to people in 10 and 15 years as well.
Yeah,
mark (28:56):
and this is what they're finding with the big influencers.
They're finding that the books sellreally big when they first come out,
and then they just fall off a cliffbecause everybody who wants the book
buys it and then nothing else happens.
And if even they crash an influencer'sbook, it's still gonna take 'em
nine months to a year to get it out.
And is the influencer stillgonna be an influencer in.
(29:19):
A year, and this is also part of theproblem and I should just say is that
if the books don't sell and that initialprint run doesn't sell out, your editor
and or publisher may very well be fired.
Bruce (29:35):
And the odds of you getting another book are nil.
mark (29:38):
Yes, it's, it's an extraordinarily fraught process.
I should just tell you beforewe end this, I should just tell
you for that, for example, when.
Lange came out with his booksand they were such huge hits.
There were a billion OT Lange copycats.
Mm-hmm.
That came out.
There were people trying to be likeOtto Lange, and they were crashing
(29:59):
those books out so fast that nowif you even mention OT Lange in
publishing, they all back away from you
because it's not that his books aren'tstill great, it's that all the copycats
didn't sell as well as his book, butthey were crashing them out to try to
catch a trend, and they really can't.
(30:20):
It's never a good idea.
Publishing moves at a geological pace,a glacial pace, and it's very hard
for them to be up on current trends.
Okay, well, there's the wholestory, the two and a half years of
how you develop an idea and get a.
Cookbook published.
It's a long process to say the least.
It's been a long process for cold canningto finally end up this summer in stores.
(30:44):
We've been working at it for a longtime and are very excited about it,
so we just wanted to let you in onwhat that full process looks like.
Before we move to the last partof this podcast, let me say
that there is a Facebook groupcooking with Bruce and Mark.
You can find us there there's also an.
Instagram channel.
And we're delighted tointeract with you there.
Okay.
(31:04):
Speaking of that, let's move on tothe last segment of the podcast.
What's making us happy in food this week?
Bruce (31:13):
Cinderella Fish Store on the Upper West side of Manhattan.
Now they also have other stores inthe Hamptons and everywhere else,
but they were the only people.
The only people, not even thekosher market that I often go to
in West Hartford, Connecticut,but they were the only people
that were able to get me a whole.
Pike at Passover so I couldgrind it up and make afil fish.
mark (31:34):
Yes, Bruce made his own gefilte fish as is common around here.
And uh, I won't eat gefiltefish in any other form.
I will not eat it injarred form no matter what.
You doctor, that goopy crap whip, what
Bruce (31:47):
is that thing people think?
You take it out and you reboilit and suddenly it's better.
mark (31:52):
Sweet fish cello.
Mm.
Gross.
No, Bruce makes his own Gefilte fish.
He's even made his own homemade jalapenossauerkraut to go with that gefilte fish.
Mm-hmm.
A recipe from cold canning did it.
It was delicious.
Um, so he thinks all of that isexactly part of what's making Bruce
happy in the food this weekend.
What it's.
(32:12):
Making me happy is, uh, we have,again, I'm gonna bow back some I've
already said, which is all about eggs.
And we have a friend who livesvery close to us, who has a ton
of ducks and a couple geese.
And I have to say, gooseeggs make me very happy.
Mm.
If you would've had a goose egg.
Well, you haven't had a mealbecause a goose egg is giant
Bruce (32:32):
size of a salad plate.
You fry it up and it overlappedthe edges of our salad plates.
It
mark (32:36):
did.
It filled the plate.
There was no room formy toast on the plate.
And because they're so big, you haveto fry them for a long time to get
the yolks to set, which means thebottom of the whites get a little
crunchy because they're so long.
I don't like my egg flipped over.
So there you go.
So you have to fry a long time to getthat yolk to set and it's so delicious
(32:58):
and there is so much yolk in a goose egg.
Oh my
Bruce (33:02):
god, so much yolk.
So bitch, so much yoke
mark (33:04):
in a goose egg.
There's just a ton of yolk for dip toastin which makes it absolutely perfect.
Okay, that's the podcast for this week.
That's what's making ushappy and food this week.
That's how cookbooks happen.
And that's our one minutecooking tip about ginger.
Bruce (33:16):
And please Mark told you about our Facebook group.
But what I really hope you will do isgo to TikTok and check out our channel
cooking with Bruce and Mark on TikTok,where we make videos of cooking all sorts
of fun stuff and about what it is like towrite cookbooks and go to our Instagram
group cooking with Bruce and Mark.
You can follow us there and you couldsee everything that's happening, what we
(33:38):
eat and what we are doing, and see moreabout us on cooking with Bruce and Mark.
Hey, I am Bruce Weinstein, and this is the Podcast
Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
mark (00:04):
And I'm Mark Scarbrough, and together with Bruce, my husband, we
have written three dozen cookbooks.
We're about to publish our37th this summer, cold canning.
We've been talking about that on thepodcast, and we're gonna talk about
cookbooks, but not about cold canning.
In this episode, we're talking about theentire process of writing a cookbook.
This came up a couple weeks ago ina previous episode, and a listener.
(00:27):
Contacted me and said, but youdidn't make clear what the whole
process is from developing theidea through finding it in a store.
And I was like, okay.
Well we can on your seat belts.
Yeah, buckle up.
'cause this is a long process, but we'regonna detail what that process actually
looks like in terms of writing a cookbook.
Of course.
We've got a one minute cookingtip and we'll tell you what's
(00:48):
making us happy in food this week.
So let's get started.
Bruce (00:56):
Our one minute cooking tip, it's not me, mark did it.
You go.
mark (00:59):
Yeah, it is me.
So here's a one that you mightnot know, but it's kind of crazy.
If you buy Fresh Ginger, it can go very.
Boggy and a hydrator after a couple weeks.
Or it can get very dried outand it can get very stringy.
Mm.
So here's a tip.
Wrap it tightly in plastic wrap andfreeze it because if you freeze it, it
will retain more of it spiky flavor.
(01:22):
It won't develop those mushyspots, it won't dry out.
And here's a bonus.
You can use a grater, particularlythe small little holes on your
box grater to just grade it.
Frozen.
Bruce (01:35):
Yep.
Right from the freezer.
Wrap it back up and put it back in.
And you can peel it if you want,before you freeze it or not.
I tend to not peel it.
If it's very fresh ginger and Iuse the peel and you don't even
know what's in there, or if it'snot the freshest before you freeze
it, peel it, and then freeze it.
What he's
mark (01:50):
saying is if you buy ginger in an Asian market, you
probably don't have to peel it.
If you buy it in a.
Standard North American, uk, orCanadian supermarket, you probably
do have to peel it because it's driedout and gotten that husky outer skin
to it, whatever that theme is.
And if you grow it
Bruce (02:05):
yourself, then you don't need to grow.
Oh, well, whatever.
I mean,
mark (02:07):
if you grow it yourself, you're not listening to cooking with Bruce and
Mark, so whatever you might be, doubt it.
Okay.
Let me say that we do have a newsletter.
It comes out very sporadically atthis point, about once a month because
we're both so busy with everythingelse you related to do with work.
But if you'd like to be a part of thatnewsletter, which is not necessarily
connected to this podcast, you can signup on our website, Bruce and mark.com,
(02:32):
or cooking with Bruce and Mark dot.
Com, they both go to the same place.
If you drop down the landing page,you'll see a place to sign up.
Just to remind you, I don't captureyour email and I do not capture your
name, nor do I let the provider do that.
So your name and email can't ever be soldand you won't be spammed out of existence.
If you want that newsletter,that's the way to get it.
(02:52):
Just go to our website ifyou're interested in that.
Okay.
Up next, the processof writing a cookbook.
Bruce (03:01):
It all starts with an idea.
Doesn't everything startwith an idea, I guess?
mark (03:06):
No, but Okay, go on.
Bruce (03:07):
But we have to develop the ideas, right?
Yeah.
So we have to come up withsomething that we like, right?
Something that we thinkour agent will like.
Yep.
And something that we thinkour publisher would like.
Yep.
And something that we think ourpublisher's marketing team will like.
Yes.
And once we get an idea that wethink they'll all like, we start
putting it down on paper andpushing it through the system.
mark (03:29):
Okay, so let me back up and talk about this.
Developing an idea.
So basically what Bruce and Iare talking about is how we,
after 37 cookbooks, how we do it.
And we do it in this way.
If you are a brand new cookbook writer.
You basically have to start with a writtenbook, a written manuscript, unless you are
an influencer with 50 billion followers.
Mm-hmm.
Or unless you're a celebrity, you haveto start with the actual book itself.
(03:54):
So we are actually,
Bruce (03:56):
I'm sorry for you if you to do that.
I know.
And
mark (03:58):
we're actually in the envious place of, we no longer start with a written
manuscript, so we have to develop an idea,and this will take several months to do.
In fact, we're currently workingon this and we have multiple gate.
Keepers to get through.
As Bruce said, we have to get itthrough our agent and that's where we
currently are in our new idea process.
We're working with our agentto come up with an idea and
(04:20):
she is our first gatekeeper.
We have to get through, she has to likesomething in order to want to sell it.
Then we have an additionalgatekeeper who is our publisher.
We are fortunate to have thesame person is our editor and our
publisher, and then he has gatekeepers.
In our case it's a him.
He has gatekeepers, which is themarketing team at the publishing house.
(04:41):
This idea is gonna have to get throughthree different levels of gatekeepers.
And uh, I think for us, themost fraught one is the agent.
But that's what I think becausethe agent is, um, she's just
getting a bunch of random ideas.
I mean, literally she's being bombardedwith ideas via email and she's kind
of, kind of sort through these andsome I end up writing a couple pages
(05:04):
on some, I just send her an email on,or Bruce will even call her about.
She's just getting barraged by ideas and
Bruce (05:11):
it's hard because we're not necessarily giving her, you
know, blown out thought through.
Here it is.
Here's how the whole book looks.
We're just throwing aquick idea at her now.
We've been with her forover 30 years, right?
So she has been a longtime relationship with us.
We do kind of understand how weall think together, so it is, we do
easier, we do than, you know, a lotof other agent client relationships.
(05:36):
Um, but it is frustrating 'cause there'llbe times Mark and I think we have a
brilliant idea and we'll run it by her.
And then the words that comeback is, I don't get it.
And then we have a choice we couldtry and make her get it right.
Or we can drop it.
mark (05:52):
Right?
And just to say, uh, you know,you may think, uh, wow, you, so
you're the creative and you haveto pass this through an agent.
But to be honest with you, she'sgot a lot of credits behind her.
She's been in the businessfar longer than we have.
She was the acquiringagent for the Color Purple.
She was the acquiring agent atSimon Schuster for the world of.
According to Garp.
So let's just say that she's got a lotof traction behind her and she does
(06:17):
understand what sells and what doesn't.
So it's not as if we're up againstsomebody who's kind of on our level.
We're up against somebody who we are,who's slightly above us in terms of
what can sell and what can't let,
Bruce (06:27):
let me say this about agents for a second, and that is they know what
will sell, but they will know what willsell to their group of editors, right?
Our agent doesn't have a relationshipwith every single editor in New York.
She has a relationship with alot and a big pool of editors at
a big number of houses, but shedoesn't know each and every one.
(06:50):
Correct.
So she knows when shesays, I don't get it.
It may be in response to an initial,well, I probably can't sell that
idea to the 15 editors I'm thinkingabout right off the top of my head.
Right.
But that doesn't mean that therearen't other editors out there who
might buy it, but that's the deal.
You sign, you work with an agent,and that agent, of course works
(07:10):
with just a bunch of editors, right?
And it doesn't work with everybody.
mark (07:13):
Ours has been in the business long enough that she has a relationship
with lots of editors and publishers.
And particularly with publishers.
She is, but still, nonetheless,we have to get it through her.
And so I wanna just say thatthis is the initial stage, and
this takes multiple months.
We've been working on this withour agent since the first of 2025.
Right.
So since I broke my leg months ago mm-hmm.
(07:35):
We've been.
This process, and we're about to enterthe second part of the process, which is
presenting these ideas to our publisher.
And once that happens, andonce he, and we and the agent
agree, then he has to sell it.
Bruce (07:49):
Now, let me say we are in a fortunate position that we can just
bring ideas to our publisher, right?
. Many people don't have longstandingrelationships with a publisher, so they're
gonna sell an idea to their agent and thentheir agent is gonna run ideas by three
or four different editors of publishersaround town to find one interested
enough to take a meeting to discuss it.
We are very lucky.
(08:10):
Our current publisherhas published our last.
Eight books.
And so we are looking to continue to worktogether and it's on both directions.
He wants to work with us,we wanna work with him.
So we are very fortunate thatthe next step for us is a meeting
with him to discuss these ideas.
Right.
mark (08:23):
So let's assume that's already happened and let's assume
we've all agreed on an idea over
Bruce (08:29):
lunch.
Usually Chinese food.
mark (08:30):
Yeah.
That.
Which our kosher agent can'teat, um, yet we keep doing it.
Let's assume that the four of us havecome to some kind of understanding.
Now the question is selling the idea, andhere's where it gets a little bit more
fraught, and that is, it falls on me.
I'm the writer in theteam of the four of us.
It falls on me to develop a proposaland it is a formal business proposal.
(08:52):
I have to write a 40 to 55 page,somewhere in that range, 40 to 55
page business proposal of why this.
Title will sell and Icome up, draft up that.
I come up with thatproposal, I draft it out.
I of course work on it for a while.
Then I give it to our agent.
She sends it back to me with comments.
(09:12):
Then finally, once she and I like it,then it goes off to the publisher.
He sends it back to me withcomments . And finally, at the end of.
All of that, he can take that giantbusiness proposal to his sales meeting.
So if developing the idea takes, mm,let's say three months, this is about
a two to three month process as well.
(09:35):
This idea of developing the formalproposal to get ready to sell the idea,
Bruce (09:39):
and lemme say what is.
In that proposal is really interestingbecause it is a description of
what the book will be, of course.
Yeah.
Yep.
But it's also a description of the market.
What other books have ever been writtenthat are kind of like this, if any?
Maybe we're lucky enough tocome with a brand new idea.
Rarely.
Um, rarely.
So we have to do a history of whatare the books have been written,
how did they sell, and how were theymarketed and who were their audiences?
(10:03):
And then we had to talk about.
Our audience.
So who do we think is theaudience for our book?
And we need research for this.
And also if the book is related toan appliance, like we wrote all these
instant pop books and air fryer books.
In those cases we had to lookat trends, projections and sales
projections of those appliances too.
'cause they directly related to our book.
And,
mark (10:23):
uh, part of the proposal too, and I should add this part of the proposal is
coming up with a recipe list for the book.
Mm-hmm.
And so it, part of this proposalis what our recipes are gonna
be included in the book.
And I wanna say.
Um, and this seems really crass, but therecipe list that appears in the proposal
is, uh, shall we say, tangential to whatwill become the final recipe book in list.
(10:44):
In the book itself.
I mean, it's a idea.
I use it as a guide, right?
It's an idea to beginning, but it barerarely bears very close proximity.
What to what actually getspublished on the line.
Bruce (10:54):
Let me say that the new book called Canning, that proposal
had about 200 recipe names in the.
In the recipe list, in the proposal,the final book had 425 recipes.
I mean, most of the recipesthat are in our list tend to
make it into the book, but
mark (11:10):
yeah, it, it's funny, it depends on the books.
Uh, we, if you look back at abook ALA mode, uh, which we wrote
years ago at when we were at St.
Martin's, uh, that's a book with dessertsand ice creams to go with those desserts.
Mm-hmm.
The recipe list bears no resemblanceto the final book at all.
So it's weird.
Um, so, okay, so now we've got a fewmonths developing the idea, a two to
(11:33):
three months selling the idea, writingthe proposal, and let's assume it sells.
Let's assume that our publishergoes off, do a sales meeting.
It sells.
They make offers.
The offers go back andforth between our agent.
You know, it's the whole negotiationthing, which is why you have an agent
once you sign the contract, you actuallyhave to write the thing itself and set
about making that proposal good as a book.
(11:53):
And that takes.
What, nine
Bruce (11:56):
months?
10.
And it depends.
Your contract will tell you howlong you have to write the book.
It does.
I mean, our contract will tellus how big the book is gonna be.
It'll tell us how many recipeshave to be in that book.
Right.
It will not describethe table of contents.
It will not tell us howmany chapters we will work.
On that as we create the book,but it will tell us how many
words the manuscript can be,
mark (12:18):
right?
Bruce (12:18):
And how many pictures will be in the book.
Right?
And most important, it'll tell uswhen that is due to the publisher.
mark (12:24):
Okay, let me explain how the due date works.
Basically, they take Google keywordsearches and they try to figure out
when is a particular topic popular.
In the course of a year,they find out, let's say.
For example, our co upcoming book, coldCanning, they discovered that canning
searches happen the most amount oftime in late June through early August.
(12:50):
So therefore, they set the publicationof the book in July of 2025, and
generally they set the due date.
A year before that.
So they work backwards a year from whenthey think they wanna put it on sale.
That doesn't always holdout, but that's how it is.
Now, I should tell you that we'vecrashed books and in publishing,
(13:10):
crashing means you're, you'rewriting it with absolutely no time.
What so.
Ever.
Yeah.
Bruce (13:17):
Where usually publishers give themselves a year from when
you turn it into publishing.
When it's crashed, you might turn it inand they'll publish it within six months.
That is really fast for them,
mark (13:26):
they used to, in the old days, called them blue files back
when manuscripts came in as, as,uh, actually print offs and people
would work on them and blue, theywould be put into blue files.
And a blue file meant when it hits yourdesk, you can't work on anything else.
You must only work on this bookin the publishing house because
they're trying to push it out.
When we wrote the Great AmericanSlow Cooker book, we had, I don't
(13:48):
even remember, five or six monthsto create 500 recipes for this book.
It was a.
Unbelievable.
I, we had basically had to put ourlives on hold to create this book.
Bruce (14:00):
On any given day.
I had 10 to 12 slow cookersgoing insane all day, all day in
mark (14:05):
the kitchen.
Insane.
You've never seenelectric bills like these.
And um, and uh, just to add tothe misery here, my laptop crashed
halfway through writing this book.
Well, more than halfway,we were about done.
It crashed because the.
Book crashed it because it was too big forthe ram to hold, and so I had a print off
(14:26):
of it and I had to retype an a thousandpage manuscript back into my laptop.
It was before you could digitize pages.
It was.
Insane the amount of work that was.
Okay, so you have a fewmonths to develop the idea.
You have two to threemonths to sell the idea.
Then you get, let's say nine monthsto a year to write the book, and now
(14:46):
you enter the dreaded editing process.
You turn the book in
Bruce (14:51):
and my job is done.
I'm out of the kitchen andMark goes into hell time, and
I get to spend time doing other
mark (14:58):
things.
Yes.
If your publisher or editor accepts thebook, now you enter the editing process.
Oh, if.
If that's an, if they have, that's
Bruce (15:05):
right.
They can look at it and say,Nope, you need to fix it.
We've had books sent back to us.
Of course, everybody has early on inour career where they didn't, the editor
didn't like the way recipes are formatted.
They didn't like the waywe worded certain things.
And rather than make that changein every recipe as they edited.
They just sent the whole thing backand said, no, restructure this.
And
mark (15:24):
Let me say that when you sign a contract to publish a book, you get a
chunk of money right at that moment ofsigning, and then you get another chunk
of money at what in publishing is calledDNA, which means delivery and acceptance.
Bruce (15:37):
It's that acceptance part that's key.
It's the acceptance because
mark (15:39):
uh, if they kick it back in any way from editing,
they have not yet accepted it.
So your payment is being delayed in thisprocess, which makes it very frustrating.
So you go into the editing processand editors, of course, my editor
has a lot to say about the book.
He goes through it very carefully.
He looks at it all.
Say very carefully.
(16:00):
Sometimes he tells me I'msitting in the parking lot of
Home Depot editing your book.
I'll get a text like that.
But he's going through thebook on, um, his laptop.
He's looking through it.
He's Or his phone.
Or his phone.
He is making all kinds of changes to it.
But I, you should know.
Here's one of the things that'sinteresting is editors don't copy.
Edit.
And I think that people still thinkthat editors sit there and say,
(16:20):
this verb does not go with thissubject, or whatever, you know?
Okay.
Well
Bruce (16:24):
now you have to explain in more detail.
Okay.
What's the difference betweenediting and copying it?
mark (16:27):
Copy editing is the granular bit, like, uh, you've used the
present tense and now you suddenly.
Switch to the past tense in this hahead note or, um, you've used this
word too many times or this old editingthing of, I'm not quite sure this
sentence makes sense because you'vegot your clauses in different orders.
(16:47):
That doesn't happen with editors anymore.
Editors are looking at the macro of it.
So they, what they're asking youat this point mostly is, are the.
Order of the recipes, right?
Do the headnote actually, does itintroduce the recipe despite the
granular grammatical problems?
Does the headnote set up andmake me wanna make this recipe?
Are you selling eachrecipe in the headnote?
(17:08):
These are all thequestions that editors ask.
Does the introduction to a chapteractually set up the chapter?
Do you need to refocus this chapter?
Do you need to put more informationin the introduction to open the book?
Basically, they're makingall kinds of changes in.
Focus and even recipe layout,the order of the recipes.
They might
Bruce (17:25):
say let's pull these recipes outta this chapter and
make it its own separate chapter.
Yes, they might.
That's something that can happen.
mark (17:31):
We wrote sheet cakes and slab pies.
We were still at St.
Martin's at that point.
Our editor took my recipe list and the wayI set up the chapters, and she completely
rearranged the book and kicked it back,and I had to write new introductions
for the chapters she had created.
Out of our recipes.
So my chapter introductionsdidn't really fit anymore
(17:51):
because she rearranged the book.
Bruce (17:53):
Now you have the right to fight back against that a little.
You can say, I don't agree with you.
You can have a discussion about it.
You don't have to.
You can't to just lie down andlet them walk all over you.
mark (18:02):
You can, but you're also trying, you know, you're trying to be a compliant.
Uh, writer, you're trying to getanother book down the line and
you don't wanna be a problem.
So they expect pushback,but not dramatic pushback.
So that's gonna take three to four monthsto get it through editing, and after that.
Now they've accepted it.
(18:22):
Now you get your next payment ofmoney and then you, the book goes
into copy editing, which is whereit all hits that granular level.
And I will say that I have a copyeditor who we've worked with for
almost a dozen books now, and I.
Love her so much that Iessentially require her to be a
(18:43):
named commodity in the contract.
I mean, I want her to work on our books.
I trust her.
But you have a
Bruce (18:48):
volatile relationship with her too.
Very volatile, has relationship,has strong opinions, and sometimes.
We agree with them and sometimes we
mark (18:54):
don't.
I, that's why I like her.
Uh, I always say about my copy editor,and she may be listening to this episode,
and I always say about her that she's notfor the thin skinned, but that's okay.
I'm not thin skinned.
And, uh, she can come at me with, uh,what she's got and I am more than willing
to say no or to push back and say,no, that's really the way I want it.
I want it to read like that.
(19:16):
Uh, so we have a, we don'thave a combative relationship.
We have actually a very friendlyrelationship, but we're very.
Blunt about what thebook should have in it.
And this is all of thisgranular, grammatical stuff.
She's catching problems.
Like, , you said a teaspoon of,or a tablespoon of ketchup was
15 grams a hundred pages ago, andnow you're saying it's 13 grams in
(19:40):
this recipe she's keeping track of.
All of those crazy details inorder to make the book consistent.
Bruce (19:46):
Somebody has to, 'cause the last thing I want is a book
that's messed up and confusing.
Yeah, it's, and not consistent.
It's
mark (19:52):
insane.
Like, uh, like she'll say, you know,you said a large Cleve of garlic
minced up was a tablespoon andthis recipe, but, uh, 200 pages
ago you said it was two teaspoons.
So which is it?
And make it consistentthroughout your book.
And it's that, make itconsistent throughout your book.
That is not for the thin skin.
No.
Bruce (20:09):
And while the copy editing is going on, the designer is
working on the layout of the book.
The designer is choosing the font, thecolors, the designer is deciding how
the recipe title goes, how the head notegoes, what the ingredient list looks like.
Is it in a column, is it straight across?
And all that's being designed asthe book is being copy edited.
mark (20:30):
Right?
And I think a lot of peopledon't know this, but.
All books are designed, I meaneven novels, history books,
narrative nonfiction, anythingyou read, it's designed.
Somebody chose the font, somebody chosewhat the titles of the chapters look like.
Mm-hmm.
Somebody laid out the table of contents.
All of that is part of the design.
Somebody decided, oh, Ihow big the margins are.
(20:51):
These were all decisions that arebeing made around the copy editing
of the book and cookbooks are.
Just, what do I wanna say?
Heavily designed,uniquely designed objects.
They're very
Bruce (21:03):
heavily designed.
If you open a cookbook, there areso many elements there, right?
There's every step in the recipe.
There's the ingredient list, there'sa headnote, there's the title, right?
There's tips and tricks.
All of those pieces have to be puttogether on a page in a beautiful,
artistic and pleasing way.
mark (21:18):
Right?
And I see a lot of cook.
Books out there.
And we don't let this happen to our books.
And fortunately we work with really gooddesigners from the publishing house.
We don't hire them, but we have gooddesigners because I see cook books where
it's basically thrown on the page mm-hmm.
Where somebody chose a font andthen, you know, recipes end, um,
I don't know, you know, two inchesdown the second page and then there's
(21:39):
just all this blank page below it.
There's nothing
Bruce (21:41):
worse than blank page.
No,
mark (21:43):
I'm not.
Totally afraid of white space,but at the same time, I do wanna
look like the book is full.
Mm-hmm.
And it doesn't just havebig gaps in it anywhere.
'cause I feel like that's almost a,I don't know what a cheated project.
Bruce (21:56):
Right.
And that's part of fitting the copyedited manuscript into the design.
Yeah.
Which is the next.
Step, and it takes about a month for Markto go through with the designer and make
sure that it fits and it looks right,and that the designer might say to Mark,
you know, I need you to cut two sentencesout of this to make this all fit.
Mm-hmm.
Or Can you write me another two sentencesso this looks better on the page?
(22:17):
Mm-hmm.
So that's making good design choices.
Based on how the recipe is written.
mark (22:22):
And let me also say that publishers cost out books by the number of pages
in a book, and I, this is gonna bereally esoteric for you, but they cost
that out in intervals of 16 and 32.
That's basically the giant sheet ofpaper where a book gets printed on it
printed on both sides and thenit gets cut down and folded
and turned into the bookthat you hold in your hands.
(22:46):
So it comes in 16 or 32 pageincrements and they worry about how
many, here's the big word signatures.
That is pa stacks of pages occurin a book, and once we published
a book in which the designer,uh, laid it out and the publisher
decided it ran one signature.
Over.
So I had to sit in a Vancouver, BritishColumbia hotel room for three days
(23:10):
and cut 32 pages out of that book inorder to, for it to fit the signatures.
But it's not uncommon.
Bruce (23:18):
No.
And it wasn't necess for me to cut stuff
mark (23:20):
out of a book.
Bruce (23:20):
But it wasn't necessary that you be in Vancouver to do the book.
No, we just happened to be waiting for.
A cruise to Alaska with your parents.
And so we have to be in Vancouver.
So cutting signatures out of a book doesnot require that you be in Vancouver.
No,
mark (23:33):
but at least I got a really good dinner each night at the end
of a hard day working in Vancouver.
But it was ridiculous havingto do all of this for the book.
But it's not uncommon for me oncethe recipe hits the page and it's
designed for the designer to say,um, cut four lines from this recipe.
Mm-hmm.
And I've gotta cut them fromthe headnote or from a back.
Part of the recipe somewhereto make it fit on that page.
(23:54):
Or the designer will say to me,this recipe is running short.
Can you fill this space in some way?
So I'll have to come up with anend note, or I'll have to add more
material to the head note to make itfill out, to actually fit the page.
And that process takesabout another month.
So just think where we are, a few monthsinto developing the ideas, a couple months
(24:16):
to selling it, nine months to writing it.
Three to four months to.
Editing it two to three months to copyediting it while it's being designed.
About a month to fitting the copyof Edit manuscript into design.
And then you get this bevy offinal questions and queries.
This is all before theyhit the word print.
And believe it or not, this is the pointwhere a manuscript goes to a proof.
(24:39):
Reader.
Mm-hmm.
And a proof reader proofs the text
But once your book is edited andbefore it goes to copy editing your
editor, let's go of your book andit turn is turned over to a managing
editor who sees it through production,which is the copy editing, designing.
All of that stuff is happeningthrough a managing editor.
And that last month with themanaging editor and the proofreader,
(25:01):
I basically can't move from mydesk because they need my answers.
Uh, that day when they querysomething and say, uh, you say
table salt in every recipe, but inthis one recipe you just say salt.
Can you fix that?
Or should that be fixed?
Basically they give me, youknow, 20 minutes to answer that
question so that they can get it.
'cause they're just racing.
(25:23):
Mm-hmm.
To hold their fingerover the print button.
Mm-hmm.
Bruce (25:26):
and it's during that point that we'll start to see cover designs as well.
And we'll see the frontcover and the back cover.
Yeah.
They both have to be designed.
Yeah.
Um, we will probably earlier onhave been sending out, um, PDFs.
Of what the book is gonna look likewith content to people, we hope
will give us quotes for the book.
And so then at that point, thosequotes will be incorporated
(25:48):
into the front cover, right?
Or the back cover of the book.
And then finally they hit print.
And guess what?
It's gonna take up to six monthsbecause usually it's printed.
In China.
And it'll be interesting to see whathappens now with tariffs that are in
place about the printing in China.
Yeah.
'cause usually books areall printed in China.
Yeah.
'cause it's so much cheaper.
Yep.
I don't know that it'll be cheaper anymoreand perhaps books will start being printed
(26:11):
here where it's more expensive, but itmay be cheaper than paying the duty on it.
It may be.
I
mark (26:16):
know that the, some publishers are looking at.
Finland where the tariffs are lowerand there are so many paper and pulp
factories in Finland, but it's stillmore expensive than China, no doubt.
Bruce (26:26):
Because wherever it's printed, it has to come on container ship.
mark (26:28):
Yeah, and just to say the, that the container ship is the
important part of this because
. Really the print button, pressingprint, and it prints in China.
I don't, that does not take much time.
A few days for your book to beprinted and collated and put
together and bound and put in a box.
Bruce (26:45):
Even 10,000 copies.
It just takes a few days.
Yeah, it is that container ship problem.
There's the problem getting it.
Into the us getting it into thepublisher's warehouse, getting it
distributed to its distributors, gettingit to the retailers who had asked for it,
getting it to places like Amazon, and thenin the end, getting it into your hands.
mark (27:04):
And the question is always,
Bruce (27:06):
how many books to print, Yeah, the first printing they go
at is a huge decision and a very,very fraught one for the publisher.
Yeah, because they want tomake sure they have enough.
Books in print to meet the demand.
Yep.
The last thing you want is to runoutta books, and it has happened
to us with the Instant Pop Bible.
mark (27:25):
We actually ran out of, the instant Pop Bible as Bruce says.
On Black Friday?
Yeah, the day, like two days before BlackFriday sales, they ran out of this book
that they expected to sell thousands andthousands of copies of through Christmas.
And our book, which was designatedto go through the Christmas sales
season, was not available until what?
(27:46):
Christmas Eve or something.
Yeah, it was,
Bruce (27:48):
it was nightmarish.
I believe they printed them in the USto get them in really quickly and yes,
you, they were shipped, I think on theday after Christmas if you bought them.
But people were unable toget them for Christmas day.
It was a
mark (28:00):
stabbing problem.
Mm-hmm.
And to be not for sale and being told it'sback ordered on Black Friday was terrible.
So this is.
All of that fraught processof getting a book out.
And if you listen to everything we'vesaid, you should realize that what
we've been talking about is abouta two and a half year span from
developing the idea all the way fromto the book, appearing on Amazon for
(28:23):
sale, or being in a store somewhere.
We're talking in normal production about.
Two and a half years.
And there's a trueproblem with that, right?
It's trying to guess when you sell a book.
Yeah.
What will sell two anda half years from now.
Bruce (28:40):
It is hard.
Which is why you want ideas that arenot necessarily stuck onto trends
you want ideas that have a longlife that can, that will be.
Exciting to people now, but exciting topeople in two years and hopefully exciting
to people in 10 and 15 years as well.
Yeah,
mark (28:56):
and this is what they're finding with the big influencers.
They're finding that the books sellreally big when they first come out,
and then they just fall off a cliffbecause everybody who wants the book
buys it and then nothing else happens.
And if even they crash an influencer'sbook, it's still gonna take 'em
nine months to a year to get it out.
And is the influencer stillgonna be an influencer in.
(29:19):
A year, and this is also part of theproblem and I should just say is that
if the books don't sell and that initialprint run doesn't sell out, your editor
and or publisher may very well be fired.
Bruce (29:35):
And the odds of you getting another book are nil.
mark (29:38):
Yes, it's, it's an extraordinarily fraught process.
I should just tell you beforewe end this, I should just tell
you for that, for example, when.
Lange came out with his booksand they were such huge hits.
There were a billion OT Lange copycats.
Mm-hmm.
That came out.
There were people trying to be likeOtto Lange, and they were crashing
(29:59):
those books out so fast that nowif you even mention OT Lange in
publishing, they all back away from you
because it's not that his books aren'tstill great, it's that all the copycats
didn't sell as well as his book, butthey were crashing them out to try to
catch a trend, and they really can't.
(30:20):
It's never a good idea.
Publishing moves at a geological pace,a glacial pace, and it's very hard
for them to be up on current trends.
Okay, well, there's the wholestory, the two and a half years of
how you develop an idea and get a.
Cookbook published.
It's a long process to say the least.
It's been a long process for cold canningto finally end up this summer in stores.
(30:44):
We've been working at it for a longtime and are very excited about it,
so we just wanted to let you in onwhat that full process looks like.
Before we move to the last partof this podcast, let me say
that there is a Facebook groupcooking with Bruce and Mark.
You can find us there there's also an.
Instagram channel.
And we're delighted tointeract with you there.
Okay.
(31:04):
Speaking of that, let's move on tothe last segment of the podcast.
What's making us happy in food this week?
Bruce (31:13):
Cinderella Fish Store on the Upper West side of Manhattan.
Now they also have other stores inthe Hamptons and everywhere else,
but they were the only people.
The only people, not even thekosher market that I often go to
in West Hartford, Connecticut,but they were the only people
that were able to get me a whole.
Pike at Passover so I couldgrind it up and make afil fish.
mark (31:34):
Yes, Bruce made his own gefilte fish as is common around here.
And uh, I won't eat gefiltefish in any other form.
I will not eat it injarred form no matter what.
You doctor, that goopy crap whip, what
Bruce (31:47):
is that thing people think?
You take it out and you reboilit and suddenly it's better.
mark (31:52):
Sweet fish cello.
Mm.
Gross.
No, Bruce makes his own Gefilte fish.
He's even made his own homemade jalapenossauerkraut to go with that gefilte fish.
Mm-hmm.
A recipe from cold canning did it.
It was delicious.
Um, so he thinks all of that isexactly part of what's making Bruce
happy in the food this weekend.
What it's.
(32:12):
Making me happy is, uh, we have,again, I'm gonna bow back some I've
already said, which is all about eggs.
And we have a friend who livesvery close to us, who has a ton
of ducks and a couple geese.
And I have to say, gooseeggs make me very happy.
Mm.
If you would've had a goose egg.
Well, you haven't had a mealbecause a goose egg is giant
Bruce (32:32):
size of a salad plate.
You fry it up and it overlappedthe edges of our salad plates.
It
mark (32:36):
did.
It filled the plate.
There was no room formy toast on the plate.
And because they're so big, you haveto fry them for a long time to get
the yolks to set, which means thebottom of the whites get a little
crunchy because they're so long.
I don't like my egg flipped over.
So there you go.
So you have to fry a long time to getthat yolk to set and it's so delicious
(32:58):
and there is so much yolk in a goose egg.
Oh my
Bruce (33:02):
god, so much yolk.
So bitch, so much yoke
mark (33:04):
in a goose egg.
There's just a ton of yolk for dip toastin which makes it absolutely perfect.
Okay, that's the podcast for this week.
That's what's making ushappy and food this week.
That's how cookbooks happen.
And that's our one minutecooking tip about ginger.
Bruce (33:16):
And please Mark told you about our Facebook group.
But what I really hope you will do isgo to TikTok and check out our channel
cooking with Bruce and Mark on TikTok,where we make videos of cooking all sorts
of fun stuff and about what it is like towrite cookbooks and go to our Instagram
group cooking with Bruce and Mark.
You can follow us there and you couldsee everything that's happening, what we
(33:38):
eat and what we are doing, and see moreabout us on cooking with Bruce and Mark.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!