Audrey Payne:
Hi everyone. I'm Audrey Payne, Cherry Bombe's cookbook editor, and I'm very excited to welcome you to today's ‘Mastering The Art Of The Cookbook’ panel. A lot of you have already done this, but before we get started, please let us know in the chat where you're tuning in from. I've seen a lot of people from Ireland out there, so that's very exciting. Or Toronto, Yes.
Audrey Payne:
Hi everyone. So today's talk is part of the Julia Jubilee, which is our virtual celebration of the life and legacy of Julia Child. We've been celebrating Julia Child for about a week now. And we've got just one more event tomorrow after this, all about her lasting legacies. So be sure to visit our website and RSVP if you'd like to join us tomorrow. Before we begin today's cookbook chat, I'd like to thank all of our Julia Jubilee sponsors. So thank you to Kerrygold, Crate and Barrel, Le Creuset, Whole Foods Market, San Pellegrino, and Kobrand for helping us keep today's event, and so much about Jubilee programming this past week, free.
Audrey Payne:
Today's panel,' ‘Mastering The Art Of The Cookbook’ is of course named for Julia's first cookbook, Mastering The Art Of French Cooking. After almost a decade of research, recipe testing, rewrites and rejection, Julia's first book was released in the United States in 1961. Now, a lot has changed in the world of cookbooks since then.
Audrey Payne:
And today, we're going to hear all about those changes from our panel of pros. Before we get started, I would just like to say that Francis Lam is unfortunately not able to join us this afternoon, and he does apologize. But it's not all bad news. Today's talk will be moderated by Cherry Bombe founder and Radio Cherry Bombe host, Kerry Diamond.
Audrey Payne:
We'll also make sure to have time for audience questions. So if you have anything you'd like to ask our panelists, be sure to put them in the chat box below. Okay. So now to welcome our panelists. First up, we have Toni Tipton-Martin. Toni is a culinary journalist and author. She's the editor in chief of Cook's Country Magazine and the author of Jubilee and the Jemima Code.
Audrey Payne:
We'll also be joined by Ken Concepcion. Ken and his wife ... Hi Toni. Ken and his wife Michelle are the duo behind now serving in LA. We've also got Matt Sartwell, a former editor at Penguin, and the managing partner of Kitchen Arts & Letters in New York. And Lara Hamilton, who's joining us from Seattle and the founder of Book Larder. And now I'm going to hand it over to Kerry.
Kerry Diamond:
Hi everybody. Audrey, thank you so much. I hope folks aren't disappointed to see me and not Francis. Francis, again, sends his apologies that he can't join us, but you can all listen to on the ‘Splendid Table’ and catch him during the week. All right, where do we even start? Francis sent me good notes. The good news is I love cookbooks so much. I have been to Matt, Lara and Ken's shops. I have Toni's books. So I feel fully prepared to do this.
Kerry Diamond:
Before we start, I lost internet for a second and I'm not sure if we thanked our sponsors, but I do want to thank them for supporting our entire Julia Jubilee conference and making all of this programming free, which has been amazing. Kerrygold, Crate and Barrel, Le Creuset, Whole Foods Market, Kobrand Fine Wine and Spirits, and San Pellegrino. We have one event left tomorrow and we'll be talking about the legacy of Julia Child with some amazing folks, including Tanya Holland and Dorie Greenspan. So you can head over to cherrybombe.com and sign up for that.
Kerry Diamond:
But today, we are talking about cookbooks, which really is one of my absolute favorite subjects. And we're so lucky to have these people here. And it's wonderful seeing where everyone's tuning in from. Audrey already flagged. We've got a few people from Ireland, so hello Ireland. I guess you love cookbooks as much as we do here. And then I think I saw someone in Boothbay Maine, all the way down to Marina del Rey. So we really are covering the entire United States, plus some friends from Canada as always.
Kerry Diamond:
So I want to thank all of you. I want to thank the panelists also for joining us. We're so lucky to have you together. The thought behind this panel was we love the cookbook sellers so much, and we don't always get to hear from you. We hear from cookbook authors all the time. But I just thought it would be so special to hear directly from you what people are buying these days, how you've noticed cookbooks changing.
Kerry Diamond:
And then Toni, I'm so thrilled to have you here because you are a cookbook collector. You are a cookbook writer, you are an editor in chief, but you are also a passionate cookbook collector. And I know how many African-American cookbooks you have. I think you have, is it over 200 that you've collected?
Toni-Tipton Martin:
Oh, it's over 400 now.
Kerry Diamond:
Wow. And I can't even imagine how many cookbooks you have total as the editor in chief of Food Magazine. So you must have a lot of books.
Toni-Tipton Martin:
I do have a lot of books, and I will be able to tell you more about how many there are when we start unloading them for my set this week.
Kerry Diamond:
So another reason we wanted to do this panel is because we did want to talk about Julia's book. Mastering the Art of French Cooking came out in 1961, and really had such an impact on the food world and on the cookbook world. I know not all of you were running cookbook stores when this book came out, but it's amazing to me when we started talking about doing the Julia Jubilee, I quickly looked at some of the cookbook rankings to see how Mastering the Art of French Cooking sells still.
Kerry Diamond:
And it's remarkable that it is still a bestseller, all these years later. And before we jump in about contemporary cookbooks, I just wanted to hear from Lara, Ken and Matt, why does this book still sell, all these years later? I'll start with you Lara?
Lara Hamilton:
Well, for one thing, I think the fact that she updated it with the 40th anniversary edition has kept it relevant. So she added in sort of food processor and lots of descriptive photos. But also it is one of those books that it's a classic for a reason. It sort of gives you permission to become an expert in your own kitchen. It gives you sort of a really strong foundation in terms of thinking about how you buy ingredients, how you use the tools in your kitchen.
Lara Hamilton:
And her voice, I think, while it is very sort of scholarly or academic, almost, in terms of the way that she sort of approaches it, you get just this incredible reliable set of recipes. And so, I think there's also just a lot of nostalgia around Julia herself, and people have, whether it's from having seen bits of her show or maybe they've seen the movie Julie and Julia, or their grandmother or their mother or they themselves cooked from the book. It's one that people also like to give to others because they loved it.
Kerry Diamond:
Ken, are people buying the book in Los Angeles?
Ken Concepcion:
Yeah. It continues to sell. And I think it's because it's iconic at this point. And with all the new books that continue to come in every season, every year, it's kind of like the north star of the French category and just for cookbooks in general, I think. And it's an iconic book. Not just a cookbook, but it's like an iconic American title.
Kerry Diamond:
And Matt, I heard that you recently came upon a first edition.
Matt Sartwell:
Yes. This is one of the true first printings. The thing to keep in mind, if you're going through your mother's cabinet and you open up a copy and it says first edition, called everything a first edition up until the time that Julia revised the book. So you have to look for other details to be sure that you've actually got a first printing. And that's what this is.
Matt Sartwell:
There is a short note from the author at the back that has a date at the end of August. And you want the ones that say August, later printing said October. So that's the diagnostic you can use if you do come across a copy. But they're scarce, they're collectable, but I think in the copy you end up within your house, it is going to be a great finger on.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. Matt, that copy is for sale, right?
Matt Sartwell:
It's actually an offer to somebody right now. So we're waiting to hear back.
Kerry Diamond:
All right. Well, maybe you'll find another one, Matt. Toni, sometimes Julia had such an impact on the cookbook world, on the food world in general. It's sometimes easy to think that maybe cookbooks started with Julia Child back in 1961. But in your collection, you have books that go back to ... I had to take notes. Was it 1827?
Toni-Tipton Martin:
Yeah. The oldest book in my collection goes back to 1827. And I think if I could just answer that previous question, I had the blessing of meeting Julia when I was an up and coming writer in LA. I was about 21 or something like that. And what struck me then that resonates today is that her passion comes through. I mean, her integrity and her love of good food and the classics, I think that's what makes her work so timeless.
Toni-Tipton Martin:
And it certainly was what was inspirational to me in the pursuit of cookbooks, of becoming a cookbook writer. There was just a really incredible role model to see at such an early impressionable time.
Kerry Diamond:
Wow. It's amazing that you got to meet her.
Toni-Tipton Martin:
Yeah, it was pretty cool. And what was fun about that was I was attending a nutrition conference. And we were in Santa Barbara. Was the very first time I had attended anything like that as a young weekly writer trying to find my way. And she'd been hovering in the background and not saying anything. But in her classic way, she challenged the status quo.
Toni-Tipton Martin:
And she stood up and said, "Isn't anyone going to say that food tastes good?" At a nutrition conference. And that stuck with me. She was able to use her knowledge and her expertise as a way to challenge all of us to do better, to cook better, to find our own way in the kitchen. And so, she certainly has had that staying power for me.
Kerry Diamond:
Wow. So let's go back to the ... So the oldest book in your collection, this is of the black cookbooks that you have collected. 1827 is the oldest in your collection?
Toni-Tipton Martin:
Yes. So that was written as a household management book. And for a long time, it was not respected as a cookbook, because while there are recipes contained in the book, their instructions for household management, like how to get bugs off of your glass, where, and how to clean the fireplace tools. But there are a few recipes embedded within this book. And what was the most compelling to me was, again, circling back to Julia and integrity and messaging and agency all tied up in a cookbook, this author was really writing as a love letter to the next generation of servants.
Toni-Tipton Martin:
Even though he was instructed to create more servants, and historically, we have gotten ourselves distracted by that. By the fact that black people were limited to work in the service industry, we have neglected to look at the positives that were embedded in that work. And what he did was teach the next generation about having an incredible work ethic.
Toni-Tipton Martin:
And so, there are all kinds of little anecdotes throughout this book about how to be a good servant, how to be disciplined, time management. All kinds of values that still, as we're talking about resonating today and a book being timeless, this book from 1827, certainly is that. But it's been lost in the negativity associated with service enslavement and the marginalization of African-Americans in the food world.
Kerry Diamond:
Toni, when did you start collecting these books?
Toni-Tipton Martin:
I've collected them off and on from the time that I was at the LA Times in the 80s, as this young woman, trying to find my way. It became evident to me that white women in particular, were able to find agency using cookbooks. They could find their voice, they could identify their tribe, they could establish identity for their community. And nowhere that I looked did I see that representation for African-Americans. But I wasn't exactly sure what to do about that as a young writer.
Toni-Tipton Martin:
And so, I went on about my life and continued to just try to push my way into the food industry, which wasn't always easy. Being the only black food editor, a black food writer at the time, that wasn't working for a black periodical. So of course, there's was expectation that Ebony and Essence Magazine would have black writers, but in the mainstream, I was the only one.
Toni-Tipton Martin:
And so cookbooks collecting them became a way for me to find voices that represented my own experience. And for a long time, all I could find was soul food books. And so that actually contributed to my feelings of insecurity in this white mainstream world, because then, everything I saw that was published was about a food that I didn't grow up having every day. And so, no matter where I looked, I just continually felt excluded from the industry and left out of the conversation. And cookbooks actually, were the place that I was able to find some comfort.
Kerry Diamond:
So for folks who don't have Toni's book, The Jemima Code, so it's the Jemima Code Two Centuries of African-American Cookbooks. Toni put together this incredible book that is really just a beautiful trip through your cookbook collection. Can you tell us a little bit more about how this book came to be?
Toni-Tipton Martin:
Sure. We're talking about Julia here, so I'll try to make sure I can stay connected there. And one of the first pieces of advice that I got from the industry came from an academic, because this is the kind of content that would have existed primarily in the academy. Scholars did this kind of food study and excavation. And it really wasn't happening in cookbooks. We weren't seeing a lot of historical data and information being conveyed. It was mostly about the recipe and how to be a better cook.
Toni-Tipton Martin:
So this advice that I got was to make sure that, as I described each one of these books in my collection, that I make them identical, so that if you're writing in a scholarly way, everything is footnoted, everything is cited and accurate and identical. And that was so contrary to the mission of the story, which was to unsaddle African-American women from the image that we had been labeled with this identity of the mammy and the plantation house cook. And it isn't that those identities weren't true, it's just that they weren't the totality of who we are and who my ancestors were.
Toni-Tipton Martin:
So I used cookbooks. I started collecting the cookbooks, looking for identities of other women. How else did women portray themselves in cookbooks? And what I discovered in writing, assembling them for the Jemima Code is that they fit into very neat categories. The book goes from the enslaved to the free to people that operated their own cooking schools, to women who used cooking and recipes and cookbooks to teach others and created their own catering businesses.
Toni-Tipton Martin:
So there's economic independence entangled in there. There's a value system, as I said earlier. And so, there were just all of these different values and characteristics that were embedded between the lines of a recipe. And what that showed me was that there's so much more to a cookbook than the instructions, depending upon your dexterity and your ability to convey that.
Kerry Diamond:
Absolutely. Well, we will come back to modern cookbooks in a little bit. Ken, I wanted to talk to you because you were a chef before you opened a cookbook shop. So I'm curious, what was your relationship to cookbooks prior to opening one?
Ken Concepcion:
I kind of joke that I opened up a cookbook shop with my wife so I wouldn't have to buy another cookbook.
Kerry Diamond:
How's that?
Ken Concepcion:
It's okay. In the pregame, I told Matt that a quarter of my personal collection comes from Kitchen Arts and Letters. And while I haven't been up to Book Larder, it remains an inspiration here on the west coast. I remember my favorite cookbook that my mom had was the Good Housekeeping cookbook, which was like yay, thick. And everything was completely illustrated, plus pictures in the middle. So as a young kid, you were kind of able to follow along. This was absolutely pre-internet, pre-anything. So it was all analog back then.
Ken Concepcion:
And the shop's been open for almost four years. But before that, I worked for almost two decades as a chef, mostly in fine dining. One of Julia's biggest fans for Wolfgang Puck, I remember him talking about feeding her at Spago back in the day. But it was really a thing where I loved food as a kid and I loved reading. And when I graduated college, I didn't really know what I wanted to do with an English and painting degree. Who really does?
Ken Concepcion:
So I started thinking about cooking school, but I didn't have the funds to go to, I wanted to go to CIA, but I didn't have the funds to do that. So I decided I'm going to just start working in restaurants and just read everything that I could. So I feel like I over compensated with the books. And it really kind of pushed me to learn on the job and do my own work.
Kerry Diamond:
Was there a book that stood out to you as a young chef?
Ken Concepcion:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, back then it was the Charlie Trotter books, which were kind of like the start of the fancy Modern Chef's Coffee Table book, the French Laundry book, How To Become A Chef by Page and Dornenburg, who of course wrote the Flavor Bible and probably Zuni Cafe.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, I love that book.
Ken Concepcion:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
So Lara, how about you? You did not come from the food world or the book world. You were at Microsoft, of all places.
Lara Hamilton:
Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
What made you decide to open a cookbook bookstore?
Lara Hamilton:
Well, oh, lots of things. I became sort of a cookbook lover in my late 20s. I had sort of cooked before that. But I grew up in the Midwest. My grandmothers and my mother were much more sort of recipe card and magazine clipper sort of cooks. They didn't necessarily have cookbook collections. And I had a few cookbooks as I moved out on my own and started cooking.
Lara Hamilton:
But it wasn't until I got married and had registered at Williams-Sonoma, of all places. And put a copy of Deborah Madison's, Vegetarian Cooking, for everyone on my list because my husband and I were vegetarian at the time, but I felt like I was like cooking the same brown food all the time and I really wanted some inspiration. Well, I actually have it right here.
Lara Hamilton:
So it's like, I get this book with this woman who just looks like she owns the place on the cover. And I'm like, "Okay, I really want to dig into this." And besides helping me understand that I didn't actually need biscuit to make pancakes or biscuits or anything like that, I could actually do it from scratch.
Lara Hamilton:
I really appreciated that she told her own story and had just this real narrative to how she thought about cooking and what it had meant sort of throughout her own life, in the recipe notes. And I'd never had that experience before. And it really just kicked things off for me. And then I became sort of a real sort of avid collector of British cookbooks in particular. My husband's from the UK, and I lived there for a while in the early 90s.
Lara Hamilton:
And so, like Nigella Lawson's first book, Nigel Slater's books, Diana Henry's books were just all ones that I think just helped me build confidence in the kitchen. And so like Ken, I had this giant collection and was like, "Well, this is really getting out of hand." And I had taken the job at Microsoft in order to move to Seattle. And 15 years later, I was still there. And it was a great place, not going to knock it.
Lara Hamilton:
So when I left with this idea of doing something in food or in books or writing, I looked at being a recipe editor. I actually, right about that time read Julia's book, My Life In France, which ended up being an absolute sort of catalyst for my life change. And I'm really not exaggerating when I say that. Reading this book where someone didn't really find her passion and start even cooking until she was in her late 30s, the tenacity she had getting that book published and the way that she's sort of launched it into her own path in food and found her own voice in her own way to contribute, I found incredibly inspiring.
Lara Hamilton:
And so, if I hadn't read that, maybe I would've found something else, but it was really instrumental in me deciding that, "Okay, maybe I don't really know much about books, but I'm going to do this. And I'm going to open up a cookbook store."
Kerry Diamond:
My Life In France is a good book for any late bloomers out there or people thinking.
Lara Hamilton:
For sure.
Kerry Diamond:
Anybody who needs to pivot, by Julia with her nephew, Alex Perd’homme. Not only did Julia learn how to cook when she was in her late 30s, the book didn't come out until she was ... She worked on the book all through her 40s. Didn't come out, I think, till she was like 49 or 50. Someone can correct me in the chat. And then she became a TV star in her 50s. And then worked up until literally she passed away. And just so remarkable. Lara, is that the original Deborah Madison? Was that the first book you bought?
Lara Hamilton:
Yeah. They've really issued it since then with a different cover, but yeah, that was.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, I can't find anything in my apartment. Toni, I have nothing alphabetized. So I was like, "Where the heck is Toni's book?" And I forgot the spine is red. I thought it was a white spine. So I was like hunting for this white spine. But I found the very first cookbook I ever bought, I was in college, and it's Kathleen's Bake Shop.
Kerry Diamond:
So if anybody knows Tate's, it eventually became Tate's Bake Shop. And it's falling apart basically. But no pictures, just some really solid bake good recipes, but I've never been able to part with this. I thought that might be a fun question for the folks following along.
Kerry Diamond:
If you want to put in the chat, if you remember what the first cookbook is that you ever bought, we'd love to know what everybody's first cookbook was. All right. So Lara, that was your transition from Microsoft into cookbooks. Matt, I did not know you were an editor at Penguin. I've known you all these years and I had absolutely no idea.
Matt Sartwell:
That's what brought me to New York. I grew up in Oregon, and I came to New York with stars in my eyes and dreaming that I would find and publish all the great American books. And I found that publishing was mostly fighting about marketing budgets and didn't have so much to do with getting books into people's hands. And then I quit my job, and there was this opening at a bookstore a couple of days a week, and it was about food, which was a great area for me because I was really interested.
Matt Sartwell:
And I started here and it just sort of blossomed. So I will have been here 30 years, this year. So it's been a long time. But I just sort of like being immersed here. And yes, it's very good for me to have the store because I could probably not fit all the books I want to have at home in the amount of space that I would be allowed to have at home for books. So I'm here. Gets them six days a week, and that's the good compromise.
Kerry Diamond:
Well, Matt, how long did you last at Penguin?
Matt Sartwell:
I was there six years.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, okay. So you were there for a while?
Matt Sartwell:
Yeah. I wasn't doing any food books there. Food was a refuge for me. It was the thing that I did when I left work. I catered some of the office parties. I did a little private work as a caterer, but I didn't add any food books in my time.
Kerry Diamond:
Did you ever cross paths with Judith Jones while you were there?
Matt Sartwell:
Not while I was in publishing.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay.
Matt Sartwell:
At parties and things like that once I was working here, she and Knock Waxman, who founded this bookstore, were very good friends. So they would often be in touch would call the store or something like that. So I spoke to her more than I ever saw her.
Kerry Diamond:
Toni, have you been tempted to open a bookstore?
Toni-Tipton Martin:
Yes. On more than one occasion. But I have my friends here as a reminder that, "Stay in your lane." I'm not even really a collector. I've been a reluctant collector. I was on a mission to prove a point. And the books that I collect are so darn expensive. The idea of me really being an avid collector, unfortunate that the bibliography that I used in order to hunt these books down as my shopping list, I have exhausted it. So thankfully, I now have, in first edition, with maybe one or two exceptions, all of the books listed on this bibliography that was published by the University of Alabama.
Toni-Tipton Martin:
With a little help from my friends in books selling, that 1827 book, there's such a terrific story with that. I was in New York, and I called Bonnie Slotnick and said, "I'm in town. Do you have anything I don't have?" And she was like, "Everybody knows you have everything already." There's nothing anybody could sell to you." And I said, "Well, I am looking for first editions."
Toni-Tipton Martin:
As we were talking about collecting, what's your first cookbook, I had a lot of these books in reprint, those Applewood things. But I wanted the first editions and didn't understand that I was building a rear collection and a library. I was just thinking I wanted the most authentic, as Matt talked about earlier, the earliest edition I could get before anybody had tampered, perhaps, with it. And so she sent somebody, she said, "I know somebody that's got a copy of that." And lo and behold, this person thought that the course that I was in pursuit of was valid and valuable, and sold me the book.
Kerry Diamond:
Wow. That's amazing. I remember reading in the Jemima Code that you said you spent a small fortune on cookbooks. And now I know why it was a small fortune. Yes.
Toni-Tipton Martin:
It was a small fortune. And when the Abby Fisher book, from 1881, became available, that is the book that we originally thought was the first official cookbook. It was a formerly enslaved woman. And because of my Southern California roots, I initially was going through that list trying to find every book that had a California connection. And so Abby's story is that she left the south when she was liberated and started a manufacturing company in the Bay Area, which again, speaks to her into entrepreneurship and her brilliance and all of that. Anyway, I wanted that book.
Toni-Tipton Martin:
And so Celia had it that omnivore in San Francisco, and I lost that book to someone else in the process of the sale and never got over it. And so when it became available at auction in recent years, everybody encouraged me to put up a GoFundMe campaign for it. And that's felt really dirty to me that GoFundMe, it was for people that had family concerns and funerary issues. And as a journalist, I just could not fathom taking anything. But people were adamant, and we raised $10,000 in 10 days for the purchase of that book.
Kerry Diamond:
Amazing. This doesn't really have to do with cookbooks, but there's a wonderful new website called Abby and Edna by these two young women in tribute to Abby and Edna Louis.
Toni-Tipton Martin:
Oh, how about that?
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah. I'll have to send you the link after this, but folks should definitely check that out. That's a remarkable story. Are there any holy grills left? Are there any books you're still on the hunt for?
Toni-Tipton Martin:
The only other one that I don't have that we're not sure there's another copy is from 1866, and it was written by Melinda Russell. She was a free woman of color. And what's compelling to me about her is that she was a single mother with a challenged child. So again, when I think about the values that are conveyed in a cookbook, here's a woman who was raising money for her livelihood. And she observed that as a way out of poverty in the broader community. And she engaged white women to help her with this.
Toni-Tipton Martin:
So we're still quibbling over whether food is a unifier or a divider. But at least in that case and several of those in my collection, the women came together on behalf of one another. So I would love to have the Melinda Russell original. What I do have are the last five or six copies of the facsimile that was published by the university of Michigan. They sent them to me to have in the collection so that I would have them. And then I don't know if they'll reprint them or not.
Kerry Diamond:
Wow. That's amazing. Have you given thought to what you'll do with this collection, eventually? I interviewed Anne Willan yesterday, who some folks will know, who's a historian writer. She's authored over 30 cookbooks. And I think her husband's collection was donated to the Getty, I believe she told me.
Toni-Tipton Martin:
Yeah, I'm having those conversations, where different universities and institutions have touched this process for me. As I said, if it wasn't for the University of Texas, there would've been no Jemima Code, because when the publishing industry said no to me, as they said no to Julia, UT press came through. And so, they're close and near and dear to my heart.
Toni-Tipton Martin:
So there are several others. Smithsonian is obviously high on my list. I've grown a little concerned about having them stored as I have them. I don't want them in my own personal possession because of their value. I think that's a little dangerous. And so, I have them, they're offsite, but they're not being cared for in the proper way that an archivist would. So I am having serious thoughts about where to donate at least the most rare of them in my name in some way.
Kerry Diamond:
Well, that's an absolute treasure. What a remarkable collection you put together. But again, in the meantime, if folks want to know more about it, they should definitely check out the Jemima Code. Ken, Lara and Matt, I want to talk about 2020 and how your bookstores did in the year 2020. I started out working in bookstores back in high school and college. Folks out there might remember Spring Street Books and Soho. I worked there for years, and really saw a lot of ups and downs in the bookstore world.
Kerry Diamond:
That was the time when Barnes & Noble was opening everywhere, and independent bookstores were closing all over the place. And I never thought we'd see a renaissance for independent bookstores. So I am so heartened by what has happened, and so grateful for the three of you for what you have built and the communities you have built up around your shops. But I'm curious how things were in 2020 and what was selling? And who was coming to you to buy books? Ken, why don't we start with you? What went down in LA last year? What were people looking for?
Ken Concepcion:
The obvious thing about sourdough that people were into for about a couple months, and then they realized how hard it was. And just make focaccia people, come on. So that was part of the gambit there. There was a lot of interest in fermentation and canning, preserving food. And then when the murder of George Floyd happened in June, as Toni can tell you, anything that had to do with the African-American experience in food, for us, we could not keep a single copy of Jubilee or Jemima Code in stock.
Ken Concepcion:
And the vibration cooking was… We couldn't get any of those books, which was fantastic and it was thrilling, but it was also educational for us too, because it was a really big message to myself and Michelle and the team here that it's about representation. And a lot of these, I would say 70% of the books that we do carry in our Amplify Black Voices collection now, we didn't carry in until last year. And so, we know we have to do better, and that was a big point as far as moving on from 2020s, who do we want to represent on the shelf and on the table here?
Kerry Diamond:
Lara, did you similarly look at your mix last year?
Lara Hamilton:
Yeah. It was in terms of what people were buying. I think it really just echoes what Ken mentioned. And I would say as a business, the most challenging thing was just making this pivot from selling to people in person. Someone walks in your store, you help them choose something, they buy it, they walk out the door.
Lara Hamilton:
You miss that personal interaction in the early days, but also just making that switch to trying to do all of that online, which is a much more labor intensive way of doing it, that I am incredibly grateful for, but at the same time, it was just this really big shift where we went from being this very hands on, interactive, sort of close together to turning the whole place into a mini shipping station sort of warehouse.
Lara Hamilton:
And so, it took a lot of creativity from all of us to really figure that out and put processes in place, and buy all the supplies, and all those kinds of things. And that also has led us to talk about the impact that all of that is having on the environment, and reevaluate the packaging that we're using. And the books that we're returning, that are damaged, or books that we're now selling for lower prices that are damaged, that we would have normally sent back to the publishers, and those kinds of things.
Lara Hamilton:
So Ken, absolutely, those are totally the same titles that we were selling. And we've kind of all been through this big shift. So I'm looking forward to being able to do things more in person again. But quite honestly, I think that it also opened up a lot of opportunities and showed us ways that we can reach authors and readers and attendees at events like this, that we weren't doing in the past. And so it's been hard, but it also showed us a lot as well.
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah. Matt, how about for you? Kitchen Arts and Letters is a New York City institution, and tourists would go visit you just to see your bookstore and buy some books from you. How did last year impact your business?
Matt Sartwell:
Well, the initial part of last year was an absolute disaster. Like a lot of small businesses, we weren't alone in that. We were forced to be closed. We pretty much lost 85, 90% of our revenue, and it put us in a really bad position. We started to be able to have people back in the store over the summer, but it wasn't getting better. And we made a pretty difficult decision to go to GoFundMe to look for support.
Matt Sartwell:
Like Toni said, I sort of felt like that was something for people whose needs were deeper than ours. But on the other hand, I just maxed out my fourth credit card and I knew that we weren't going to be able to get it through the end of the year. And we asked for help. And it was really touching how and we soared past our goal in four days. It was just amazing. And there were contributions from all over the world. And like 1200 people stepped up for us. It was amazing.
Matt Sartwell:
So it reminded us that we really had a job to do here that was greater than just keeping the door open. We have been looking very hard, like Ken said, making sure that we are always helping push the envelope about what gets represented. Publishers have to be led. Occasionally, they'll do something surprising on their own, but they have to really be given all the possible encouragement to do that. So we've been investing money in ordering lots of copies of books that sort of a publisher might've felt like they were taking a long shot on.
Matt Sartwell:
And if we step up and we order 50 or a hundred copies, which is a big order for us, we're trying to send the message to the publisher to keep doing that kind of thing. And most of the time they don't all succeed, but they succeed often enough that we're trying to help push the boundaries a little bit. But we've always felt here that ... And this has been especially true since the internet came along, recipes fall from the sky. Recipes are everywhere. You can find them online for free. So when you're putting out money for a book, you want more than just recipes. You want a story.
Matt Sartwell:
And as Toni said, you want the insight into who the person is who's telling you that story. What are they offering you? Are they taking you seriously? I think that's why Julia succeeded so well and has for so long, is that she really takes her interest in French cooking seriously.
Matt Sartwell:
If you just want to make French food for dinner once a month, there's no point in buying Mastering The Art of French Cooking. But if you want to really understand the French culture of food, its a magnificent pathway into that. And so, we're always looking for the books that offer a richer, deeper level, and trying to encourage the possibility that more of them will be published.
Kerry Diamond:
Do the publishers talk to you three? Lara, do you ever hear from cookbook publishers?
Lara Hamilton:
I do, for sure. Yeah. Especially our local ones. I have great relationships with the editors at Sasquatch and Mountaineers and places like that. Yeah, for sure.
Kerry Diamond:
Ken, how about you? Do you hear from them?
Ken Concepcion:
Yeah. I guess they're starting to say hello. And when we opened up the shop, I had this like closed minded idea of, well, if I put up a cookbook store here in LA, because it's the last cook bookstore was Cook's Library, which closed in 2009, if I could just get the chefs and the restaurant people on board, then we would be okay. But once we opened, we realized that the people who love bookstores are the people who love books. They're readers.
Ken Concepcion:
People would come in and show pictures of their cookbook collection right next to the pictures of their kids. So it was really gratifying. And I do want to add that the big part about 2020 as well is, I think a whole generation of people learned how to cook at home, was that they also learned that they wanted to support local small businesses as well.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay.
Toni-Tipton Martin:
Carrie, if I could add something there because we're talking about indie bookstores. My voice was a disruptor of the food world and the food industry's perception of itself. And the only reason that my work has succeeded is among other reasons is indie bookstores. Like these here, the events that they held for me was a line outside of the door at Ken's place waiting to get in on his see saw. So this was at the beginning of my book tour when people hadn't really been talking about Jubilee as much yet.
Toni-Tipton Martin:
So they do build an incredible community, not just within their consumer base, but also with us as the authors. And the support that they extend is so meaningful. Well, I can tell you for sure, I would have had to write the Jemima Code in a totally different voice and manner if I were thinking that it was going to go into the big book stores, but I knew that I would be dismissed automatically by them.
Toni-Tipton Martin:
So my motive in selling it and crafting its messaging, all the way through how it was marketed, we knew all along that it wouldn't appeal at that level. But indie bookstores embraced that work day after week after month. And that just paved the way for Jubilee to come in with the next level of the messaging. And so, we've been able to layer on the story by developing trust with the readers who know that I'm going to tell a truth without it coming up with a hammer. And that helps, I think, us all as we try to get more readers, get more people involved in reading books.
Kerry Diamond:
Matt, are you worried about the impact of social media and celebrity on who gets to write a cookbook these days?
Matt Sartwell:
There have always been celebrities writing cookbooks. And there will always be famous people stepping into areas where they have no particular expertise and deciding to swat around and say that they're wonderful. So I don't worry about that because at the same time, we keep finding all these amazing gems that people self-publish or they push forward, or they're like Toni. Did they go with a small press that's willing to give them some room and put some faith in them? So I think that's always possible.
Matt Sartwell:
I think for us, it's become easier to get the word out that we have something extraordinary than in the old days when we would do a printed mailer three times a year and this helped people about what had come in. And we had to make sure that we could only fit so many things in there, and it was very much of a different time. And now we can help support authors a lot better. And we're hearing more from authors who are self-publishing.
Matt Sartwell:
And I will say this to anybody out there, whether you're self publishing or whether you're publishing with one of the biggest companies in the world, reach out to us. Your publicists have a lot on their plate. Whatever you can do for yourself is best email all of these stores and let them know that you're out there. Don't assume that your publisher's doing that work for you.
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah. Same with the magazine. I can say that we sometimes we'll see a book when it's in one of your bookstores, or we see it on Instagram and I'll be like, "How in the world did we not know that book was coming out." But it's hard to stay on top of everything. So if there are any authors out there, just know that ... Ken you're nodding, do you hear from any authors?
Ken Concepcion:
Well, we've only been around since the fall of 2017. Right after college, I worked for two years as a bookseller and book receiver in St. Louis at a place called Library Limited, which was amazing. But really no experience in publishing or the book world or anything like that. We just loved cookbooks. So for us, the benefit of social media was reaching out directly to these authors and writers and saying, "Hey, do you want to do a book talk? Are you going to be in LA? Can you send us the book plates?"
Ken Concepcion:
So it was that one-on-one thing that Matt had really kind of talked about, where you would just go straight to the stores. And Toni, when you were talking about your book event here, I have to say that one of my favorite memories of you is at the end of the talk, we were bringing out all the books for you to sign. And this was a week after pub day, and you said, "We had all these stacks of books." You basically said, "Are you sure you want me to sign all these?" Implying, maybe you want to return some of these. It was a big gamble. And I think what Matt and Lara can attest to is that sometimes you just believe, and it's in a book and in a title.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, that's beautiful, Ken. Well, thank you for doing that for Toni [crosstalk 00:51:45] Lara, I want to ask you, the pace of change in the publishing world, and Matt, you worked in publishing, so you can talk about this. It takes so long for cookbook to go from idea to your bookstore. Are you frustrated at the pace of change among the mainstream publishers? Or have you seen progress?
Lara Hamilton:
I've seen progress? I think.
Kerry Diamond:
And by progress, I mean, who's getting published these days.
Lara Hamilton:
Oh yeah. So there's definitely been progress. I've had my shop for 10 years. And I think in that time, the representation has definitely improved, but it's nowhere near what it needs to be in terms of different cultural voices, black authors, AAPI authors. But also, I think one of the things I've been encouraged by this year but that I think we still need to see more of, are also queer authors. And queer authors who are allowed in publishing to sort of represent the fact that they want to see themselves in books.
Lara Hamilton:
We had a great conversation with Rebekah Peppler last night about her new book At Home. And seeing a major publisher get behind a woman, basically only having photos of women in her book, queer women, and really getting to use that gaze is great. And seeing more and more authors like Julia Turshen and Zoe Adjonyoh and Ruby Tando, who in their writing are embracing the fact that there's more to them than just what they cook, I love that.
Lara Hamilton:
And so I want to see more of that. I want to see more authors who aren't white get to tell stories about things other than just their culture, which I think is, people represent multitudes. They have a lot to say. So I would like to see publishing move a little faster on those fronts. I think they're making progress. I think they're taking things seriously, but there's a lot of room to grow.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. We are running out of time. I would love to know from each of you, a book that you are championing right now. And I loved that, that spirit that you talked about how, when a bookseller gets behind a book, they can help find an audience for that book. So I would love to know what is a book that you are super enthusiastic about right now that you're trying to find an audience for. While you answer, I'm going to scan the Q&A box, because I do want to take a few questions from the audience.
Kerry Diamond:
So if you have a burning question and you did not put it in the Q&A box yet, drop it in there. Toni, why don't we start with you? I know you're not a bookseller, but you do get to see a lot of books, I'm sure, in your capacity as an editor in chief. Is there a book that you are particularly passionate about right now that you can recommend to the audience?
Lara Hamilton:
That is such a dangerous spot for me to be in, like choosing one of your favorite children, because so many of my friends, African-American and other are getting published. What I can say is there is a big stack now of voices that we have not been listening to or heard from as often. And so seek out those culinary voices of color, or that are BIPOC, so that there will be more of them published. But I've been unable to do any blurbs in the last year or so, and endorsing too close to heart.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. Matt, how about you? What's the book you're championing right now?
Matt Sartwell:
Well, I'm always bad at these kinds of questions, but of course, that's the moment somebody asks me that, my mind goes blank. So I'm going to cast my mind back a little bit. I was beyond excited about two years ago, when Julia Turshen came into the store and started asking for all our books about East Africa, because for years, I had been trying to find books for people about that.
Matt Sartwell:
So In Bibi's Kitchen, which Julia helped Hawa Hassan write these profiles on women from eight East African countries is such a step forward for the way in which publishers think about the food in the world and how it can be connected and how it can be reached. And they've done this amazing job of telling the stories of cooks, some of whom are still cooking in these countries, some of whom are cooking away from there, either because of political turmoil or economic opportunity.
Matt Sartwell:
But it gives you a sense of our cultural and food history that I think most Americans are not aware of at all. And that was a book that really made me feel like, yes, occasionally the big houses can really get it right.
Kerry Diamond:
Great. Ken, how about you?
Ken Concepcion:
A book that really comes to mind immediately this year is Mister Jiu's Chinatown, by Brandon, Jew and Ken Lawn Ho. It really is about this interplay between Brandon's story. Chinatown is in San Francisco, which is the oldest Chinatown in the country, and being Chinese-American. And it's just quite moving interplay between those three points. It's almost like Brandon's stunning food and the photography, which is the book is produced by an all Chinese-American cast. It's almost like the food is the bonus part of that book because of the moving points of history of Chinatown and Brandon's story.
Kerry Diamond:
Lara.
Lara Hamilton:
I'm very excited about Marianna Velazquez's book coming out about Colombiana. I'm really excited about that. It's always so encouraging to see countries whose cuisines aren't represented in English get the big glossy cookbook treatment, and sort of move out of that pamphlet stage of cookbooks. So I'm really excited about that.
Kerry Diamond:
No, that's a beautiful one. Mariana Velasquez did, it's called Colombiana and it's out in June. She's a really talented food stylist. We just did a demo with her the other day, and she shared a little bit of news with the audience. She was also the food stylist on, In the Heights, the Lin Manuel Miranda movie, that's coming out in June. So June is going to be a very big month for her.
Kerry Diamond:
So we're all very excited for her. Okay. Let's take a few audience questions. Our friend Abena, who always has questions for us would like to know some tips for someone who wants to write a cookbook. Toni, why don't we start with you? We'll have you answer that question. Aspiring cookbook writer.
Toni-Tipton Martin:
I think in this day and age, you can be your true self. That's the biggest take home message here. There was a time when publishers and gatekeepers massaged our voices and controlled what we could say or forced us to redirect some of our passions. But today, you can find your voice. You can share your voice, and people are interested to hear it. That was one of the biggest surprises for me, was being able to find my tribe in social media. So stick with your voice because it resonates. People can tell when you're being honest or when you're just trying to sell above.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. Matt, this might be one for you. Where can someone get their collection appraised?
Matt Sartwell:
Well, it depends on precisely what you wanted the appraise for. Cookbooks don't have, except, Tony can tell you some different stories, but in the most case cookbooks don't have incredible values the way that, say, first additions of mystery novels and so forth might. So it can be a big job for someone to do a thorough work for you. But first of all, don't like pack everything up, just take photographs of the spines. That's often enough for someone to do that for you.
Matt Sartwell:
We got approached enough that we're really not able to do full appraisals for people any longer, except in the most extraordinary circumstances. But you can probably get a pretty good take from your local indie bookstore. I think all of us here would love to get the support from everybody who's participating in this panel, but if there's a local bookstore near you, they need you. And please, that's an important takeaway is just go to them, they can help you if you can help them.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. Great. All right. Sherry, people are saying cookbooks are a dying breed. How do you reply to that, Ken?
Ken Concepcion:
Dying breed. We're still around. We're the new kid on the block here. So I think we're doing okay. The online business is the pivot, as everybody here can attest to, it was really like opening a brand new business. And now, we're shipping books to Singapore or to Ireland or to Venezuela. So I don't think the cookbook's going to go away. Thank God.
Kerry Diamond:
Lara, what's your answer to that?
Lara Hamilton:
Oh, very similar. Cookbooks and children's books continue to be the growth areas in publishing overall. And the internet is great for finding a specific recipe, but there is nothing like a collective voice in a book that you can touch and look at the pictures or read. So they're not going anywhere.
Kerry Diamond:
And then our last question from Pascal. Pascal is a cookbook author. Matt, you mentioned authors reaching out to folks. What's the best way for an author to get in touch with all of you.
Matt Sartwell:
You can write to me at matt@kitchenartsandletters.com, that comes to my phone. I would be happy to talk. To the website, but the matt@kitchenartsandletters.com comes to me rather than the general inbox.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. I wasn't implying you had to give your emails to the whole world. Laura and Ken, how about you? How's the best way for an author to reach out to you?
Ken Concepcion:
Probably quickest is a message on Instagram @nowservingla, or our general email, Hello@nowserving.com.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. So people can slide into your DMs, Ken. That's totally cool.
Ken Concepcion:
We answer them all the time.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. Good, Lara.
Lara Hamilton:
So they can either email me directly Lara@booklarder.com or info@booklarder.com, because the store manager will be more likely to see that. And she helps me with those decisions.
Kerry Diamond:
All right. And Toni, if an author wants to pitch you for a story, what's the best way to reach you? Or to get your attention?
Toni-Tipton Martin:
You mean for America's Test Kitchen and Cook's Country, they can email me at Toni.tiptonmartin@America'stestkitchen.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. Fabulous. Well, thank you for being so generous with your information. And thank you to everyone who tuned in. I'm so sorry Francis wasn't here, and I hope I did okay filling in last minute.
Lara Hamilton:
You were great, Kerry.
Kerry Diamond:
And I adore all of you. And I don't know, we get asked often because we have a magazine which is somewhere. I'm looking for my own magazine. People always ask us, "Is print dead?" And I'm like, "Oh my gosh, civilization is dead when print is dead." And I know how hard it is to run a bookstore, and Toni, to just collect on the level that you have and to put out the beautiful books that you have. I know how hard that is.
Kerry Diamond:
And just from the hundreds of people who have joined us on this talk, thank you to you for what you do. It's invaluable. And I don't know. I'm sure a lot of you have similar stories, but growing up as a young kid, I feel like books saved my life. And if it wasn't for the library and all those beautiful books and the wonderful librarians, I don't know, who knows what that did for me in my path. But I think it set me on a very good path. So just sending all my love to you and I hope times become easier for booksellers.
Kerry Diamond:
And everybody out there, like Matt said, support your local booksellers. All right. I wanted to just say, speaking of magazine, this is our magazine. Matt, thank you for having magazines behind you. I know all three of you carry our magazines. Thank you so much. This is our special Julia Child edition, which was such just an amazing experience putting it together. And I appreciate the support that all of you have shown us with that issue.
Kerry Diamond:
I'd like to thank our sponsors again. Kerrygold, Crate and Barrel. Oh my God, I was not prepared to moderate today, as you all know. So Kerrygold, Crate and Barrel, Whole Foods Market, Kobrand Fine Wine and Spirits, San Pellegrino, and Le Creuset. Again, thank you for making all of this programming free. Thanks to everybody who tuned in. And we have one more event tomorrow celebrating Julia. We'll be talking about Julia Child's legacy. And I can't wait to wrap things up. And I just want to thank the four of you for your time.
Lara Hamilton:
Thank you, Kerry. It was great.
Toni-Tipton Martin:
It was great. Thank you. Bye everybody.
Ken Concepcion:
Take care everybody.