The Greatest Recommendation for Cooks and Bartenders Who Wish to Write a Cookbook

A model of this submit initially appeared on April 21, 2025, in Eater and Punch’s e-newsletter Pre Shift, a biweekly e-newsletter for the business professional that sources first-person accounts from the bar and restaurant world. Subscribe now for extra tales like this.

Jenn Sit is the manager editor at Clarkson Potter, a division of Penguin Random Home, the place she makes a speciality of cookbooks and food-related nonfiction, almost 50 % of the imprint’s catalog. She’s labored on cookbooks by business veterans like Rodney Scott, Deuki Hong, Paul Bertolli, Sean Sherman, and Nok Suntaranon and has co-authored two of her personal: The Bread and Salt Between Us with Mayada Anjari and the James Beard Award nominee Senegal with Pierre Thiam. Right here, she discusses the present cookbook market, what she’s searching for in a proposal, and why folks in hospitality are already well-poised to jot down a ebook.

“At Potter, there’s not a one-size-fits-all or cookie-cutter strategy for our cookbooks. However typically, we actually are most excited in regards to the ones that may clearly connect with this era of dwelling cooks and residential bartenders. For us, this implies actually trusted, professional authorities with a powerful voice and perspective and high-quality content material that actually retains the reader’s expertise high of thoughts. And I feel that’s actually true throughout the board, whether or not you’re a chef, a bartender, a content material creator, a blogger, a meals author, or a TV persona.

“For culinary inspiration, there’s so many extra sources now. This current second is, after all, very a lot dominated by social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok. In recent times, we additionally noticed the rise of a variety of popular culture crossover initiatives, books from celebrities or tie-ins with leisure properties. It’s extra fragmented now. I’d be very remiss to not spotlight the continued success of tried-and-true, single-subject books: They won’t get as a lot consideration by means of the media or by means of influencers, however they’re so necessary to our enterprise. These are books each on evergreen subjects like bread baking and pasta-making, and in addition ones that we publish in a short time to reply to traits within the market, like machine cookbooks [such as Melissa Clark’s 2017 Instant Pot cookbook, Dinner in an Instant].

“It’s actually trying on the listing as a complete and responding to, the place are folks excited about getting their inspiration from? These sources have modified a lot. The place are we going? {The marketplace} is de facto crowded and, after all, we have now to make sensible enterprise choices. Prospecting and scouting for authors is essential to what we do. And it’s additionally a very enjoyable a part of the job. It’s maintaining a tally of who’s thrilling to you, who’s sparking your curiosity, who is de facto making an influence with of us on the market, who has an thrilling perspective.

“What we’ve seen work properly with restaurant cooks, bartenders, and somms in recent times is once they’re actually in a position to translate what is exclusive about their strategy, experience, and voice to the house prepare dinner and bartender. So which may imply going actually deep on a single topic or a technical subject like pasta-making or bread. Or it would imply approaching dwelling cooking in recent methods, or making a wealthy narrative world for the house prepare dinner to be immersed in.

“Typically when proposals are available, they’re very completely different from what the ebook really turns into. For Wine Easy by Aldo Sohm [longtime wine director at Le Bernadin] and Christine Muhlke, the unique proposal was extra targeted on the bar, and for The Bartender’s Manifesto by Toby Maloney and Emma Janzen, the ebook was in regards to the [Chicago bar] Violet Hour. With the latter, there was a sense that there wasn’t fairly a ebook that breaks down the craft of cocktail-making. And Wine Easy is de facto about distilling Aldo’s tremendous skilled professional data for a newbie wine fanatic. For each books, by broadening the premise and the angle, we’re in a position to attain a wider viewers and convey new folks into their fold.

“On the cooking aspect, Italian American—by Angie Rito and Scott Tacinelli of [New York restaurants] Don Angie and San Sabino—involves thoughts. The cookbook may be very a lot not positioned as a straight restaurant ebook, i.e. it goes past Don Angie. The by means of line [of the book is showing] their approach of mixing modern inventive influences with traditional, comforting Italian cooking. In the event you’re searching for among the Don Angie recipes, they’re in there. However there are many others which are impressed by their households and what excites them. I can’t take credit score for that. The proposal got here in like that: They actually wished the ebook to be an evergreen entry to the Italian cookbook canon. I used to be actually excited to see it positioned that approach.

“What we’re seeing within the panorama is folks wanting extra approachable, dwelling cook-friendly recipes. The factor that every one of those cooks have in widespread is that they’re actually in a position to distill their perspective. Every ebook looks like them and their perspective. What’s actually necessary is being intentional about who you’re writing your ebook for and why. That’s key. What’s the promise you’re fulfilling together with your ebook? Whether or not it’s diving into a subject that you simply’re actually an authority on or making a world that’s pushed by your personal private story and perspective. I like to think about cookbooks as a service software the place we will always remember the significance of the tip person. And folks in hospitality are arrange rather well to know that.”

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