The Weirdness of Cookbook Sales and Promotion

Platforms and pricing. Amazon discounts. A versatile Vietnamese corn milk recipe.

We live in a world where when you’re asked “How are you doing?” the automatic response is expected to be “I’m great!”

But to tell you the truth, I’ve lately been on a challenging career roller coaster. I made this little video to summarize.

I got into writing cookbooks to push recipes and stories that hadn’t yet been told. I had no idea how sales and promotion worked. You write a good book and people will buy it, yes? That would be wonderful but it’s just not that easy.

When my first book released in 2006, no one knew who I was. My book deal was small but my publisher believed in Into the Vietnamese Kitchen. They gave me the best possible, including their top editor and publicist. The book was well received and a few other authors suggested that I change my website, Viet World Kitchen, into a blog. “You should do it. Just do it,” a popular blogger said.

So I started blogging, but I never mastered things like search engine optimization. I just wrote about topics and recipes that interested me and my audience.

Unbeknownst to me, I was building a “platform”. People watching out for me then told me to get on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Despite my dorkiness, I managed to develop a cookbook writing career.

I thought I’d be a one-book wonder. I was very much an outsider trying to break into an industry that was mostly populated by people with New York media ties, fancy Ivy League degrees, and/or trust funds.

My refugee/immigrant California resident status stacked the odds against me! But this girl had a dream, and was blessed with luck and pluck.

Nowadays, the bigger the platform and audience that you have, the better the chances are that your work will get attention. However, getting attention doesn’t necessarily translate into sales, as this week’s New York Times article¹ by Priya Krishna reveals.

There’s another factor at play in the cookbook sales and promotion department — and that is online retailers like Amazon. Whether you are okay with Jeff Bezos or not, Amazon dominates books sales — an estimated 60 to 70 percent of all books sales and at least 40 percent of print books². Sigh.

Amazon Discount Impacts

People purchase from Amazon because of discounts, shipping speed, and variety. Up until recently in the world of cookbook sales, Amazon would substantially lower its price on a book title around release date.

Consumers, publishers, and authors came to expect a big push of sales out of the gate led by a lot of books sold through Amazon.

But this year, the big price drop didn’t happen around publication date. People saw modest 10 percent discounts, for example.

Sales have been good but sluggish on Ever-Green Vietnamese. However, my in-person events have been packed and I’ve been overjoyed at meeting and hugging folks who’ve invited my recipes into their lives.

Cookbooks have changed my life and I didn’t know my work would be life changing for others.

This disconnect has been strange and unnerving, especially given the press and social media excitement for the book around the time of its April release. Moreover, people who get their hands on the book appreciate its modern interpretations of Vietnamese plant-based traditions.

Consequently, I’ve felt bummed, confused, and sometimes elated.

I asked my publisher what was going on. They confirmed that Amazon’s current pricing strategy has impacted sales across the board on new cookbooks. They’ve not been as strong as expected. However, backlist books that have been around for some time are doing alright. My publisher takes the long view.

I asked indie bookshop owners about pricing. No one was clear. One person ventured that maybe Amazon is trying to compensate for higher shipping costs by not dropping prices as it used to?

Fellow authors also wondered and were puzzled. No one has a definitive answer. We do all we can to promote our new book babies. Then it’s a matter of riding the roller coaster and hoping for the best.

The Price Drop

At one point my sister said, “I’ve been waiting to buy your new book because Amazon hasn’t dropped its price enough yet.” Family can be darn honest.

Who knows what’s going on but Amazon recently discounted the price for Ever-Green Vietnamese by nearly 40 percent! Such a drop used to be rare but it’s now part of the calculation. I don’t know how long the price will last.

The Amazon price for the book is currently $21.49. Ditto for Target and Walmart.

Perhaps it’s time to gift yourself or others? The holidays are approaching. ;-)

If you buy the book and enjoy it, please leave a positive review at Amazon. The reviews mean more now than ever!

Of course, if you elect to support independent bookshops, that would be extra wonderful. Options include:

• Abebooks and Bookshop.org often offer discounts.

• Signed copies may still be available at: Book Larder (Seattle), Kitchen Arts and Letters (NYC), Bold Fork Books (Washington, DC), Now Serving LA (Los Angeles), Omnivore Books (San Francisco), Book Shop Santa Cruz (my hometown and where I’ll be doing an event on 10/29 too).

Wait, what is Ever-Green Vietnamese?

If you’re new to this newsletter (and me) and wondering what I have written about today, this should clarify:

Corn Milk Recipe

Regardless of whether or not you have the book, I’d love to also talk about corn milk. Sounds odd but it’s rather genius. Called sữa bắp in Vietnamese and composed of mostly corn and water, it is a simply elegant, creamy, slightly sweet beverage. It illustrates Vietnamese plant-based resourcefulness incredibly well.

I spotted sữa bắp in Hanoi a few years ago and have enjoyed it in California too. Its popularity and tastiness got me to develop an easy recipe for Ever-Green Vietnamese. After several rounds of testing to get the recipe right ('easy’ recipes can be tricky), I realized corn milk’s many virtues:

• It can be vegan, or not.

• It can be served as a beverage or light soup.

• It can be turned into a cocktail or ice pop.

We couldn’t photograph every recipe for the book, and I don’t want you to overlook this one for corn milk! Moreover, corn season is winding down.

For all those reasons, I made a video and shared the recipe on Viet World Kitchen. Also included is a nifty pandan variation that Caroline, a chef based in Saigon, just told me about! Get the full corn milk recipe low down.

Writing PTFS updates to you always makes me feel good. Thank you for reading and cooking.

1. “How TikTok is Reshaping the American Cookbook” by Priya Krishna, NYT, 9/18/23.

2. Amazon book sales estimate sources: Gitnux.com (60-70 percent total) and Wordsrated.com (40 percent of print books)