THE BEST OF THE BEST

The objective is to show the best of the best winners of the past 12 years.

There books are still easily available at reasonable prices, often with translations that came out in the years after receiving their Gourmand Award.

Twelve years represents nearly three generations in the life of the sector.

• It is very difficult for books from 1996 to compete in quality with books of 2008. In 25% of the categories there is more than one winner, to include more years.

• New book production technology give an equal chance to all countries, we have best of the best winners from 31 countries.

• The shift for leadership in quality in the sector is clearly from the Atlantic and Europe previously, to Asia-Pacific now, including the west of the US.

• Small publishers are winning against big publishers, with the quality at big publishers stagnating compared to small publishers.

• Food and wine books are now a global market, with the same trends and fashion spreading fast worldwide. Foreign rights deals are increasing in number quickly in the sector.

• Television has been the driving force. Now internet and blogs are multiplying the number of authors. Printing on demand will make the output of cookbook titles soar.

In these twelve years, over 200.000 cookbooks have been published worldwide by 5.000 publishers. The Gourmand World Cookbook Awards have tried to honour the sector, reward the best, and help publishers, authors and readers. We single out here less than 100 books, some are obvious to everyone, others deserve more attention. AII can still be translated with profit as they correspond to the current demand.

copyright® 2008