The future of cookbook rights
Publishers and authors are adapting to an emerging global market for cookbooks and wine books. It is accelerated by the bridges between cultures and lifestyles, thanks to the new media and the social networking services. No cookbook market is now an island.
1.-The Global Market. Buying and Selling. The Two Pillars.
Going global changed automobiles, film, music or drinks. This is at the start now for cookbooks and wine books, far more global than most other sectors of publishing.
The trends for cookbooks in the countries around the world are now very much the same, at a more or less advanced stage. The demand of the clients is driven by the same television formats everywhere. The concerns for healthy eating are growing across cultures. The same demographic and family issues reinforce the need for cookbooks to help to transmit recipes and food culture.
For publishers, it means that foreign rights have become essential for profits and survival. As the case of the automobile industry and others show, import and export go together, and help each other. The first key concept is to understand you will do better if you both buy and sell foreign rights, and establish long term relationship. The market has shifted east and south, the most interesting trade is now with Asia and Latin America, again an easy parallel with the automobile industry or the drinks industry.
2.- Lifestyle and Foreign Rights : Be Flexible
Consumers worldwide are changing their lifestyle, following the new media. This lifestyle is increasingly global, more so with the young who spend money. A lifestyle book for the young which works in one country is likely to be well received in another.
In Japan French wine, French pastry, and French outing have been stars for years. There is a lively market for western culinary books. The interest for western style cooking in the rest of Asia is much larger than western publishers believe now. For instance, the demand is increasing fast in China, with foreign cooking books rising to over 12% sales, while traditional Chinese cooking is stagnating, according to Chinese Publishers Magazine. At the moment most translations are sold by Japan, Korea and Taiwan to Mainland China. They have in common a different view on design and colors than the West, though it is changing.
There is a demand for Western content, but layout and design need some adaptation and experienced publishers know for instance that front covers changes are the one key point to accept to make deals happen. One interesting case study is the cover of Modernist Cuisine, white in English, in black in most other markets.
3.-Bestsellers, brands, cookbooks, and foreign rights.
Western publishers focus for foreign rights deals on best sellers. Cookbook bestsellers are driven by television, such as the bestseller lists for 2012 show both in the UK and the US. The British have always done better.
Their best, Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay, Nigella Lawson or Lorraine Pascale sell more than their US counterpart, in a country 5 times smaller.
In most countries, the top 10 bestsellers in cookbooks are also heavily influenced by television food shows. The new young star is Jeroen Meus of the Netherlands, selling more than the number one from the US as a total of the past two years, in a country 20 times smaller.
In France, it is not television that makes bestsellers, but brands combined with low pricing. There are some television bestsellers, such as Cyril Lignac, who can be considered a brand known by everyone. Without TV show, one bestselling author that has foreign rights success is Trish Deseine.
Wine books have very few bestsellers. They are built on authors who are brands. There are really four in the foreign rights market. The historical number one has been "Bordeaux and its Wines", sold for nearly 150 years, by Editions Féret, with 18 Editions, usually at the top price for a wine book anywhere. There are three other British bestselling wine authors, Jancis Robinson, Hugh Johnson and Tom Stevenson.
4.-Digital Publishing and Foreign Rights
Outside the US, cookbooks and wine books have less than 2% of their sales as E-books. However foreign rights deals could help digital publishing for the culinary sector.
For instance digital publishers Cooklet from Poland and Caramelized from Germany have an international approach from the start for the design of their products. They are present at Paris Cookbook Fair, as well as Editions Alain Ducasse. "Mon Grand Livre de Cuisine" by Alain Ducasse is driven in its format as much by English than French, and is adapted to several other languages. The Chinese such as Qingdao Publishing are working on cookbooks read on the telephones.
The Gourmand Awards are the major Food Culture event in the world.
They started in 1995 for cookbooks and wine books, at Frankfurt Book Fair. They now include all Food Culture content. The Gourmand Awards are open to all, big or small, print or digital, for sale or for free, with or without ISBN, trade or self published, private or public, in any language. It is free to participate, anyone can send entries. There is no comparable international cultural event in the world, except the Olympics. We are inspired by the Olympic spirit.
1- The countries
This year we had entries from 215 countries and regions. There are 193 countries in the United Nations. For the Finalists, we have considerably reduced from the entries the number of countries, and entries. There are now Finalists for Food from a total of 134 countries (116 UN members) and regions. There are 40 countries and regions for Drinks.
2- Categories
There are 100 categories for Food, 30 for Drinks. This is necessary to reflect the wide diversity of world food culture. It gives a chance to many countries to win in a category. In the Olympic games, they have 303 competitions/categories for 202 countries. On our list our finalists, we have 130 categories for 134 countries and regions. In total, there are 1372 entries now finalist, 1144 for food, and 228 for drinks. This represents less than 3% of the total of similar books and other formats published and available every year. It is a major achievement to be on this list of Finalists. There are 67% of the categories with 12 or less finalists, 26% with 13 to 19 finalists, and 7% with 20 to 30 finalists.
3- Trends
Food Culture is now taken very seriously by most governments and individuals. Food is at the heart of the issues of our future, collectively and individually.Trends in Food and Drinks culture are now global, everywhere in the world, which this list of finalists makes very clear. We see six major trends, combining or competing at a different pace in different countries, with change accelerating:
- Tourism is becoming the force driving food culture. Food is the first positive criteria and motivation generally, for 35%, up from 25% fifteen years ago. We have 160 entries for tourism (12%). See our categories B15, B17, B21, W1-8, W1-12.
- Social media and television continue to expand the food culture market, helping print. See our categories A07, A08, A09, A13, B18, B19.
- Health and Nutrition have joined with Ethics and Environmental concerns, spreading the same issues worldwide. For instance Vegan has become mainstream in very few years, everywhere. See our categories D01, D02, D08, D09, E06, E13.
- Local has become the key word. There is a major effort everywhere to save local food culture, and transmit it. It is helped by tourism and the locavore trends. Slow Food has won. See our categories C01, D05, D07.
- Quick and easy comfort food is still very important, especially in Asia. See our category E01. In 1995, when we started, this was the leading category.
- Children and Family food books are rapidly expanding. See categories D03, D11.
- There are minor new trends starting now Sports and Food, see D13.
- Seniors and food, see D12 Breakfast, see E15.
- Embassies and Gastro Diplomacy, see F08.
4- Digital
We have 19 categories (15%) exclusively for digital, with 195 digital entries now finalists (15%). You can find in the list of Finalists approximately 50 free Food and Wine PDF to download, selected for their quality, nearly all produced by public institutions. Unfortunately, they tend to disappear quickly, so do not be surprised if you cannot find them. We cannot help. See categories A06 for FAO, UN-IOM, UNDEP-Canada, UNESCO, UNWTO or B17, W1-12. For cookbook professional online newsletters, see B03.
5- The next step
The Best in the World will be announced in Yantai, China at the Gourmand Awards annual event May 25-28, 2018. The top 3 in each category will have the right to Best in the World. We do not announce results before the event. It is not necessary to attend to win. Apart from the honors at the event, the major opportunity is meeting the other participants, for business and pleasure. As previous participants have written, it may be the best four days of your life if you participate. Guests from over 60 countries had already indicated they wanted to come as of January 12, 2018. There are among them 81 guests who have already been at our events in Yantai. They come back even if they have no entry in the competition, it is so important for networking, business, and food culture.