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.
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