Harvard Common Press Launches Trademarked Series
By Lynn Andriani -- Publishers Weekly, 9/18/2008 12:28:00 PM
In 2005, the Harvard Common Press published Not Your Mother’s Slow Cooker Cookbook by Beth Hensperger and Julie Kaufmann. It was a tremendous hit for the Boston independent, even in the competitive field of slow cooker books (an Amazon search for “slow cooker cookbooks” yields some 525 results). HCP followed up with Not Your Mother’s Slow Cooker Recipes for Two (2006) and Not Your Mother’s Recipes for Entertaining (2007). The books went on to become the press’ bestselling series ever in its 32-year history, with more than 500,000 copies sold to date. As a result of the unprecendented success, has HCP trademarked the name Not Your Mother’s, designed a Web site at NotYourMothersCookbooks.com and is expanding the Not Your Mother’s series to include books that venture beyond slow cookers. First up: Not Your Mother’s Weeknight Cooking.
The Not Your Mother’s concept taps into the overall trend toward cookbooks focusing on healthy, fresh, local foods that are not labor-intensive. The books take a subject mired in tradition and give it a contemporary update. Publisher Bruce Shaw said Not Your Mother’s Slow Cooker Cookbook was HCP’s “fastest selling title out of the gate,” and says it did so well in a crowded field because “we were able to find a new approach to [crock pot cooking], and anoint it with a memorable, meaningful brand name that has really resonated with both accounts and consumers.”
The series has lots of in-house support; every time a new book comes out, the entire company celebrates with a pot-luck lunch based entirely around the book. Last week, HCP employees all cooked out of Not Your Mother’s Weeknight Cooking, which landed in stores in early September. Shaw said so far the book is doing well; since all the chains had seen strong sales of the previous titles, they were eager to support the newest one. The book is also getting distribution into supermarkets and gourmet stores.
HCP is pushing the brand, too, advertising and promoting it to consumers and the trade (both the book trade, as well as the gourmet and gift markets). A multi-recipe excerpt will run in Family Circle in November, and HCP is running ads on Delish.com, a new online recipe resource and cooking community from Hearst and Microsoft.
