Far from the gourmet emporiums of Dean & DeLuca in New York City's SoHo neighborhood, a shopper scans the cookbook section at the Wal-Mart in Epping, N.H. There is no guide to making artisanal food, like Charcuterie, which Norton published last year to critical acclaim. Nor is there a volume tapping into the hottest ethnic-food craze, such as José Andrés's Tapas, which PW praised in a starred review. Aside from the latest offerings from Food TV celebrities Rachael Ray, Paula Deen and Sandra Lee, the store stocks these four cookbooks: The Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook, a Betty Crocker cookbook, a Weight Watchers cookbook and a book called Fix-It and Forget-It Cookbook, which offers more than 800 recipes using a slow cooker.

While these books eschew the foodie trends toward "authentic" and ethnic cooking, they're the ones that are selling in big numbers, especially in stores like Wal-Mart, Costco and Sam's Club, stores where customers can buy a cookbook as well as all the ingredients they need to make dinner that night—all for less than it costs to take a cab from the Upper West Side to that Dean & DeLuca and buy some imported olive oil for a salad. When the most recent book in the Fix-It and Forget-It line—titled Fix-It and Enjoy-It—went on sale earlier this year, it was the fifth top-selling trade paperback at Wal-Mart after just six days of sales, and the seventh top-selling nonfiction book for AMS (which services Costco, Sam's Club and BJ's)—without any advertising or promotion. The book, published by Good Books in Intercourse, Pa., isn't flashy: there are no glossy pages or photos, and the text is entirely in black & white. Similarly, the Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook, with its user-friendly ring-bound format, is currently seventh on AMS's nonfiction bestseller list and among the top 10 bestselling cookbooks of the year so far, according to Nielsen BookScan. The book is published by Better Homes and Gardens, which is owned by the Meredith Corporation—which is headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa.

To see how these books perform in specific stores, take Wal-Mart; the "world's largest retailer" (according to U.S. News & World Report) accounts for 7% of all consumer spending in the U.S., and while it can account for 40% of sales of bestselling books, overall book market share may be as high as 10%. The store's top-selling cookbooks the week of August 14 included Rachael Ray Express Lane Meals, Weight Watchers New Complete Cookbook, the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving, Fast Food Fix (featuring recipes for popular fast food restaurant dishes) and Look Good, Feel Great Cookbook: How Eating Superfoods Can Help You Turn Back the Clock with Over 80 Comfort Food Recipes by Jenny Jones. It's clear that Wal-Mart shoppers (and many others) are looking for a certain kind of book—and that some publishers have finally figured out what that is.

The cookbook market may be crowded, but sales are up: according to Nielsen BookScan, cookbooks' unit sales for this year through the end of July were 6.7 million, 12% higher than this time last year. Many of the large New York houses are focused on publishing works by Food Network stars (and understandably so, as six of the 10 top-selling cookbooks so far this year are from Food TV chefs) or high-end cookbooks that editors at upscale food magazines like Gourmet will write about. But there's a movement taking hold elsewhere in the business—in places like Intercourse and Des Moines, as well as in Pleasantville, N.Y. (headquarters of Reader's Digest), North Adams, Mass. (home to Storey Publishing), Portland, Ore. (where you'll find Collectors Press) and Delaware, Ohio (the location of a company called Gooseberry Patch). In these places, several publishers are responding to the "return to the basics" trend, seen in books like Fix-It and Forget-Itand the Better Homes and GardensNewCookbook. As Richard Perry, president and publisher of Collectors Press, which publishes books on using packaged dough and cooking with slow cookers, says, "Comfort foods... are reigning hot, as publishers wake up to the fix-it & forget-it phenomenon—talented home cooks are cooking delicious food across the country every night—although not necessarily the gourmet style that so many cookbooks seem to be espousing."

Some City Folk Respond

Of course, not all New York houses are ignoring the back-to-basics movement. A few are realizing that many Americans want to prepare large quantities of food for their families in advance, to minimize time spent in the kitchen while still providing home-cooked meals. William Morrow Cookbooks, for one, is publishing a book from the creators of the Dream Dinners franchise (which has 150 stores where customers—moms, mostly—prepare meals at stations, 12 or so at a time, and bring them home to freeze for reheating later). The book, Dream Dinners, plays up the importance of family meals; Morrow's press materials tout benefits like "saving money, forming stronger family bonds [and] sharing important family values." Incidentally, Dream Dinners competes with another "assemble-your-own-meal" center, Super Suppers—which will bring out its own cookbook, Super Suppers Cookbook, in September, published by Meredith. And as more Americans prepare meals at such centers, they're also shopping at price clubs; according to U.S. News & World Report, 38% of Americans buy in bulk to save money, up from 27% in 1997. To address those customers, Simon & Schuster is publishing From Warehouse to Your House: More than 250 Simple, Spectacular Recipes to Cook, Store, and Share When You Buy in Quantity (Dec.), which offers ideas on what to do with 11 whole chicken breasts or five pounds of oatmeal; and St. Martin's is updating a book first published in 1986, Once-a-Month Cooking, in February.

Across the Hudson, in Hoboken, N.J., John Wiley & Sons is also publishing a number of books that aren't necessarily aimed at the gourmet home cook. Natalie Chapman, v-p and publisher for the culinary line in the professional and trade division at Wiley, says, "Well-respected brands continue to be a foundation of Wiley's cookbook publishing program, and consumer response to our branded cookbooks has been excellent." In particular, new editions of Weight Watchers New Complete Cookbook and the perennially accessible Betty Crocker Cookbook (which Wiley employees refer to as "Big Red") exceeded sales expectations, Chapman says. Wiley also was pleased with the success of its first Spanish-language branded cookbook, Cocina Betty Crocker, which collects 125 classic American recipes—including macaroni and cheese and apple pie—in both Spanish and English.

Slow Food Isn't Just for Foodies

Coinciding with the move toward inexpensive yet wholesome family meals is the rebirth of the slow cooker, which first caught on in the early '70s when Rival introduced its Crock-Pot. Sales of slow cookers (wherein a cook adds ingredients to the pot, covers it, plugs it in and returns hours later for the finished meal) decreased in the '80s, but the mid-'90s saw a resurgence, and now there's a veritable boom (Rival expects to produce five million Crock-Pots this year). According to Nielsen BookScan, slow cooker cookbooks accounted for 64% of special appliance cookbook sales in 2005.

While Fix-It and Forget-It (and its numerous spinoffs for diabetics, entertaining, etc.) may be the granddaddy of slow cooker cookbooks, other publishers have rushed to market with their own offerings, creating more niches within the genre (healthy, gourmet, vegetarian, vegan, low-carb, three-ingredient and more). As Pat Adrian, editor-in-chief of Bookspan's the Good Cook Book Club, explains, "Ever since September 11, I've seen our members gravitating to cookbooks about warm, filling and sweet foods. I see this in the huge popularity of our slow cooker cookbooks—the publishers keep bringing more of them out, but they all do very well for us."

In addition to Collectors Press in Portland, Ore., and Ten Speed Press in Berkeley, Calif., a 22-year-old company called Gooseberry Patch in Delaware, Ohio, has published seven cookbooks that feature recipes using slow cookers. Begun by two mothers who wanted to create a business "celebrating the country lifestyle and all the comforts of home," Gooseberry Patch is now a thriving catalogue company that creates and sells exclusive products, including home decor items and books. It has published more than 100 cookbooks that have sold 6.6 million copies. Because Gooseberry Patch relies on customer submissions for its recipes, it has an up-close view of what marketing director Lisa Bownas calls "real life" food trends. Bownas says, "We still see slow cooker cookbooks and quick, easy, fast cookbooks as strong sellers, along with anything related to comfort foods," which she believes "might be a backlash against the many low-carb books that have flooded the market." Among Gooseberry's fall 2006 titles are Cozy Country Christmas, Best-Ever Casseroles, Country Baking and The Cozy Home Cookbook.

The Biggest Food Magazine You've Never Heard Of

Although there's bound to be plenty of media interest this fall over the revised edition of TheJoy of Cooking that Scribner is publishing in November, there is another forthcoming cookbook that's almost as weighty—674 pages, with more than 1,200 recipes—but is probably unknown to many city dwellers: the Taste of Home Cookbook, which Reader's Digest will publish in September. The book is based on recipes from the magazine Taste of Home, published by Reiman Publications in Greendale, Wis. The magazine launched in 1993 and has 3.5 million subscribers—which makes it bigger than Bon Appétit, Gourmet and Food & Wine combined. Taste of Home doesn't accept advertising, and most of its recipes are contributed by readers (its magazine and Web site's tag line reads "Edited by a thousand country cooks").

The book, done in a five-ring-binder format, is very much in the spirit of the magazine, offering, for instance, recipes for Cheesy Noodle Casserole from Shirley McKee in Varna, Ill.; and Marble Chiffon Cake from LuAnn Heikkila in Floodwood, Minn. Last year the magazine received more than 90,000 submissions; its Web site has more than 500,000 unique visitors per month. The book's first printing is 385,000 copies, and the publicity tour skips places like New York and San Francisco in favor of Milwaukee, Wis.; Dayton, Cincinnati and Cleveland, Ohio; Louisville and Lexington, Ky.; Indianapolis, Ind.; Pittsburgh, Pa.; Winnetka, Ill.; and Minneapolis (the B&N at Mall of America).

It's well known that most book buyers are women, and the same applies to cookbooks. Most of the contributors to Taste of Home are female, as are most contributors to the Fix-It and Forget-It oeuvre. And books like the forthcoming Chicken Soup for the Soul Recipes for Busy Moms, from Health Communications in Deerfield Beach, Fla., and Mom's Best Crowd Pleasers, from Storey Publishing, are blunt about excluding half the population. It's a matter of recognizing that there's an audience, and publishing books that cater to the market—which is exactly the premise that Taste of Home, Fix-It and Forget-Itand their companion books are based on: give the people what they want. And for many home cooks in the middle of America, that's home cooking, plain and simple.

Kids and Cooking
"So many of the children's cookbooks that are really successful have air appeal," comments Lynn Waggoner, v-p of global retail books and associate publisher at Disney. Most people in the book business agree that food programs; the rise of celebrity chefs, who own restaurants in multiple cities; and media attention to childhood obesity are the three ingredients contributing to today's expanding shelf of children's cookbooks.

"Kids are cooking," says Antonia Markiet, senior executive editor at HarperCollins Children's Books, whose roster includes Emeril Lagasse. "They are a really key part of his audience."

With two shows on the Food Network and a third cookbook for kids due out in October, Emeril's There's a Chef in My World: Recipes That Take You Places, Emeril is not the only TV chef attracting young followers. Food Network star Rachael Ray—Cooking Rocks: Rachael Ray's 30-Minute Meals for Kids (Lake Isle)—continues to have the bestselling kids' cookbook at Koen-Levy, says children's book buyer Lisa Dugan.

AlthoughDeanna F. Cook doesn't have a TV show, FamilyFunmagazine (circulation: two million) provides a recognizable brand that allows her to compete. Next month, Disney will publish Cook's FamilyFun Cooking with Kids, which Waggoner describes as a book for kids who want to do more than just lick the cake batter.

For B&N buyer Teresa Pagano, the children's cookbook category has already heated up: "It's been an area of constant growth since late 2001." This fall she's especially excited about Food Network host Sandra Lee's first book for children, Semi Homemade Cooking with Kids(Meredith, Nov.). Koen-Levy's Dugan anticipates strong sales for British teenager Sam Stern's Cooking Up a Storm: The Teen Survival Cookbook(Candlewick, July). So is his publisher, which has already gone back to press after Stern's Today Showappearance earlier this month and has signed him for three more books.

Many children's booksellers are looking for books for younger kids to supplement Mollie Katzen's two earlier titles from Tricycle, Pretend Soup and Other Real Recipesand Salad People and More Real Recipes. Dinah Paul, owner of A Likely Story in Alexandria, Va., who ran a cooking camp this summer using Katzen's books, says she likes simple, kid-centric books like Rozanne Gold's Kids Cook 1-2-3: Recipes for Young Chefs Using Only 3 Ingredients(Bloomsbury, Oct.). Gold worked with 10 young sous-chefs—including the children of book illustrator Sara Pinto—who helped select the final recipes. —Judith Rosen

Grape Reads

Andrea Robinson (née Immer) is known for demystifying the often intimidating subject of wine. In her eight books, two TV programs and DVD series, she explains why pinot noir is appealing, what to drink with Warm Chocolate Cake, how to pronounce the Italian rosé Centine ("Chen-TEEN-ay") and more. Here, she lists 10 wine books she thinks all booksellers should carry. —L.A.

"Core" Titles

The Wine Bible by Karen MacNeil (Workman). "A wonderfully comprehensive resource that's still manageable in size."

The Windows on the World Complete Wine Course by Kevin Zraly (Sterling). "A true, simple-to-follow classic from one of the great wine educators (and my mentor and friend). The updated and expanded edition is outstanding."

The New Sotheby's Wine Encyclopedia by Tom Stevenson (DK). "Truly covers the world of wine, concisely and with great maps and summaries of classic vineyards."

Great Wine Made Simple by Andrea Immer (Broadway). "Teaches you how to learn about wine by tasting it—the only way that really works."

Other Specialty Works

Vino Italiano: The Regional Wines of Italy by Joseph Bastianich and David Lynch (Clarkson Potter). "The most thorough coverage of this intense region, plus great insider tips on where to visit and eat when you go."

Making Sense of Burgundy by Matt Kramer (Quill). "Really explains the complexity of Burgundy easily; a must for the pinot lover."

Bordeaux: A Consumer's Guide to the World's Finest Wines by Robert M. Parker (S&S). "The classic book on this classic region."

The World Atlas of Wine by Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson (Mitchell Beazley). "The most outstanding wine maps, and great prose from two wonderful writers."

Pocket Guides

Hugh Johnson's Pocket Wine Book 2006 (Mitchell Beazley). "Always up to date on vintages, and he's such a talented writer."

Andrea Immer's Wine Buying Guide for Everyone (Broadway). "Actually covers wines you can find in stores and restaurants, and tells you how well they keep after the cork's out."