If life is like high school, then cookbook publishing these days is like a high school cafeteria, with a small clique of authors who make seven-figure advances sitting together, and the rest of the student body relegated to the uncool perimeter. And what distinguishes the queen bees from the nerds is that they host shows on the Food Network.

At Borders and Waldenbooks, 12 of the top 25 cookbooks for 2004 were by five Food Network authors: Ina Garten (with four titles), Rachael Ray (three), Paula Deen (three), Emeril Lagasse (one) and Alton Brown (one). "Being on the Food Network doesn't necessarily mean that a cookbook becomes a bestseller, but it certainly helps," said Borders and Waldenbooks cookbook buyer Scott Ferguson.

The equation is simple: exposure equals sales. "If you look at the top 50 cookbooks in week-to-week BookScan numbers, at least 60% of those titles have a presence on television. Television remains—absent a magazine in your name—the number-one branding tool," said Paul Bogaards, executive director of publicity at Knopf.

Though television outlets like PBS and the shopping channel QVC (where Pamela Anderson sold 100,000 copies of The Perfect Recipe, her 2001 cookbook from Houghton) also offer platforms for cooks, they don't come close to the Food Network's consistent commercial impact. "The Food Network makes stars," observed Simon & Schuster senior editor Sydny Miner, who saw that star-making machinery in action after she acquired The Lady & Sons Just Desserts by Paula Deen, around the time that plans for Deen's Food Network show, Paula's Home Cooking, were percolating. The book debuted with a 30,000-copy printing in April 2002, then "exploded" the following November, when Deen's show went on the air, prompting 13 trips to press for a total of 190,000 copies so far, according to Miner. Deen's The Lady & Sons Savannah Country Cookbook(Random House, 1998) now has close to one million copies in print, said Deen's agent, Janis Donnaud, who recently represented her in a new two-book, seven-figure deal with Simon & Schuster.

An Audience with an Appetite

This separate-and-unequal situation in the cookbook market didn't develop overnight. Nor did the Food Network rise to prominence in a single season after its November 1993 launch as part of the E.W. Scripps media company, which has interests in newspapers, as well as broadcast and cable television. It was a change of focus to comfort food in late 2001 that helped the network take off. "Our programming before that was much more chef-driven. We had lots of foie gras and no brisket," explained v-p of culinary productions Susan Stockton. Today, the cable network finds hosts in a variety of places—many are cookbook authors, but some are teachers or even home cooks. Ratings continue to grow. Kagan Research reported that the network had an average of 681,000 viewers in prime time in 2004, reflecting a 7% increase from 2003.

Viewers aren't just watching; they're buying. On weekends in late 2004, when the network devoted a day of programming to a single personality, B&N buyer Maria Hoffman would see "a huge spike" in sales of related titles the following Monday. "A book would pop into the top 100, and after that it would trail off until the next weekend they aired the special," she said.

Some titles by new Food Network hosts are even generating heat before they're released. Bn.com took hundreds of preorders for Giada de Laurentiis's first book, Everyday Italian (Clarkson Potter, Feb.), which has the same title as her TV show. A week after it went on sale, the book hit #12 on the PW bestseller list for March 7 and #8 on the New York Times advice list, and now has a total of 200,000 copies in print, according to the publisher.

Though the Food Network doesn't take a cut from book deals, it does profit from selling related titles via its online store (www.foodtv.com). And while the network doesn't directly promote its hosts' books, it will coordinate the launch of a new show with a book's release. For example, Hyperion will publish David Lieberman's Young and Hungry in April, when his Food Network show, Good Deal with Dave Lieberman,premieres. The publisher and the network have also arranged appearances on Today and at the South Beach Wine and Food Festival. Needless to say, the estimated 60,000-copy first printing is significantly larger than it would have been for an author whose previous claim to fame was a public access cooking show he created as a Yale undergrad.

The End of Traditional Cookbooks?

The prominence of Food Network personalities and their blockbuster sales model have gradually been reshaping the cookbook category. Most notably, they are erasing the old slow-but-steady sales model, within which a book might eventually hit six-figure sales, but rarely in a short period. Today, even generic titles with a Food Network association achieve major sales, such as the network's own Food Network Kitchens Cookbook (Meredith, 2003). Though Borders's Ferguson tagged that title "a personality book without a personality," it has sold close to 100,000 copies with consistent on-air and Web site advertising.

Relatively low cookbook advances are also becoming a thing of the past. When HarperCollins paid chef Marcella Hazan $650,000 for Marcella Cucina (1997), PW hailed it as a record-breaking deal. By contrast, when Esther Newberg, executive v-p of ICM, recently reported the "biggest contract ever for a cookbook writer," it was for a multiple-book, multimillion-dollar deal for Ina Garten, host of the Food Network's Barefoot Contessa. In a testament to her blockbuster status, Garten's latest book, Barefoot in Paris (Potter, 2004), had its own 30-second commercial (bought by Potter) during Garten's holiday TV special.

Likewise, perky Rachael Ray, who previously published eight books with tiny Lake Isle Press, is now a William Morris client with a multibook, multimillion-dollar deal with Clarkson Potter, thanks to her three Food Network shows: 30-Minute Meals, $40 a Day and Inside Dish. Meanwhile, her first book, 30-Minute Meals (Lake Isle Press, 1999) is in its 20th printing, and 30-Minute Meals 2 (Lake Isle Press, 2003) has more than one million copies in print.

Chef Mario Batali, host of Molto Mario and Mario Eats Italy, also racked up a million-dollar deal for world English and first serial rights to Molto Italiano (Ecco, May), despite disappointing sales of his most recent title, The Babbo Cookbook (Potter, 2002), compared to Simple Italian Food (Potter, 1998). Batali appears regularly on Iron Chef America, although a planned third series for him—promoted on the blad for the new book—is on hold. But with his Food Network deal in hand, Batali didn't even have to sign an agreement to purchase a certain number of copies for sale through his restaurants (a common practice for chef/authors). "Publishers themselves acknowledge that the Food Network is scarily powerful," commented Batali's agent, Tony Gardner.

But there can be a downside to publishing what are essentially TV tie-ins. While the hardcover sales for many of Food Network authors are remarkable, and launching a new show can do wonders for a personality's previous titles, their books may not achieve the kind of long-term backlist life of classic cookbooks. Part of the problem is that the audience clearly tires of anyone who's not fresh from the oven. Emeril Lagasse's latest title, Emeril's Potluck(Morrow, 2004), has sold well below 100,000 copies, a figure that pales in comparison to three years ago, when Prime Time Emeril sold close to 200,000 copies despite its September 2001 pub date.

Even so, traditional cookbook standard-bearers are feeling the pressure for greater frontlist sales. Norton v-p and senior editor Maria Guarnaschelli tends to favor projects like a primer on Latin American cooking 10 years in the making by chef Maricel Presilla, scheduled for fall 2006, rather than books by the likes of Lagasse, who stays on a strict one-book-a-year schedule at Morrow. But Guarnaschelli admitted, "I would love to have a Food Network person. Everybody likes sales like that."

Or, as Susan Friedland put it, "You want a bit of pornography that helps all your poetry." Friedland, another of the small cadre of editors and agents who used to dominate the field with more substantial titles by renowned chefs like Hazan, departed HarperCollins in January after more than 15 years heading up the cookbook program. Beginning with the winter 2006 list, all Harper cookbooks will shift to Morrow, where, Friedland predicted, "I don't think they'll continue to do the kinds of books I did."

While it's likely that the inflation of advances will eventually top out, it seems equally possible that cookbook authors without television shows may be unable to find major publishers in a few years. The question is whether, by largely prizing platform and personality over cooking skill, the category is eating itself for lunch. Said Friedland, "It's really hard to sell a book without a celebrity. Nothing sells that's a sleeper. Everything that sells has had some kind of push behind it. And high-minded authors who write beautifully about food are not going to do that well. Do I bemoan it? I do."