The Exhausting Glut of Generic Influencer Cookbooks

Howdy cookbook fans!

Okay y’all! I meant to do a news digest today but I am hustling to try to get out the door to drive to Houston (hi Houston!). So, weird issue today! A rant from me, plus the new releases from the first half of May. Okay I gotta pack! Have a good weekend!

Today’s issue of Stained Page News is brought to you by Hardie Grant North America and Bethlehem: A Celebration of Palestinian Food by Fadi Kattan. Bethlehem is a celebration of Palestinian food and culture from one of the area’s most dynamic chefs and a portrait of one of the most storied cities in the world. Pre-order today.

The Exhausting Glut of Generic Influencer Cookbooks

Influencers—TikTok, YouTube, and otherwise—can move copies, that’s for damn sure. But can they write good cookbooks? The answer, as always, is “it depends.” UK food writer Helen Salter explores the issue in the Independent, asking “what makes for a hit cookbook in 2024?” Do sales equal success? And do all those social media recipes actually work? Salter talked to several acquiring editors, and you can bop over to read their thoughts, but here are mine. :)

This is something I struggle with a lot. Writing this newsletter, I see deal after deal after deal go to influencers/content creators I’ve never heard of, who have followings in the millions. I am not talking about current or former professional chefs, or the many international cuisine cookbooks that have come out of this phenomenon, or cookbooks with fun spins like B. Dylan Hollis’ exploration of historic recipes, or even the really high quality creators with a unique and personal point of view, like Deb Perelman or Justine Doiron. All of those people seem to come to their content via a genuine love for food. And believe me, I am not knocking people who enjoy food content–I myself am a big Poppy fan, for one. But there is a cynical aspect to some content creators, and after awhile, a lot of the books that are generated out of a TikTok or YouTube star start to seem…the same. 

The books I am talking about are very generic, often run by people who, to my eye, don’t seem to really know how to cook. Typically these are either aimed at a Gen Z audience, offering easy-but-delicious recipes with some kind of spin on them, taking aim at Alison Roman’s crown, filmed in a kitchen in sunny California or a modern sleek New York high rise. OR they’re some variation on help-what’s-for-dinner recipes for busy moms, sometimes with a health angle, made by women with impossibly shiny hair, filmed in palatial suburban kitchens in Los Angeles suburbs or Salt Lake City. Increasingly, I’m seeing a category that is Hot Dudes Cooking, but most of these books are by women.

I’m talking about TikTokers whose recipes are 95% “hacks” they’ve stolen from old cookbooks, or are mostly a vehicle for ASMR channels. People who spotted the trend in culinary content and hopped on, not out of love for or skill at cooking, but because they saw an opportunity to grow a massive digital following. (Read Ryan Broderick on how AI-generated digital “creators” have latched onto food content, too.) Often these influencers’ books have co-authors to do the heavy lifting on recipe development. This isn’t really a blind item, you can comb through the archives for book deals and pick up who I’m putting down.

There is obviously an audience for these books, their authors wouldn’t have the followings they do otherwise, but I for one am exhausted of them. I don’t have anything to say about them? “TikTok person <name> (TK million followers on TikTok) to write <Title>, a collection of fresh new recipes that <TK buzzword: feel-good, with a twist, etc.>. ” There’s not much there other than recipes for Easy Weeknight Noodles and Fun Salad and Spicy Cocktail recipes. What else is there to say, really?

Anyway, I listened to my friend Matt Rodbard’s conversation over on the Taste podcast with Clarkson Potter editor Francis Lam and it really unlocked something for me about these books. Francis talked a lot about the importance of storytelling in cookbooks, and I realized: my problem with these books, aside from questionable recipes that you can find in dozens of other cookbooks as well as online, is they don’t tell stories. They’re props for the real business, which is online. But I want more books that tell fascinating stories! I want cookbooks I actually learn something from, books that grip my attention through language and design and photography and, yeah, food. I want cookbooks that contain recipes and stories I can’t find anywhere else but in a book that the author has put their heart and soul into.

And, okay, if these books are selling big numbers, why is this a problem, you might ask? If these books bring in money to the increasingly precarious publishing industry, and that money bolsters other more interesting projects within each publishing house, isn’t that a net positive? Sure, until people stop buying cookbooks. Because, to my eye, if there’s not much that differentiates these books from their authors’ online content, readers will eventually realize they don’t need to spend money on influencer cookbooks. Why would they, when they can get the same recipes for free on TikTok?

Anyway just one cookbook blogger’s 4 to 5 cents!

Recent Releases: Kismet! GoT! Women-Authored Grilling Books, Can You Even Imagine?!

Trying a new way of covering new releases. Let me know if you hate it!

• I do not know of this St. Louis Chef Hancock (I cannot find his first name anywhere, and while he seems real, that cover is for sure AI), but he has self-published a cookbook called Celebrity Chef Hancock Cook Book. May 3.

• Sparkling by Elva Ramirez. Union Square & Co., May 7.

• I am not sure how many people are actually cooking with flowers BUT if they are, Taste Buds by Nikki Fotheringham is here to help ‘em out. (Good title.) Appetite by Random House, May 7.

• Food Is Love by Palak Patel. Vegan Plant-based Indian food! Harvest, May 7.

• Kismet by the LA chef-owners of the restaurant of the same name Sara Kramer and Sarah Hymanson is getting covered all over the place so you have perhaps heard of it, but: think bright Mediterranean vegetable recipes. Clarkson Potter, May 7.

• Global classics with Indian flavors in Misarana (which publishers’ copy tells me means “fusion” in Punjabi) by MasterChefUK winner Eddie Scott. Carnival, May 7.

• From the but-the-WSJ-said-women-don’t-write-barbecue-or-grilling-books department:

  • UK barbecue expert Helen Graves is out with BBQ Days, BBQ Nights, which focuses on year-round live-fire recipes. Quadrille, May 7.

  • Canadian grilling expert Paula Stachyra is out with the first pellet-grill cookbook I’ve seen (Amazon tells me there are others but sorry a lot of them seem like AI crap): The Big Book of Barbecue on Your Pellet Grill. Page Street, May 7.

• Italian Coastal by Amber Guinness. Thames & Hudson, May 7.

• Thai food gets the comic book cookbook treatment in Noodles, Rice, and Everything Spice by Mallika Kauppinen and illustrated by Christina de Witte aka chrostin.

• Big Moe’s Big Book of Barbecue by Moe Cason. National Geographic, May 7.

• Five Star Comfort Food by Rich Komen (who is apparently the founder of Cinnabon? okay.) Skyhorse, May 7.

• I know I said I don’t cover IP cookbooks any more, but this is a biggie (also unlike a lot of IP that cookbooks are pegged to these days, the ASOIAF books actually have a lot of food in them): the George R.R. Martin-blessed Official Games of Thrones Cookbook by Chelsea Monroe-Cassel. Random House Worlds, May 7.

• Forbidden Cocktails by André Darlington. Running Press, May 7.

• My Little Cake Tin by Tarunima Sinha. Quadrille, May 7.

• Hell yeah Scon cookbook! The Way Up North Wisconsin Cookbook by Victoria Shearer. Globe Pequot, May 7.

• Gather & Grill by John Darin McLemore and John Darin McLemore II. Harper, May 7.

• Summer Sparklers by Jassy Davis. Harper Collins, May 7.

• Nostrana by Bri DiMattina. Harper Collins, May 7.

• The Levantine Garden by Salma Hage. Phaidon, May 8.

• The Aroma of Czech Cuisine by Denise Mazal Resenerova. TCU Press, May 10.

Okay that’s all for today! Have a great weekend and talk soon.

1  I don’t lump AR’s books into this group of generic influencer books, either. But her copycats? Yes.