127: How to Land a Book Deal with Maria Ribas

In this episode, we talk to Maria Ribas from Cooks and Books about what publishers look for when they're signing with an author. Specific numbers, including how you get paid as an author and potential earnings, and advice for things that you can be doing today to set yourself up for a future book deal. Hey there, everybody. This is Bjork Ostrom, and you are listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. Today we are talking to Maria Rivas from Cooks and Books. You can find her@cooksplusbooks.com and she's going to be talking about her life as a literary agent, specifically around the cookbook industry. And we're going to be jumping into some real specifics, the nitty gritty details about the numbers, like how many followers or how many fans or whatever you want to call them, how many. How many people do you need following along with what you're doing in order to realistically look at cookbook deals? And then once you do get that number, what should you be asking for in terms of a cookbook deal? Obviously, there's a lot of variables that go into that, but we're gonna talk about some specifics, and it's really helpful to hear those numbers. We're also gonna be talking about some of the things that you can be doing today if you're in the early stages to set yourself up for a cookbook deal down the line and what publishers are looking for when they're analyzing these deals. It's going to be a great interview. I know you're going to get a lot out of it, so let's go ahead and jump in. Maria, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure.

Yeah, I'm excited to talk about some specifics with cookbooks. And as I looked through your site, Cooks and Books, it's a perfect fit for our audience. Right. So it's cooking, it's books, and you work in that cross section. So you're willing to talk about kind of the questions that a lot of people have in this industry. But before we jump into some of those specific numbers and some of those specific questions, I want to start with a very broad, generic question. What is a literary agent?

Sure. That is a very common question. So a literary agent is essentially, we are the person in the traditional publishing process that is really on the author's side. So what that means is, you know, when you're working with a traditional publisher is, you know, they are sort of representing their interests, and we are representing the interests of the author. So it's really Easy for people to sort of think about it in terms of, you know, maybe an athlete or an actor. And, you know, you see that they have agents and they're sort of negotiating, you know, maybe multiple movies or, you know, different moves around to different teams for them. So we do something similar. We're very really sort of the constant for an author throughout their career. So, you know, they may move to different publishing houses or they may decide they want to try something different, that sort of thing, where really the person that's with them there through it all, sort of coaching them through and giving them sort of, you know, one reference point, another context point, outside of, you know, what the publisher may be telling them.

Got it. Yeah. So the sports analogy makes sense to me. I, you know, there's athletes that you follow, like LeBron James, obviously a popular basketball player, and he has an agent, and they're doing the negotiation with contracts, and they have the connections. And so would kind of be similar with bloggers and authors, where you're representing them on the opposite side. So for you specifically, you work within the niche of cookbook authors, I would assume, but also do some work outside of that as well. Or is your niche really just, hey, I do cookbooks, and that's what I focus on.

So I do a lot of cookbooks. I love cookbooks. I always have since I started in the industry. So my list right now is about 50% cookbooks and then 50% sort of other things. So, you know, you really sort of have the opportunity to, you know, sort of explore different interests you have. So I do a good bit as well of personal growth, design, lifestyle, spirituality, sort of really anything that sort of strikes my interest.

Got it. And so I'm guessing that you are probably a book person, is that right?

Yes, of course. You have to be.

And that was probably what led you into this industry. So curious your story a little bit. Was this being a literary agent, something that you were always interested in, or was it a job that you're kind of exposed to and said, hey, I actually really like this. I'm going to really pursue this? Was it lifelong interest or something a little bit later on that you discovered and you were interested in? Said, hey, I want to do this?

Yeah. So I mean, I always love books, you know, and sort of thinking, what's my favorite thing that I would want to, you know, dedicate, you know, one third of your existence to? It'd probably be books, for sure. But, you know, when I was in college, you know, I was thinking I was an English Major. Just sort of thinking about, you know, what you can actually do with that. I didn't want to be a waitress. As, you know, people said that's your only option. So, you know, I thought about going the academic route. And then I had an internship at a big five publisher in Editorial. So then I started out working at a few different publishing houses as an editor. And when I started out, I did not know that literary agents existed. I did not know what they were. And when I sort of entered the industry and sort of was exposed to them and had to deal with them, I initially was terrified of them because, you know, they sort of have a reputation of being, you know, you know, the kind of Ari character in Entourage or something like that. And then sort of, you know, as you get to know an industry more, you start to realize that, you know, every player sort of has a different role and that there is a huge variance in the way, you know, different agents do business and the way different publishers do business. Everyone is, you know, a unique personality, and you don't have to do things in a certain way. And that's sort of along. Right around the time when I realized that I was working at a publisher, we were working often with sort of going directly to authors and having them do books. It was a smaller publisher, and I sort of realized that I really wanted to be on the author side advocating for them. You know, it just felt to me a little bit more of a fit to, you know, be telling them, you know, here's what you can expect, here's what you deserve, here's what, you know, you should be negotiating for. It just felt a little bit more like a personality fit for me.

Yeah. And I think that's great to analyze and say, what feels good for me, what's a good fit for me, for my personality. But also the other thing that you said that I think is important to point out is we don't have to fit the mold of what we think the industry would be. And I think about that a lot with what we do and, you know, business building and brand building. And a lot of times, at least the. The version of myself 10 years ago, would think of a business owner as somebody who's kind of a shark, and they are always looking to get the best deal and negotiate, and I'm not very good at those things. And that's also not my personality. So it's like, what is my personality? Well, I tend to want people to like me and everybody to get along and, like, finding ways for that to exist within the work that you're interested in doing. And it sounds like in a lot of ways that's what you've done. So can you talk about launching your site, Cooks and Books? Where did that come from? And what is the focus of the content on that site?

Sure, yeah. So it really focuses on its publishing, its books. It's sort of a little bit of lifestyle to it, too. I mean, I work in those categories because I love them. But a big part of probably the main focus of the site really is sort of providing publishing advice and insight for authors. And that sort of came about that when I was working as an editor and then later as an agent. You are sort of in this difficult place that I was a little bit uncomfortable with, where you only get to work with a very few amount of people one on one. So, you know, at any time, maybe I have, you know, 10 authors who currently have books in production, you know, maybe just a handful that you sign new per year, that sort of thing. And at the same time, you know, you have sort of hundreds of queries that come in through our agency of people who are really interested in doing a book. And you sort of get this sort of time disparity where you realize, you know, there. There's so much that you can't really do to help the people who are, you know, at different stages of the journey and really just maybe need to do more research, do learn a little bit more about the industry and about what they want to do before they dive in. So it really sort of came about where I hate rejecting people. I don't like it at all. So it really was sort of a way for me to feel a little bit better about saying, hey, instead of, I may not be able to take you on, or maybe you're not quite at the point yet where you're ready for a book, but here are a ton of resources that can help you get there and that I hope, really help people along in their journey.

Got it. And so just to understand from the work that you do. So you work for an agency that does. That would be the kind of. What would be the term for it? Like a literary agency?

Yes.

And then you are an agency agent. Got it. And then what happened was there's a lot of people that would connect with you as the literary agent for this agency. What is the name of the agency that you work for?

I work at Stone Song, which is based in New York City, and we do nonfiction and fiction.

Got it. Yep. So a lot of cookbooks, a lot of well known Cookbooks outside of that as well. I saw Doug the Pug was one of those, so that's pretty exciting for me.

He's one of our favorites.

Absolutely. But what happened was you had a lot of people that you're interacting with that were interested in publishing a cookbook, but they would either not be at the point where it makes sense for them or maybe needed to grow their platform a little bit more. So you started your site as a way to connect with those people at scale, as opposed to emailing every single person and giving advice, which makes a lot of sense. A lot of the reason for us why we started Food Blogger Pro as well, it's in order to scale the advice or to scale the questions that people ask and the answers that you get. So let's go ahead and talk about some of those questions and some of the advice that lives on your site and the advice that you give to people that are interested in writing a cookbook and having a successful cookbook launch as well. So let's start at the beginning. If somebody comes to you and they say, hey, I want to write a cookbook, and I want to publish it, and I want to get paid for it, what does that look like for you as a literary agent to go through the process of saying, like, let's analyze and see if you're ready for this?

Sure, yeah, that's a great question. So, you know, a lot of it is in nonfiction and especially in cookbooks. Platform is extremely, extremely important. And that has changed, you know, even in the last eight or 10 years since I started out. I remember when I was an editor at a publisher, and we did sort of one of the first blog to book cookbooks. And it was, you know, on our list. We were like, we can have one book based on a blog that say, you know, like, we don't want another one.

What was the blog?

It was called? Gosh, what is it called? I can send it to you later. The author was named Sarah Matheny, and her blog name, it was about peas. I can't remember off the top of my head, but it was a wonderful book. Absolutely fantastic book. Hit the New York Times, listed very successfully. And then, Sarah, gradually, people started to realize, well, a book has a higher chance of success if the author is already bringing a readership to them. There's already clear market demand for this person's photography and recipes and writing. So a lot of what we're doing now is really keeping up with trends and having to know a lot about the online world and what Converts into sales. So a lot of what I do is I'm looking at things like traffic, I'm looking at things like social media reach, looking at things like email list size. More importantly, as things become more sophisticated, we're looking at other products that a blogger might have launched and their rate of conversion for those membership sites or sort of anything that can prove that someone is doing something that people are willing to pay money for. And that can really translate into a book that has value and that can stand out in the marketplace.

Yeah, it's interesting to see the. And I looked the book up real quick. Peas. And thank you. Does that sound right?

Yes, that's it. Yes.

Great name. And it's interesting to see how that's shifted and a lot of the validity or a lot of the proof or a lot of the. What would be the word for it, I think how it's shifted to be so important the platform that people build. But one of the interesting things with a lot of those metrics that people would normally look at would be the fact that some of those don't necessarily equate to converting on a product or converting on a cookbook. And a for instance would be. We talk about this quite a bit with sites. A lot of times you can have the 2080 rule where 80% of your traffic comes from 20% of your content. And that might be for a specific reason in our niche, it would be maybe a pin that does really well or ranking really well for a certain recipe in Google. So from an agent perspective, when you're looking at a cookbook, you had mentioned this idea of other products or proof of concept in other areas. Can you talk about what that looks like and how people can be intentionally tracking that? So if they are interested in doing a cookbook or getting a deal that they can use that as a metric to say, hey, not only do I have this many followers on Facebook and this many visitors to my website every month, but here's some proof that that actually translates to whatever you want to call them, like true fans.

Sure. Yeah. And I mean, I think there really isn't any thing that you couldn't do. I think that any data points that you can sort of show that. Show that people are willing to pay for what you're doing. So again, you know, it could be an ebook, it could be a membership site, it could be printables, it could be really sort of any sort of product that you think of that you can sell is valuable, but it doesn't necessarily need to be just you Know something you don't necessari need to have sold something before to be able to have a great audience. For a cookbook, it could be something where it's like your open rates are fantastic, you get a lot of comments, you have a really engaged audience. What we're really looking is for engagement, because you're entirely right. There have been books that have had these massive media sites behind them that get millions and millions of page views per month and then the book doesn't sell. So you really need to have someone that has a real audience, is actually connecting with real life people and that they're not just sort of a search engine machine for sure.

So what does that look like from your perspective when you're pitching to a publisher and from a blogger's perspective when they're pitching to you? Is there any way that you can intentionally craft the story of your numbers in a way to make it convincing or enticing to a publisher or to an agent? And if so, what does that look like?

Sure, yeah. And I mean, I think that it sort of depends. And you know, there are some numbers are not the end all be all. So for instance, like I never tell authors, you know, you need to have, you know, whatever, 50,000 Facebook fans or you're not ready for a book. It's really not that simple. It's more important, you know, to have, it's fine to have a small but mighty audience if you can really prove that they're engaged and you can prove that you're growing steadily and at a pace that is really sort of building something that's real, actually building real relationships. You know, you don't necessarily always want to see someone who has a meteoric rise, massive traffic. But then you wonder, you know, how long have those people been with you? How much of your story do they know? How personally connected do they really feel to you? So that's sort of, you know, platform is really important. It's not by any means, you know, 100% of the equation. You know, storytelling is important. Engagement is important. The concept of the book itself is important. You know, you really sort of need to be able to talk about why your book is going to stand out in the marketplace, how it's going to make a difference to people and why people, people are going to care and why you care about the people that you're talking to every day. You never want to see. No one ever wants to work with someone who necessarily feels like it's really transactional and they're just pumping out content. There and getting the page views and making a ton of money, but they're not really responding back to those people. They're not responding to emails, they're not responding to comments, they're not showing who they are. That sort of thing.

Yeah, one of the things that you say in your site that I really like is you said author platform equals relationships. Can you talk about what you mean by that?

Yeah, it's exactly sort of what we're talking about. So it really is, you know, engagement. And I mean, that is really hard for us to measure online because obviously, you know, we're just typing away in little boxes and staring at screens, but there's a person behind every single thing that you're doing. And, you know, that's what we're looking for. You know, we really want someone who is actually forming relationships with people. You know, whether it's. I love to hear when authors will say, oh, I have certain email, you know, certain readers that I email with all the time and we're really close, or I respond to every email I get personally, or I respond to every comment. Little things like that, that show that you really sort of care about the people who are giving the 10 minutes out of their day to read what you're writing. And of course, repeat readers, that sort of thing. Because obviously just searching for chocolate chip cookie recipe will get you a lot of hits, but you might not necessarily be building a relationship with those people. So I think a lot of times, often, especially where sometimes dealing with authors who are at early stages on their blog or they're a little uncomfortable with the idea of starting a blog or building a platform at all, because it used to be a thing that in traditional publishing, you know, is just write the book and then let everyone else, you know, don't worry about having to market it or get to know readers or any of that. It was sort of, you know, the author was very siloed. And I think sometimes people feel a little bit uncomfortable about putting themselves out there in that way. And I think it sort of helps to remember that, you know, there's just another person on the other side of what you're writing and that it's important to get to know them or you're really not going to be able to reach them and help them in any way. You know, it's just sort of like it sort of becomes, you know, an exercise that doesn't seem to have any true purpose to it.

Right. So one of the things that you had talked about on a post, I forget which post it was. But as I was reading through, you have a lot of really insightful and pointed posts about the cookbook process and the, you know, what it looks like to be an agent, what it looks like to be an author and cover a lot of really good content in those. One of the things you talked about this. Yeah, this idea of 50,000 true fans. And you said it with a caveat of like, there's so many different things that go into this, but one thing I appreciate is saying like, here's a number. And I think people really, really appreciate that. And it's hard in any industry because there's so many different variables that go into it. But can you talk about why you came to that number as like a. Hey, so if I. If you are really going to ask me nine times in a row, so I'll give you a number and it's 50,000 true fans. What does that mean?

Sure. Yeah, I mean, you're totally right. It's really, really hard to calculate that. And the reason why I don't say 50,000 Facebook fans or whatever, 50,000 email list subscribers is that doesn't. We have no way of knowing what the conversion rate of those are. So 50,000 true fans is actually really me sort of going about it backwards. So having worked at a publisher and having been an editor, we have our P and L. So, you know, if you can run a P and L at a level where you're predicting that an author will sell 50,000 books in the first year, you can make them a pretty strong offer, which means that, you know, they will probably be one of the lead titles on the list. So they'll get more attention throughout the whole process. You know, they'll get more publicity, they'll get more marketing. It sort of puts them in the best position to launch a first book, have it be successful, hopefully have other books, hopefully have other opportunities open up for that. So that's sort of, you know, my ideal of sort of long term thinking. It's, you know, how many, you know, what, what would make that book be successful? What's the number that would make that book be successful? And selling 50,000 books to 50,000 true fans in the first year would really open up a lot of doors and, you know, put you in a good position to do a next book if an author wanted.

Sure.

And then, you know, and then it's just a lot of sort of calculating and guessing and gut checking to see to sort of, you know, analyze everything that a potential author does and try to determine if they're Sort of, you know, and that's what publishers do, too. They're looking at proposals, they're talking to authors, and they're trying to guess how many books can this person sell.

Got it. A couple things in there. You had mentioned P and L, that being the profit and loss. So does a publisher look at a single book and say, kind of break it out into its own category and look at a profit and loss for that book? Is that in general how it works?

Yep. So basically, when publishers are deciding which book to buy, they are running P and L estimates on their end, which means that, you know, the editor is talking to their team and trying to convince their team that they think this person will sell X amount of books. And then, you know, they sort of have all different sort of numbers that are part of that. And ultimately that sort of. That spits out would be. Would be the advance, what would be the royalties. And then that is sort of, you know, what sort of starts the whole value chain throughout the process. So obviously, you know, the more money that they invest up front, the more that they invest in the back end.

Yep. And that was another thing you had mentioned, was lead titles. So a lead title being one of the main focuses for a publishing house for that year, Is that what a lead title would be?

Yes, exactly. So that's sort of something that I think sometimes people aren't quite aware of is that, you know, just like really with any catalog, you know, there are some titles that get a little bit more of the attention. You know, maybe it's the big Martha Stewart book or whatever it is. And ideally, you know, we want to position our authors, you know, in the best way possible scenario where, you know, they're getting more of the attention over anyone else.

Yep. Great. So I know that there's lots of caveats that exist for this, and it's hard to do, but let's say if we use the 50,000 true fans number, and these would be people, when I think of a true fan, I would think of them as somebody that would say, I love. We'll use Pinch of Yum as an example. I love Pinch of Yum. Like somebody that could say that. They'd be familiar enough with it. They know it. And so you can fill that in for XYZ Blog, for whoever is listening to this. If you get to that point where there's 50,000 people that say, I love fill in blog name, then you could maybe be at that 50,000 true fans mark. People that essentially would purchase a cookbook. Would there be a Range that you'd give, again, lots of caveats on this, but a range that you could give in terms of what could an author expect to get for a cookbook deal? What are the different numbers that they would look at and potentially what would the dollar amount be?

Yeah, common question too. And it really varies very drastically. So I think something that sometimes people outside of the industry don't realize is that there are just as many different types of publishers as their socks in your sock drawer. They are from the very small ones to the massive international companies. So the publishing experience at each of those is drastically different. I worked at a large house, a medium house, a small house, and then as an agent. So I just sort of, in working on books at all those different places, see how very, very different the process is, which sort of sometimes I think makes it hard for people to choose what house might be right for them or know what to expect even from the process. So, you know, cookbook advances can range just as drastically. So, you know, they can be as low as 5,000 to as high as 500,000. You know, in sort of the sort of strong advanced range that we usually consider, it's a little bit closer to sort of the mid level number of around 100,000. But again, you know, that is the sort, sort of thing that varies so drastically from house to house and can really sort of depend on the marketplace at any time on what other books are on the list. It's just, it's sort of, you know, it's a thing that you. It could be anything.

Yeah. And so many factors that go into it. Ed, if you were to do, let's say, a cookbook deal for $5,000, obviously a significant amount of money and also a significant amount of work that it would be. So, so in a situation like that, if somebody is, let's say, just getting started out with their blog and they're thinking, I don't have a ton of traffic right now, I don't have a lot of engagement. And they're doing the right things, but they're in the beginning stages. Is there potential for these content creators if they have the skills and abilities to create quality content, to produce cookbooks, not necessarily under their brand, but maybe just branded cookbooks that a publishing house would be interested in publishing, or does that not really exist?

Huh? That's a good question. You mean sort of branded cookbooks with not their name or their blog name on it?

Yeah. Right. So let's say that there is a publishing house and they really want to do a spiced latte cookbook. And they know that somebody's really good at taking photographs of spice lattes. It's a super, super small niche. Right.

I have a spice latte now.

Yeah, I actually just had one. It was really good. Good. But point being that they are creating it. And I think back this was maybe four or five years ago that somebody approached Lindsay and asked about doing. It was like a mini donut cookbook or something. But they weren't really interested in like Pinch of Yum doing it. They're interested in just the cookbook itself. So is that something that you've had exposure to or are familiar with or is that maybe an anomaly?

Yeah, no, absolutely. So, you know, that is one form of publishing as well. So I worked at a smaller house that did that sort of thing as well. So, you know, really it's, you know, it's usually quicker to market books. Smaller advances, usually they're coming up with an idea in house and then trying to find an author for it. So there's absolutely, you know, always opportunities for that. Those are really good opportunities for bloggers who are just starting out, for instance. So when I worked at that smaller house, I started working with a blogger. We came up with an idea in the house for the book. I started working with a blogger. She was just starting out. The book sort of gave her an opportunity to go full time on her blog and then, you know, as her platform, the book did very well, which was wonderful. And that really sort of set her up to be able to do a next book deal. So for her next book, I was actually her agent on that book. And her platform had grown so much at that point that we were able to get her a book deal that was, I don't remember the exact number, but maybe like 10 to 15 times larger than the previous one with one of the major big five publishers. Because she had grown and, you know, it was the right fit for her at the time. So, yeah, I mean, you know, sometimes doing some of those smaller cookbooks, if you're in early stages, is a really good way to get your name out there. You know, get a cookbook out there, get sort of some of that exposure. You know, it's sometimes not necessarily a great money making opportunity, to be honest, because, you know, you have your cost of ingredients and all your time and all of that. But, you know, it is sort of a good stepping stone if you're able to sort of make that book successful and then maybe want to go on and do, you know, a larger sort of branded Book, that's your blog vision later on.

Yeah. So can we talk about that? So when you say maybe not super profitable, let's talk about what would actually go into a cookbook, what the process would look like. And the first thing that I'd be interested, and I think that other people would want to know as well, is like, what does a typical timeline look like? And within that, how much time should people assume that they'd be spending on producing a cookbook?

Yeah, great question. So the total timeline and the shocks, bloggers, because I know it sounds like a century is usually about a year and a half to two years from selling the book proposal to having the book out on shelves. And the reasoning for that is usually about the last six months of that process is you actually have finished copies of the book in, but you're pitching long lean media. So, you know, the magazines that are working six months in advance, you're building your publicity and marketing plan. It's really more about the launch at that phase. And then, you know, the first six to 12 months of that process is the author working on the manuscript. So, you know, again, timelines, the manuscript timeline itself can really drastically vary. So, you know, I've seen situations where, you know, if it's sort of quick to market book, you know, maybe they give you six weeks, but most of the time, you know, sort of for working with the larger publishers, you are, you have at least six months. And for my authors that are doing their own photography, I want them to have at least 12 months because I know that, you know, there's so much that they're doing with running their blog, and you sort of can't put any of that on the back burner or, you know, that won't be there when you need it to talk about the book. So it really, it helps to have a little bit more time so you can do it at a pace that feels manageable in terms of how much like hours per week it would take. I really wouldn't even be able to give you a good estimate just because I wouldn't, you know, I think it depends on how complicated the recipes are, how many of them you have developed in your mind already, whether you're doing the photography, how many rounds of testing you're doing. That is just, you know, I think every author's process is different for the way that they're actually creating and writing the manuscript.

Yeah. How many of the authors that you work with are doing their own photography versus hiring that out in cookbooks?

It's about 50 50. So there's some, there are a lot of bloggers who, they have great photography. It's solid. You know, it works for what they're doing online, but they want something a little bit sort of more a different look for the cookbook. And then, you know, at that point they're interested in talking to different photographers. And then there are others that, you know, they really, you know, their photography is a big part of what their brand is and what they love doing and they really feel strongly that they want to use their own photography. So it's really, you know, either can work.

Yeah. When and when you hire a photographer out, would they be paid on a per shoot basis or are they getting a percentage of the royalties of the book?

Yeah, no, it's work for hire. So it's sort of like hiring a photographer to do anything else, really. So they don't receive royalties. You know, the author is really the sole, you know, creative mind behind the whole book. So, yeah, it's really a work for hire basis.

Got it. And then the other question that I would have about that in during the cookbook process, working with a publisher, how much creative control does the author have? Obviously it depends on a few different things, I would assume. But, but in a typical situation, are they able to kind of do whatever they want or are they having to convince and sell the publisher on the topic and the recipes and all of that?

Sure, yeah, that's a very common question since I think a lot of people sort of worry that if they decide traditional publishing is right for them that they're going to lose all control. So really it is a collaborative process and that really means that you're truly partnering with a publisher and that they, you know, you have the advantage of hearing from them of if, you know, the buyer at Barnes and Noble says, I hate this shade of green and I don't think it will sell. You know, that's helpful market knowledge to have. But they will never say because of that, you know, we're going to get rid of this, even if you hate it and you're kicking and screaming about it. So, you know, really the author has on most things final say because, you know, the last thing a publisher wants to do is put out a book where the blogger hates it. And they say, you know, I'm not proud of that. I don't want to tell anyone about it. Like, that's not really what I had in mind. So that's, you know, that doesn't work for anyone. So they never want to put an author in that position. So it really sort of just becomes a dialogue, you know, where they might say, you know, there are certain things that they think will sell better and certain things that the author will say, no, you know, I know my readers will respond to them. So they really rely on the authors to be experts on their readership, their particular niche, their particular type of food. And then authors also look to the publisher to be the experts on how to sell a book, how to best merchandise it, how to talk to booksellers about it, how to position it, that sort of thing.

Yeah, I would imagine it to be kind of a difficult back and forth because the author really knows their audience and what works with their audience, what their audience would want. But the publisher also knows what's worked in the past for other cookbooks. And those might not always overlap. Exactly. And I would imagine that conversation potentially can be difficult sometimes. Do you ever feel like you play the role of kind of counselor in between getting people to a point where they both agree, or at that point, are you kind of removed from the process?

Oh, yeah, totally. No, that's a lot of what we do. It's sort of being counselor, it's kind of being the mediator. And that's the part that I like about it, you know, because you're really sort of trying to find compromises that make everybody happy and, you know, with the goal of producing the best possible book. And, you know, we sort of really are advocating. That's a big part of our role in the process, is advocating for publishers to really listen to authors on things that, you know, we know that they really know what they're talking about and that they understand their audience well and they know what they're going to respond to. So it really turns into sort of, you know, a little bit of a balancing match. But a lot of that too is. Is sort of helped by finding great matches to begin with. So a lot of what we're doing is matchmaking between different authors and different publishers. So, you know, for instance, I have some authors that, you know, they are very, very design minded and they need to have like final sign off on every single shade of every color in the book. In which case, you know, I'll say, you know, then there's these five publishers who we know from experience give authors, you know, a huge amount of creative control in the design process. You know, they're a good fit for you. Let's try to make a match there. Whereas other authors, you might say to me, you know, I don't really care about the Design, you know, I want them to handle that, or, you know, I trust them to do what's best. But I really care about marketing and I really want a house that's going to be really, really strong in marketing. And then we'll say, you know, there's this set of houses that, you know, that's one of their strengths. So it's really sort of, you know, knowing the author, getting to know their goals, getting to know what their strengths and weaknesses are, and then helping them find someone who's going to really sort of align with their vision and the way that they work their creative process.

That's great. Yeah, it makes sense. So let's say that, Maria, you were starting your own food blog and you were starting today, and your hope was in two years to have a really strong cookbook deal. What would you do starting today to set yourself up for that in two years? And is two years realistic for getting to a point where you can get a stronger cookbook deal?

Wow. I feel like you could answer that question better than me. I, you know, again, I think that what I would be if my sole goal was to do a cookbook, I'd really be focusing on building deep relationships with my readers. Not necessarily only focusing on traffic. I'd be focusing on, you know, how do I build relationships with people who might become true fans and, you know, consistency, you know, all the stuff, you guys know, trying to do something unique so that you're really standing out so that you're not just one of many doing many, you know, the same old things, that sort of thing. Do I think that two years is a realistic amount of time? It depends how much you put into it. You know, if you want to spend 80 hour weeks working on it, maybe, you know, I have had authors who have built, you know, have massive traffic and, you know, did that in two or three years. But, you know, it's working very long hours. Getting lucky on some things, really. Constantly innovating, teaching. You know, they had skills before they started out that already, you know, they weren't teaching themselves photography necessarily up front.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I mean, I think it depends where you're starting, how much time you can put into it. And if your goal is to ultimately do a cookbook or really to launch any sort of product that you're hoping will sell and will be helpful to people is really focus more on, you know, developing relationships with your readers rather than just, you know, chasing traffic or page views.

Yeah, that's great. And when I think of the timeline, it's Interesting that you say that. I didn't even really think about this when I asked the question, but I was reflecting as you were talking about it. I feel like three to five years, slash leaning towards five, is kind of the. Is kind of the number for what it takes in this industry. Obviously, you can build, you know, different businesses really quickly, but for the people we've seen, for the conversations we've had, unless you're, like, lighting your hair on fire and, like you said, working 80 hours a week.

Yeah.

In order to make it a sustainable thing where you're still really hustling and working hard, I feel like five years is kind of the mark. It was interesting. I had a conversation with a friend who has a men's, like, fashion site, and he said he did the same thing. It was now, like six or seven years ago where he said, I'm interested in doing this. And so what I did is I took a day or a couple days and just explored people who had done similar things. And I looked at the timeline of what it took them in order to get to where they are or in order to get to doing it full time. And most often it was like four to five years. And that's a really long time. Like, that's a ton of work and it's. And it's a lot of time and it's a lot of energy. But the great thing is that you've built something up that then is moving and there's some momentum behind it.

It.

And you can start to realistically have these conversations that we're talking about with getting a cookbook deal or taking your passion full time and working on that full time. So let's say that somebody's at that point where it finally makes sense for them. Obviously, like we talked about, there's a lot that goes into it. There's no exact number, like you said, of a hundred thousand Facebook fans, and then you can get a cookbook deal. But somebody gets to the point where maybe they're having some people approach them, they're starting to have those conversations, they're starting to get a feel for. This might be a good idea for me to do. When they're moving into that and you move into the stage of saying, okay, we're going to put some numbers behind this. What are the numbers that go into a deal? When you are working with a publisher, a lot of times we talk about the advance, but what are the other things that are important to factor in?

Sure, yeah, that's a great question. And that's something that, you know, really people often don't think about until they're at that stage where they're getting offers. So we. So usually the main numbers are. Yes, the advance royalties are really, really important, of course, because, you know, we want to make sure that that advance is being earned out and that you're getting royalties on every copy sold. Let's see, things like royalties on specialty sales. So, for instance, you know, what's the royalty rate on your book if it sells? An anthropology, you know, because that can sort of be different based on the outlet. Things like, you know, Subrite split.

Explain what that is. A sub right split.

Yeah. So that's something that we see a little bit more in sort of other types of lifestyle nonfiction than in cookbooks. And usually that means sort of the territory in which the book is published. So cookbooks, they tend not to translate as well abroad because, you know, food is very sort of personal. So most of the time you're not necessarily going to publisher and saying, I'm selling you only North American rights. And then we're going to talk about, you know, the. The split or, you know, we're going to be negotiating separate deals in, you know, Russia or in China or wherever. So that's one sub. Right split. It's, you know, where you can actually publish the book. Another is things like ancillary paper products. You know, we have an author who did a beautiful. She's a graphic designer, beautiful cookbook. And now she's working on paper products based on her cookbook, also with a publisher. So, you know, things like that. Talking about, you know, who gets what cut of what. Things like audiobook, again, not super popular with cookbooks, but a big deal. Audiobooks are huge right now, and all the other nonfiction we're doing. So we want to talk about things like that ebook. Every cookbook receives an ebook, is also made into an ebook. Things like enhanced ebooks, which there was a time in the industry where people were doing more enhanced ebooks. Houses have sort of backed away from that as much as they haven't really gained in popularity. So really, it's sort of. You can think of a literary property as being, you know, it's not just a book, but it's sort of, you know, all the other things that can be made from a book.

Yeah, it's almost a brand in and of itself in a lot of ways. Yep.

Yeah. And one question we often do get is, you know, authors will say, oh, I don't want to sell rights to, for instance, Pentaville and paper products. What if I want to do my own? That's not what it is. They're actually only products that are derivative from the book. So I have authors that, you know, they have great paper goods businesses. You know, they sell a lot of printables online. And that has nothing to do with, you know, the paper products that they might or might not do that are based on their book concept.

Got it. So if you were to. If somebody were looking at an agreement, obviously there's all of these things that go into it. What would be the top three most important of an agreement? The things that you'd say, hey, make sure to get some of these things, you know, you want to pay attention to make sure that you understand them. But the most three important line items on an agreement would be what?

Good question. Let me think. I think that probably most important would be copyright. Make sure you're not in any way giving up copyright to your work. I know that sounds sort of obvious, but, you know, there are some smaller publishers and every project is different where there are some, you know, just be clear if it's work for hire or if it's your. You are keeping copyright to this work.

Can you explain the difference between those two things?

Things, yeah. So when you're doing work for hire, you're being paid a flat fee up front. Most often you're not receiving royalties on copies sold, and you're basically working sort of as an independent contractor providing a service. When you're the author, you are actually the creator of the work, and so you're protected by intellectual property laws, you hold the copyright, and then, you know, you are simply licensing that copyright to a publisher. And that sort of brings me to the next one, which would be important, which. Which is termination clause and out of print clause. So you're licensing your copyright, meaning that at a certain point you want to have benchmarks. If sales fall below a certain level or a certain amount of time has passed, that you can have the rights reverted to you, and then you own it the whole time, but you have the license again for that work.

Can you explain that? I think that's a really interesting little rabbit trail that we could go down. Is it a rabbit hole or a rabbit trail? I feel like I've said it enough on this podcast that I should know.

I say it both ways too.

I see a rabbit hole that leads to a trail, and I would like to take that.

Let's go.

Okay, but so what would that look like? Would somebody buy the license from the publisher? Or if it falls below a Certain point it just like is a tripwire and then they own it. How does that work?

Yeah, so at no point does a publisher actually own your copyright. They themselves are licensing it it. So they're licensing their right to print and reproduce it and use it in certain ways. So that's really what the contract is outlining. And then every contract should have some sort of out of print clause that outlines at what point that license is returned to you. And usually, you know, it's something like if sales have fallen below, you know, a certain benchmark and a certain amount of royalty periods, that's sort of thing. It's usually based on sales and they don't have another addition planned. So you know, they could put out another edition and say, no, we want to try again or re. Put this out into the marketplace, that sort of thing.

So as a. I'm just thinking about how that would work. Let me know if I'm totally off on this as the creator. Would there be some weird type of incentive for you not to get sales in order for it to dip below that and then to get the license to own it completely and then just like uptick your marketing on it so then you're getting all of the commissions from it, like you're getting all the sales from it? Or is that. Am I thinking of that totally wrong?

I guess you could, but usually at.

That point it's not worth it.

Yeah. And at that point it's like many years have passed where it's sort of, you know, I mean, sure, you could do that, but probably if it's selling at such a low rate, maybe it's not selling anyway. So. Yeah, I mean, it sort of depends. I mean we do have authors because we're an agency, you know, we're on the agent side. We do have authors who sometimes have their rights reverted to them and then they don't know what to do with them. This happens a lot. A little bit more so sort of in the fiction space where they say, you know, I wrote this novel six years ago, the rights were reverted to me. What do I do with it now? And then we sort of talk to them about what their options are and other ways that they might be able to put it out there or use it as a way to gain new fans. You know, it's sort of. It's your work. You're not. Not selling it indefinitely to someone. You're really just licensing it.

Yeah, great. Okay, really interesting. So one was making sure that you understand copyright. Two kind of related to that was understanding if there is a point where the license is reverted to you, it goes out of print. Technically, it doesn't mean you can't print it anymore. It would just mean at that point the publisher's not printing it. So you could own that, you could print it on your own, but then you'd obviously be paying printing costs and things like that. That. How about number three?

I would say probably a termination clause, which is just, you know, what happens if you want to get out of this contract? You know, that's kind of pretty standard contract stuff. You know, what happens if down the line, you know, six months in, you, something happens and you say, I can't do this book anymore, I want out, or you know, under what circumstances can they do that? You know, and that's something that, you know, we make sure that we include in all of our contracts is that they can't, you know, suddenly the market changes and they just say, oh, never mind, we don't think there's a marker for this book anymore, you know, we're going to cancel the contract. So, you know, certain safeguards like that, that protect you, that protect the author and, you know, help them to, you know, you know, you, you want every eventuality covered in the contract, essentially.

Absolutely. How about on the financial side? What would be the top three things that people, that publisher or that authors should consider when they're approaching a contract? I would guess the first would probably be the advance.

Yes, and so what my big thing on the advance, and I say this to every author, is that most of our authors, they don't necessarily need the advance money up front because they're already running successful businesses. But the reason why the advance matters again is because it sort of, it shows an upfront investment in your book and in your project and in your idea. And it also directly ties to what the back end investment is meaning, you know, the higher the advance, the more publicity they're putting into, the more marketing they're putting into it. You know, the more resources in every single way, you know, maybe the more money they're spending on getting the book on a table at Barnes and Noble, that sort of thing. So that's sort of really, you know, even if the upfront money isn't important, it's important to choose a house that has expressed that they really want to invest in you.

Yeah, that's interesting. Essentially, the amount that a publisher is putting towards the advance will equate to. Not always, but it can be kind of a loose correlation to. Well, it is the amount that they're willing to invest in that and therefore the risk involved, which means on their side they're going to be marketing and putting more intentional effort behind getting publicity behind that book.

Exactly. Yeah. I think it's always good for people to think of publishers sort of like venture capitalists. You know, you're trying to, you know, they're making an upfront investment in you and you know, they're covering the cost of production and marketing and publicity. You know, the back end costs are really significant, especially on cookbooks, which are really expensive to produce. And they want to know that they're going to recoup that investment that they've made. So it's really, that's why it's really important to sort of know that they're really excited about the book and really sort of willing to put a lot into it on the front end as well.

That's interesting. Great. So advance and we've talked about that and what that looks like. Essentially it's an amount of money that you get before the book is published, usually in tiers. Right. So you'd get it at like when you start and then you'd have different markers along the way where you'd get that payment released. But idea being it's before the book has made any money. But then there's this point where the book gets published and then you're able to get royalties. And would that be. I would, I would guess that would also be in the top three things to consider financially.

Yep, absolutely. That would probably be number two of things we're looking at most closely, sort of at the offer letter stage. And then after that, you know, it would probably be the other rights. And especially, you know, with books that are, you know, if you had a food memoir, for instance, you know, I would really, we would really look at, say, you know, we want to keep audio because, you know, the audiobooks have really exploded and that's something that, you know, we feel like could be an additional income stream. So you don't necessarily need to have just the book. It can be, you know, your audiobook and it could be, you know, whatever paper products or whatever it is. So, so negotiating those things is really important.

Sure. And how do. Can you explain how royalties work? And is that like a percentage of each book sold? And what would be a normal number for that?

Sure, yeah. So it's a percentage of each book sold. There are some houses that pay royalties on list price, meaning what the book retails at. So if it's $29.99, they pay on that amount. Some houses which pay on net, which is net receipts of actual earnings on each copy sold. So it's a little bit hard because houses calculate them differently to really equate them. And it depends on format. So, you know, hardcover royalty is different than paperback royalty is different than ebook royalty is different than audiobook royalty. So it just really depends. Usually a typical range, if you're talking retail list price, and let's say a hardcover book would be anywhere between 10% to 15% and up around.

Yeah, 10% is nice because it's nice and clean. So let's say it's $30 book. 10% royalty on retail price would be $3. And you don't get that money necessarily right away. Can you explain how that relates to the advance and how is it common or is it across the board that it's expected that you pay back the advance?

Yeah, exactly. So the advance is an advance on royalties. So it's, you know, once you earn back that amount, then you start to receive royalties. Yeah. So it's sort of, you know, they sort of see it as, you know, the upfront investment. It traditionally started that, you know, writers couldn't take time off to write and do what they were doing unless someone was funding it. It really kind of started as, you know, having sort of a funder behind you. And then the idea was, you know, once the book actually succeeded and started selling well, that they would recoup their investment and then the author would continue to receive their royalties after that point.

Got it. I hadn't. That's one of those. It's like when I was a junior in high school and I realized that homecoming means everybody comes home. I understood advance, but I never thought about it as an advance on the royalties. Like, specifically.

Advance on what?

Yeah, yeah. It's like, I thought it was just like an advance payment, like you're getting this in advance, but that it's on royalties makes a lot of sense. So then you pay that back, and then once it tips over past the point that you've paid it back, then you're able to get royalties on the sales moving forward. How often will a book launch and not make up the advance?

It just depends. It's so hard to say because all advances are different, all royalty rates are different. You know, all books are different. You know, we. The hope is that, you know, they're making that advance back in the first year of sales is usually how people are running numbers, but it really. It just depends. But one thing to note is that the. What was I going to say the advance is really sort of, it's, oh, it's the advance. You don't actually have to ever pay it back. So let's say, you know, your book did come out and it didn't earn back the advance. You don't then need to return whatever.

Amount you're not going to get calls from. Yeah, exactly. People being like, you owe us $20,000.

Right. So it's sort of like a loan you never have to pay back. But if you do, then you receive the royalties.

And I would assume that the credibility with the publishing house has a lot to do with how successful the book was. So you want to get to a point where you pay that back and then tip over into a point where you're actually collecting royalties. Because there is some proof then that, hey, this was beneficial for the publisher because we got past the advance, now we're making money beyond that. So it's kind of proof in the math that it was a successful relationship.

Exactly. Yeah. And they're doing on their end too, their post mortems and looking at their P&Ls in retrospect and saying this book was successful or this book didn't quite earn out. And then if an author is interested in doing a second book, they might say, we want to work with this author again. We believe in them, but we want them to really be at a point where we feel like, like they're going to be right at that point where they're earning out. So maybe, you know, we offer them a lower advance or maybe another direction. You know, they offer a much, much higher advance because, you know, they see that the book can really support an advance of that level.

Awesome. So interesting. Maria, We've covered a ton of stuff today. I think that people will get a lot out of it. I feel like this is one of those episodes where people should take out their pen and paper and make little notes and jot down tips and tricks along the way. So packed with a ton of good stuff. And also there's a ton of stuff that we didn't cover that you cover on your site. So before we wrap up, can we take a little bit of time? Can you share where people can connect with you, follow along with what you're doing, read some of your articles on your blog and just connect with you in general?

Sure, yeah. So my website is called Cooks and Books. The URL is www.cooksplusbooks.com and I have a whole archive of information on publishing. So sort of of trying to answer all of the questions we most often get really demystifying the publishing process because I think a lot of people feel overwhelmed by it and feel like it's sort of this secretive industry that they don't understand. So really I write about everything on there. One thing I really like to do is if people have specific questions, things I haven't even thought to answer, they can always reach me through the site with an email and say, I don't understand how this works in traditional publishing or, or I'm interested in doing a book, but what about this or that? I'm always willing to sort of take requests and write about things that people have questions on.

Awesome. Really generous of you to offer that and really generous of you to be on the podcast and share all this great information. Thanks so much for coming on Maria.

Thank you so much for having me, Bjork. I really appreciate it.

That's a wrap for this interview with Maria. Maria, thank you so much for coming on, sharing your insights, your knowledge, your expertise in the cookbook industry. I know that people will get a lot out of it. And if you want to connect with Maria, you can go to cooksplusbooks.com and we will link to that in the show notes as well. Hey, I wanted to give a thank you and a shout out to two people who recently left a review for the podcast and give them a little shout out. So the first one is from Creekmore Co. Creekmoor Co. And they said, I have learned so much from these podcasts. I listen wherever I can and I'm sure when I listen to them all, I will listen to my favorites again. So far my two favorites are the episodes with Dolores Custer and Phil Pallon. This podcast has given me the motivation to pursue my passion in food. Keep up the good work and thank you. So thank you to Creekmore Co. And then Buffy from BeGoodOrganics.com said, I only found Bjork's podcast about six months ago. Can't believe it's been going for two full years before I did. I've learned so many new tips and tricks from this podcast. It's incredible. The level of knowledge and teaching that the podcast provides is unparalleled. If you're a food blogger or just a regular blogger, this podcast is a must. Can't get enough. Just subscribe. Ten stars. Thanks. Buffy from BeGoodOrganics.com hey, we would love it if you leave a review. It takes maybe two minutes. I'll describe it on the iPhone app. That's the one that I have. So you just open the app, you click click on the search button, you search for Food Blogger Pro. You click on Food Blogger Pro, scroll down and there at the bottom, you'll see where you can leave a review. That adds fuel to our fire. It helps us to show up higher and it makes it more sustainable for this podcast because then we get more downloads and it makes more sense for us to continue doing it. It's super easy to do and takes just a couple minutes. Thanks so much for listening. Make it a great week.

Sam.