How Cook's Illustrated thrives while others are dying

Re:How Cook's Illustrated thrives while others are dying by tptacek on Monday January 12, 2009 @06:13PM (#431302)

It may be more true of food magazines than publishing in general, but --- leaving out Martha Stewart Living (that's like bringing O Magazine in; a magazine with a lucrative sideline in television!) --- do the line of cookbooks from these magazines come anywhere near the size of Cooks Illustrated?

CI does what looks like 5-10 a year. Does Saveur?

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Re:How Cook's Illustrated thrives while others are dying by joshwa on Monday January 12, 2009 @06:50PM (#431358)

5-10 cookbooks a year sounds terrifying. The QA on those must be terrible--not sure how they could afford that number of recipe testers for each title. I tend not to buy any cookbook that has a number in the title or is part of a 'series'.

Saveur does one every few years, on different themes-- Saveur Cooks Classic Italian and Saveur Cooks Classic American are still doing pretty well-- they're great references for the classics.

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Re:How Cook's Illustrated thrives while others are dying by tptacek on Monday January 12, 2009 @10:03PM (#431567)

No, the QA on those cookbooks is better than the QA on most software. That's the point of Cooks Illustrated. You don't even have to trust me; read a CI recipe: they've documented everything they did wrong. They not kidding: they made that coffee cake 45-50 times to get it right. Also, check out their "board of advisors"; they're name-brand people. Bittman used to be on staff, and restaurant chefs are on their tasting panels.

What's funny is, CI used to have a third Consumer Reports style section where they rated other cookbooks, by turning their (large) kitchen and staff loose on the recipes and evaluating the results. CI does a better job QA'ing other people's cookbooks than they do.

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