After telling people that I self published Meal and a Spiel: How to Be Badass in the Kitchen, I typically, get one of two reactions.
The first, a look of pity that I don’t have a huge publishing company footing the bill for my book. And the second, a look of confidence that says, “Wow, nicely done.” Clearly, I prefer the latter because I am proud of myself for choosing to self-publish.
There, I said it. And, I’ll say it again: I’m proud of myself! So often we are taught, particularly as women, that we shouldn’t applaud ourselves. That we should make ourselves seem smaller. Well, this journey has been empowering and I’ve had enough of humble bullshit…that’s French for “Here I am!”
I almost went the traditional route. I have a book agent in New York, which is not an easy thing to acquire, and I spent months and months writing book proposals. The feedback I got from publishers was always same, “We love her voice but she doesn’t have enough Instagram followers.”
Instagram followers?! Am I going to wait around until I have enough Instagram followers to write the book I feel destined to write? I could be dead before that happens. I’m not a millennial, socialized from a young age on my smartphone. I was raised in an age when if you wanted to write a book, you just sat down and wrote it. And so, I did.
Furthermore, the bottom line is that publishing houses are dinosaurs, slowly going extinct, and I like venturing into the unknown. Plus, authors of cookbooks, particularly first-time authors, make little to no money – sometimes they even lose money working with publishing houses. And they definitely lose creative control.
Though there is prestige in having a NY or SF publishing house put out your book, prestige isn’t enough to stop me from pursuing my dream. I have LOVED having creative control…I created the book that I know people need…based on my years of experience in the kitchen teaching people to cook. Editors in publishing houses make decisions from inside a high rise looking at spreadsheets. The trend is to choose books with only very narrow subjects, such as Avocados at Every Meal or Southern Mexican Food in Under 30 Minutes. Those types of books are nice, but they aren’t like the book that was inside of me.
Meal and a Spiel: How to Be Badass in the Kitchen is a book packed full of recipes, lessons and inspirations from an adventurous Jewish girl who lived in Italy and returned to California to transform her community into a bunch of badass cooks. THAT’S the book that was inside of me.
Meal and a Spiel: How to Be Badass in the Kitchen is Elana Horwich’s first cookbook. It is currently available for pre-order. You can find more information here.
