VeggieTalk

Today I spent most of the day preparing for, then participating in, a photo shoot for the cover of the revised edition of my Vegetarian Soups for All Seasons, due out in September.

First, a little back story. I first wrote this book for a British publisher back in the late 1980s. As soon as I completed the manuscript, they went out of business. So, my agent shopped it around in the U.S.; no bites: “Too narrow a niche,” and comments like that. So I got brave and, in 1992 published it myself. A small publisher that specializes in veg cookbooks distributed it for me, and just like that, I sold about 20,000 copies in two or three years. To this day, I still have no clue how that was accomplished. I mean, it’s hard to sell 20,000 copies of any kind of book, let alone a tiny vegetarian soups cookbook.

In 1995 my editor from Little, Brown, decided to buy the rights for the book; I expanded it and they published it in 1996. It went on to sell tens of thousands of copies more; so much for “too narrow a niche.” A couple of years ago, I asked Little, Brown to let me do another revised edition; a book’s design and content do get tired after so many years in print. But LB declined. My editor had long been elsewhere—I followed her to Random House; but they already had another vegetarian soups book in the works. So I decided to come full circle and pubish it myself once again.

I’ve spent quite some time retesting the soups, re-editing the text, re-designing the pages and adding new recipes and illustrations. The book will now be completely vegan—the first ever vegan soups and stews book on the market (if anyone knows otherwise, I’ll throw myself out the window!).

So today represented one of the last major tasks and milestones—shooting the cover. On Sunday I bought all kinds of funky and colorful bowls and linens to play with at Pier One. Above you will see the talented Michael Polito preparing one of the soups for shooting; the second shot is another one of the contenders for the cover. My younger son, Evan, is on vacation from school this week so he helped me with all the preparation and schlepping, and documented the photo shoot with his own camera. Whichever soup does not make the front cover will go on the back.

This is a lot of work! I really don’t like being the publisher. It involves wearing way too many hats. I feel lucky to be a Random House author at the same time. With them, I just hand in the manuscript and the illustrations and a few months later a lovely package emerges. Well, at least dinner is ready for tonight. Two different soups—Spanish Vegetable Stew (above) and Puree of Carrots with Broccoli. With them I will make some sort of Reuben sandwich.

So now you’ve gotten a taste of the trials and tribulations of self-publishing, and a preview of the cover of the forthcoming Vegetarian Soups for All Seasons: Bountiful Vegan Soups and Stews for Every Time of Year.