We Go Back to Press—But How Many to Print?

By Nathan

March 11th, 2011

Update

Sales of the book have accel­er­ated so much that we’re about to sell out of the first print­ing of Modernist Cuisine. As we pre­pare to order a sec­ond print­ing, we face a big ques­tion: how many more copies should we print?

Several cru­cial para­me­ters go into this cal­cu­la­tion. After we order the print­ing, it takes about four months to man­u­fac­ture and ship them, so order­ing now gets books from the sec­ond print­ing to us in June. That is not as early as we would like, but that’s how it goes.

At a min­i­mum, we should order enough books to han­dle four months’ worth of sales—otherwise we would need to order a third print­ing the moment the sec­ond arrives. We need more than this, how­ever, because cus­tomers will place new orders between mid-March and mid-June. Taking that into account, we ought to order at least as many as we expect to sell in seven months.

But seven months’ worth of books would run out in October 2011. We would have to rely on a third print­ing to cover the hol­i­day sea­son. That seems like a risky propo­si­tion. If we make a mis­take, we could run short of books just when more and more peo­ple want them. Complicating mat­ters fur­ther, in order for the third print­ing to arrive in October, we would have to order it in June. Although we’ll know more about the level of demand for Modernist Cuisine in June, we won’t know as much as we would like.

Together, all these fac­tors cre­ate a pretty strong moti­va­tion for us to order enough books in the sec­ond print­ing to meet demand all the way through the hol­i­day sea­son and into January 2012. Doing that means order­ing 10 months’ worth of books, and tak­ing into account that those 10 months include hol­i­day gift giving.

How many books is 10 months worth? That is the big question.

We have always believed that word-of-mouth com­mu­ni­ca­tion would be crit­i­cal to sales of Modernist Cuisine. The book is hard to describe, and it is a big enough pur­chas­ing deci­sion that many peo­ple will need to hear from a friend or see the book in a friend’s kitchen before they buy it. It is hard to tell how well peo­ple like the book until peo­ple have expe­ri­ence with the book.

That process is just start­ing. So far, we only have expe­ri­ence with pre-orders. A few hun­dred copies of MC have been in people’s hands for per­haps a week. That is not enough copies—and not enough time—to get a good han­dle on how strongly the word-of-mouth buzz will build. We’re try­ing to get the first print­ing out as quickly as pos­si­ble, and by the end of April we’ll see what hap­pens when 6,000 books get into the market.

Unfortunately, a rep­u­ta­tion takes time to spread by word of mouth. Customers may need to spend weeks dip­ping into MC enough to start rec­om­mend­ing it to friends and acquain­tances. It also takes time for word-of-mouth inter­est to trans­late into orders. The first print­ing will give us a good read on whether the person-to-person buzz around the book is going to be pow­er­ful or not, but it is unlikely that we’ll get that read until some point in May or June.

A coun­ter­vail­ing fac­tor is that the book is cur­rently back­o­rdered. Some peo­ple don’t want to wait; rather than get­ting in line, they say “I’ll order when the book is in bet­ter sup­ply.” That won’t hap­pen any­time soon, so the vol­ume of orders we see in April and May might not reflect the true demand.

When we faced the same deci­sion for the first print­ing, we had exactly zero expe­ri­ence. Several pub­lish­ing com­pa­nies told me to print 2,000 copies. I wanted to make 10,000, but what at the time seemed to be wiser heads on the MC team pre­vailed, and we com­pro­mised at 6,000 copies. It seemed incon­ceiv­able that we could run out of 6,000 copies before we could get a sec­ond print­ing done, so it seemed safe.

In ret­ro­spect we clearly should have printed more, but hind­sight is like that. It’s unfor­tu­nate that 4,000 peo­ple will have to wait a cou­ple months longer than if I had fol­lowed my ini­tial instinct, but it now seems that a sec­ond print­ing was inevitable regard­less. Even more cru­cially, I would have no more data now to make that inevitable deci­sion on the size of the sec­ond printing.

Over the course of the last cou­ple weeks our ideas about how many copies to order for a sec­ond print­ing have increased as sales of the book have soared. Earlier this week, the book hit num­ber 45 on Amazon’s ranked list of all books by sales; it reached num­ber 6 in the cook­book cat­e­gory. But we still don’t have much of an idea of how this trans­lates into sales across the year.

As one exam­ple, one could pos­tu­late that there are a fixed set of peo­ple who want the book, so they will order at a high rate, but once they all have their copies, orders will quickly dry up. I hope that isn’t true, but it is cer­tainly pos­si­ble. But even if it is true, what is that num­ber? If the total pos­si­ble mar­ket is 10,000, then I really have to worry about it. If the num­ber is 100,000, that is a dif­fer­ent story.

An even sim­pler model is to assume that the cur­rent rapid sales rate is dri­ven by the pub­lic­ity and media cov­er­age sur­round­ing the book. That effect is cer­tainly real, and it is highly likely that the media inter­est will start to fade in another month or so. So maybe we shouldn’t order that many. On the other hand, while we know that press and broad­cast cov­er­age will dimin­ish with time, we also know that it will be sup­planted by word of mouth. I don’t know how to quan­tify the strength of that replacement.

Here’s another impon­der­able: how big a hol­i­day sales spike should we expect? Normally, cook­books are timed to come out in September or October pre­cisely so they get a big boost from hol­i­day gift sales. In our case, we started to ship nine months before the hol­i­day sea­son, so a lot of peo­ple who would be per­fect can­di­dates to get MC as a gift may well buy it for them­selves, or get it for their birth­day. So maybe we won’t get a big hol­i­day boost. Or maybe we will get one, but it will be off­set by a decline in late summer.

Some peo­ple on our team started out sug­gest­ing a sec­ond print­ing of 10,000 to 15,000. Now they are sug­gest­ing 20,000, whereas my instinct is that 25,000 is the right num­ber. That’s prob­a­bly what we will order, but I won­der whether I am think­ing too small (again!).

One final fac­tor is that book print­ing is a scale game: the more you print, the cheaper the cost per copy. The rea­son is that set­ting up the print run car­ries a high cost, which gets amor­tized across all the books in the run. Unfortunately, this effect is strongest at small print runs; once you get out to 20,000 copies, the incre­men­tal price drop becomes small for the next 5,000.

If any­body has thought­ful sug­ges­tions about many copies we should print, I’d be happy to take them. Just post them as com­ments here.

31 Responses to We Go Back to Press—But How Many to Print?

  1. It’s an inter­est­ing opti­miza­tion prob­lem, so I’m glad it’s not mine :)

    Random thoughts:

    You will of course have noted the jump in Amazon sales rank that occurred when you announced the book would be avail­able in short sup­ply, so clearly some of the cur­rent sales vol­ume is peo­ple try­ing to make sure they don’t miss the boat and have to wait for months. Today’s blog entry prob­a­bly will spike the sales graph a bit too.

    The scarcity issue also makes the book more desir­able to own due to its rar­ity and result­ing spe­cial­ness (and some peo­ple may even be spec­u­lat­ing that there will be an eBay oppor­tu­nity in the lull between 1st and 2nd print­ings) so if the 2nd print­ing also sells out early that’s not entirely a bad thing as peo­ple might then be ready to pounce on the 3rd print­ing espe­cially if it shows up in say November.

    I think it’s a mis­take to think of MC as a “Cookbook” for mar­ket­ing pur­poses. That’s like treat­ing a Ferrari as a com­muter vehi­cle. Sure, you could use it that way, but there is appeal also as an objet d’art and some­thing peo­ple will want to own whether or not they really know how to use it. These cus­tomers who may never actu­ally attempt any of the tech­niques MC describes may yet account for a sub­stan­tial per­cent­age of sales.

    I could def­i­nitely see MC becom­ing a very trendy Christmas Gift for any foodie type person.

    Can Amazon tell you the num­ber of Wish Lists the book is on? This would seem like an inter­est­ing met­ric for pre­dict­ing hol­i­day sales, espe­cially how this value evolves over the next few months.

    I really think you should plan on the pos­si­bil­ity of a 3rd print­ing this year as I think you’ll have WAY more infor­ma­tion in June or July than you do now, since the book is effec­tively still in pre-release.

    If you order enough in the 2nd print­ing to at least get you into the hol­i­day sea­son, then you might be able to delay the 3rd edi­tion order to July for a November arrival rather than hav­ing to hit October.

    So I guess I would take everyone’s esti­mates of how many copies you’ll sell through the end of the year, then order some­thing in the low to mid­dle of this range for the 2nd print­ing and plan to sup­ple­ment with a 3rd print­ing if things are look­ing bet­ter than the con­ser­v­a­tive estimate.

    For what it’s worth.

    G.

    Reply

  2. 38,000 I know you prob­a­bly can’t order that incre­memt, but that’s what I think you will need.

    Every urban book­store who wants to main­tain any cred with it’s cus­tomers must shelve it for the hol­i­days. With some­thing of this scope, release date won’t affect that.

    Anyone who wants one who didn’t buy one will ask for one for Christmas. It is the per­fect gift to give, it’s the per­fect gift to receive. I can spend $500 and give you some­thing that cost $10M to make. It’s a beau­ti­ful and mean­ing­ful gift.

    Libraries and schools will get them.

    You also have to fac­tor in con­spic­u­ous con­sump­tion, and peo­ple buy­ing them on spec­u­la­tion that they will be worth more later.

    You are going to get a bunch of expo­sure with the “Cooking MY Way Through Modernist Cuisine” blog­gers that are going to pop up. I think there will be way more than one might nor­mally expect because peo­ple will try to get your atten­tion and impress you.

    There is such a move­ment in America to under­stand cook­ing. Cable is sup­port­ing a whole new cook­ing chan­nel. I think many peo­ple are com­ing to it, and the peo­ple who have been watch­ing food TV for awhile are mov­ing up, first to things like Chow.com and even­tu­ally to eGul­let. EGullet’s mem­ber­ship is sur­pris­ingly large., and I think it will con­tinue to grow. The next step beyond that is culi­nary school or your book. Most peo­ple can’t quit their jobs and go to culi­nary school so your book is per­fect. I think there is such a move­ment towards home cooks want­ing to both appear expert and be expert.

    I don’t think this will be a typ­i­cal bell curve sce­nario. More like Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

    I think eGul­let, blog­gers and your web­site will main­tain word of mouth on the inter­net. I think culi­nary stu­dents and food pro­fes­sion­als will get it or receive it as a gift. And I think word of mouth will be very sustaining.

    I think sales will be very strong. I am will­ing to gam­ble that there will be a sec­ondary mar­ket for it at Christmas and have ordered two.

    Thank you for this book. Really.

    Reply

  3. Please be aware that a book of this nature is also prized as a first edi­tion. One rea­son I am will­ing to pay the cost of this attrac­tive tome is for brag­ging rights of hav­ing a ‘true’ first edi­tion. I would not be will­ing to pay the same amount for the sec­ond edi­tion. In my case, I would pull my pre-order if a first print-run can­not be filled. I would then wait for a bet­ter priced ver­sion to come to mar­ket. That being said, my recomen­da­tion is to for­mat the sec­ond edi­tion in a slightly dif­fer­ent way that is still attac­tive but more afford­able. This will also have the added advan­tage of plac­ing a pre­mium on the first edi­tion as a valu­able col­lec­tors item on the sec­ondary mar­ket. I sug­gest, for what it’s worth, being care­ful with sec­ond print run because you do not know how many of the buy­ers are true ‘food­ies’ and how many are col­lec­tors of fine books. I believe, past 10,000 copies, you will fine it a bit harder to fine buy­ers at cur­rent price if not a first edi­tion. Good luck. regards, Scot

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  4. poten­tial buy­ers should deposit say 35% of pur­chase price so you will have a solid fixed base and indi­cate when they would want to receive their copy giv­ing you more pre­cise plan­ning details

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  5. I’m not sure if it is pos­si­ble to get this infor­ma­tion, but if you could find out how many immer­sion circulators/SVS have been sold in the past few years, it might give you a bet­ter idea of the mar­ket for MC for a num­ber of reasons.

    1) Even though MC cov­ers far more than sous vide, the press is strongly asso­ci­at­ing the book with that tech­nique (see NYT). Word of mouth should coun­ter­act that to some extent but it will take time.

    2) There are only a hand­ful of books on the mar­ket cur­rently that deal with sous vide and none that I am aware of that cover it in such a sys­tem­atic and defin­i­tive way.

    3) People who do sous vide at home are early adopters who are more likely to be inter­ested in the other mod­ernist tech­niques in the book.

    Hope this helps!

    Reply

  6. Save one copy...I am sav­ing, as fast as I can.

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  7. If there’s any way you could drop the price I’d say print a lot more. I’d love to have the book but the cost is astronomical.

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  8. Congratulations on such an incred­i­ble book!

    Still wait­ing patiently on my copy... I knew I should have ordered before the begin­ning of February. :)

    I’m not sure how much infor­ma­tion you can get from Amazon, but I’d assume that they have unbe­liev­ably in-depth sta­tis­tics around the per­cent­age of peo­ple who pur­chase after view­ing. Not just for MC specif­i­cally, but also for prod­ucts with sim­i­lar prices, sub­ject mat­ter, mar­kets, etc. They should also have some pretty amaz­ing sta­tis­tics around the num­ber of peo­ple who pur­chase based on expected ship date, and how that changes over time based on how close you get to ship date. They might also have data around what per­cent­age of cus­tomers come back after some­thing is “in stock” (i.e. don’t actu­ally buy when they can’t get it right away, but check back and order when they can).

    It strikes me that the best way to model the sea­sonal demand might be to talk to the folks at The Fat Duck or El Bulli and see if they have any data about the sea­son­al­ity of the demand for their books. Likely this approach is com­pli­cated because the TBFDC was orig­i­nally released in Fall. Not quite in the same price region, but close enough that you’re look­ing at the same customers.

    I’d look at any data I could pos­si­bly get about the pre­orders. How many of them are sched­uled to go to busi­nesses ver­sus indi­vid­u­als? I’d imag­ine the “busi­ness” orders will be pretty finite and easy to model — so you’d eas­ily be able to work out how many copies you could expect to sell to that mar­ket going for­ward. For the indi­vid­u­als — some­one, some­where has mar­ket research data to tell you what frac­tion of a per­cent­age of the pop­u­la­tion at large is likely to be a cus­tomer for the book.

    Colin
    Scientist/Chef/Computer Geek

    Reply

  9. Nathan,

    You should just print 20,000. Otherwise a lot of the inter­est is going to die down, and more peo­ple are just going to wait and see — even after the book is out on shelves. People can only wait so long. Trust your guts and be a tes­ti­mony to your con­fi­dence in your product.

    James.

    Reply

  10. This is an intrigu­ing ques­tion, and for sure there is sig­nif­i­cant finan­cial risk involved. It is clear that cur­rent sales are no indi­ca­tor for future sales, although the fact that every last copy was sold before any­one held the phys­i­cal book in its hand, is surely a good sign...

    Perhaps try it from the other side? What would the total mar­ket be? Some gut­feel­ings below, for what it’s worth:

    * 5–15% of McGee’s sold
    * 10% of upmar­ket restau­rants
    * 20% of num­ber of stu­dents, alumni and staff of food tech­nol­ogy stud­ies
    * 10x num­ber of spe­cial­ized cook­ing stores

    The real­is­tic tar­get geog­ra­phy would be US, Western Europe and Australia. Surely, get­ting these sta­tis­tics will be tricky, but could help you to deter­mine if the mar­ket is 5k, 25k or 100k copies.

    I would per­son­ally think the lat­ter (i.e. 100.000 copies): I had sev­eral dis­cus­sions about the book with peo­ple both in the US and Europe inter­ested in food in gen­eral, and some in food sci­ence. Everybody of them already knew the book from the media cov­er­age, and every­one was eager to hear my expe­ri­ences from cook­ing from the book. As my copy was pre-ordered, and hasn’t shipped yet, I couldnt tell them yet... Nonetheless, surely when the book starts to be shipped out, many of these peo­ple can also be con­vinced to get their own copy...

    bot­tom line: order 25.000 for now, and decide on a third edi­tion next spring.

    Regards, McM

    Reply

  11. Stuart Millinship

    March 13, 2011
    10:41 am

    Since many of us pre ordered many months ago and have or are still wait­ing for our copies (Me in the UK — April 6th fin­gers crossed) shows that peo­ple want and are pre­pared to wait for the book.

    My gut feel­ing would be to let the orig­i­nal run sell out that will make it more “desired” and also prove it’s more than us kitchen geeks who want to get there hands on it. If the demand is there you should see it reflected in your coms

    Also if Amazon can give you advance sales fig­ures then release for advance orders in June with a deliv­ery mid December to get the hol­i­day buy­ers. By August you would have a good idea of demand and put in your order for print­ing. If Amazon can give you stats on how pre orders (esp if for a sec­ond print run) trans­late into sales then it’s a no brainer.

    I must admit, I’m torn on how this book will sell (I’ve not seen a copy yet) is it just for those who already embrace sci­ence as part of cook­ing (That could be an ini­tial surge of orders that dies out) or is it some­thing that can bring sci­ence to to those who cook (And McGee while excel­lent is a bit heavy and dry for the cooks I’ve shown/given it to ) and is a real game changer.

    The price is very high, and a bar­rier a lot of peo­ple with think twice before buy­ing. Better to under print and keep demand and desir­abil­ity going than over­print and have large (and very heavy) stock unsold.

    All the best, can’t wait for my copy to arrive

    Stuart
    Ermintrude on eGullet

    Reply

  12. I appre­ci­ate your open dia­log regard­ing book print­ing. The only sug­ges­tion I would offer is I am a casual seri­ous home cook....and I want this series of books! I have seen noth­ing but pos­i­tive articles/reviews for your book and have been fas­ci­nated by your atten­tion to detail and the small sam­ples I have seen. The pho­tog­ra­phy is cre­ative and amaz­ing. I really believe you would have no prob­lem sell­ing 25000 copies. I know sell­ing the entire vol­ume as one is impor­tant but if you were really that far off on your print order, you could sell the vol­umes as indi­vid­ual books or smaller sets...not opti­mal I know. I really look for­ward to own­ing these books some­day. You have a trans­for­ma­tional book here. Very Respectfully, Phil

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  13. There’s a chance you’re think­ing a bit too small. If MC is as influ­en­tial as many are believ­ing it will be, than I think it’d be a good idea to think beyond this years hol­i­day sales. If you believe that the buzz will con­tinue to spread beyond this years sales, and if print­ing more books will mean that prices drop a bit, that makes own­er­ship of MC even more attrac­tive to peo­ple for whom it was pre­vi­ously cost prohibitive.

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  14. Hello Nathan,

    Your cur­rent dilemma regard­ing quick sales and re-order of a sec­ond print­ing might be sim­pli­fied by plac­ing a sur­vey of those with real intent of pur­chase. It may clar­ify the num­bers a bit. With social media sites and twit­ter con­nect­ing a vast mul­ti­tude, word of good or bad prod­ucts or their unavail­abil­ity spread like wild fire. The amaz­ing and never before pos­si­ble con­nec­tiv­ity of the cit­i­zens of Egypt seem proof that our media envi­ron­ment has abil­i­ties far beyond that of was thought pos­si­ble only a few years ago.

    Another option is to give those who will have to wait a dis­counted price or added bonus with a down pay­ment to fil­ter the win­dow shop­pers from your true customers.

    If the set-up cost amor­tization fades as you reach 20,000, could you split the sec­ond print­ing into two shops with the same com­pany, pos­si­bly dis­count­ing some of the sec­ond set-up, while plac­ing two sep­a­rate orders of 10–15,000 units? If you can print the “dual run”, it might also ben­e­fit logis­ti­cally in lower ship­ping rates to the dis­tri­b­u­tion ware­houses of your partner’s and your­self. Amazon has mul­ti­ple ware­houses through­out the coun­try to facil­i­tate quicker ship dates and cheaper postage in gen­eral. This lower cost of ship­ping might also off­set the cost of hav­ing two set-up charges. I do not know if this is an avail­able option as I am not in the print indus­try. I do know some­one that was and can inquire as to what his opin­ion is.

    I am buy­ing this set in early April, if still avail­able, but was under the impres­sion from NPR that it would be made avail­able in a few days. If there are oth­ers with this same incor­rect under­stand­ing that the book had not yet started sales, you will likely sell the remain­ing stock in short order.

    I am def­i­nitely a mem­ber of the Greater Geekdom and would nor­mally not be inter­ested in a set of cook books at this price level, but this is some­thing entirely dif­fer­ent you’ve cre­ated here. I under­stand tech­ni­cal data and pro­ce­dure, but cook­ing with books prior to these can become more alchem­i­cal throw­ing a pinch of this or that with­out know­ing its func­tion. I had heard of the Modernist Cuisine project on NPR some time back and have been await­ing its release.

    Six months ago I started work­ing for myself. If there were a chap­ter on cook­ing up about ten clones, my great­est con­cerns would be resolved......keeping the cur­rent cus­tomers happy while tak­ing on a great num­ber of new ones with­out sac­ri­fic­ing qual­ity. In my indus­try, you are only as good as your last ser­vice call and loos­ing a cus­tomer costs thou­sands a week in potential.

    I hope that you find the answers you’re look­ing for, as I believe this to be a solid prod­uct with the pos­si­bil­ity of being over­whelm­ingly suc­cess­ful. It’s arrival could also help with those who want to start new busi­nesses in the food indus­try. If your books are as good as they appear to be, they could have a side ben­e­fit of cre­at­ing jobs.

    Thank you for all your hard work on this vast project.
    Philip

    Reply

  15. I think you will sell 75,000 over the next 18–24 months; 15,000 each run should work to bal­ance demand with the asset of elu­siv­ity. My algo­rithm is eso­teric, but it has worked in the past.

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  16. I would order a print of print of 50,000 to 75,000, but would keep that num­ber pri­vate, and allude pub­licly that you expected to sell out and that any­one hop­ing for a Christmas gift would be wise to order now. Once that rush was fin­ished, you’d have, I’m sure, a bet­ter grasp of when and whether you’d need a pre-Christmas order.

    Have you thought about tak­ing a page from the recent pub­li­ca­tion of Jung’s RED BOOK ? Yes, it was less expen­sive than MC, but it’s still a $200 behe­moth, and one with, I’d imag­ine, a much smaller antic­i­pated audi­ence: nearly every­one cooks, but not every­one is into eso­teric psy­chol­o­gists. It came out in 2009, with an orig­i­nal run of 5,000, and within a few weeks was into its fifth print­ing. The pub­lish­ers at Norton, and / or those at the Philemon Foundation, which pro­duced the work, might have some valu­able input.

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  17. Forgive me if this has been bela­bored else­where... but elec­tronic for­mats of this book would be a huge sav­ings to you from the pub­lish­ing side. I would gladly set my kin­dle aside for a search­able color epub of MC.

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  18. How many books would you have to sell to break even? I think that’s your magic num­ber :-)

    –Scott

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  19. Retail Math so sim­ple — expected the unexpected.

    In my expe­ri­ence don’t over think and use your intu­ition. Order 25,000 units.

    Chasing orders is a great prob­lem to have than hav­ing too much inven­tory. It cre­ates the demand and estab­lishes a marketing/PR con­ver­sa­tion too.

    After your 2nd print­ing, I would estab­lish a flow plan so orders are being writ­ten 4–6 times per year and inven­tory is cycling in and out. After this first hol­i­day sea­son, you can plan next year much better.

    In nego­ti­at­ing with the fac­tory or two, nego­ti­ate cost per unit on annual pro­jec­tions not each run. You are also able to pur­chase paper up front and estab­lish a set price but then you are committed.

    Have Fun!!!

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  20. Is it pos­si­ble that many of the ini­tial orders came from insti­tu­tional buy­ers such as news­pa­pers, mag­a­zines, restau­rant chains and well-healed libraries? I am not a sta­tis­ti­cian, but I’m sure that such a ten­dency would skew the numbers.

    In the mean­time, I’ll have to lick my chops for wait­ing too long. I never expected the first print­ing to sell out. Congratulations!

    Reply

  21. You had bet­ter get your act together or these will be sell­ing for $50 on bar­gain shelves and the whole thing will be seen as a joke and the buzz you had cre­ated will be his­tory. If you are unable to pro­vide and ship the book for those wait­ing who have their money down you had bet­ter think of another career. Get the orig­i­nal orders delivered!!!

    Reply

  22. Having col­lab­o­rated with some amaz­ing peo­ple on this book, per­haps some of them could give insight into a good num­ber. It seems this book is being pur­chased by the same num­ber of peo­ple as those who bought the El Bulli books, Fat Duck, Culinary Chronicles and oth­ers in the high genre. This is a com­bi­na­tion cook­book and invest­ment if the print run stays lim­ited. It may even have wider appeal based on the break­through fac­tor and unique infor­ma­tion afforded the reader. Perhaps you could con­tact these guys and extrap­o­late a num­ber from there. I am also assum­ing that a paper­back will either never hit the mar­ket or will be held off for four years to main­tain strong sales. Finally, I would assume that there will not be a sec­ond edi­tion, but rather a new vol­ume cov­er­ing new ideas and con­cepts not released in this col­lec­tion.
    Hope my ran­dom thoughts help. Can’t wait for the book, been wait­ing since October. Good luck and thank you for advanc­ing the sci­ence of cook­ing, wished I could join you!

    Reply

  23. Having ordered mine as a gift whose time­frame wasn’t be able to be reached unfor­tu­nately, I am one of those rare few who can­celled. That is not to say I am not plan­ning on pur­chas­ing — in fact, I am plan­ning on order­ing 9 copies for friends and fam­ily next November to make hol­i­day shop­ping easy (if you are one of the nine, and you know who you are, quiet please). No make that ten... I for­got myself there. Why not now...

    a) price point, I just did some­thing sim­i­lar last xmas, and am recov­er­ing from that splurge (Sous Vide machines).

    b) I am some­what hop­ing that there is a errata revi­sion for print­ing two or three. Maybe not, but tit would be a rare thing indeed were that true.

    Reply

  24. I review books for the Charleston Gazette occa­sion­ally, and I am read­ing with inter­est your goals for this book, and dis­cus­sions of its intended audi­ence. How could one even begin to review this? Could this help an ordi­nary per­son cook­ing for a fam­ily? I think it must cer­tainly be a per­ma­nent ref­er­ence part of every pub­lic library. I think you def­i­nitely need your own show on the Cooking Channel, for a start. I would watch it. In my mind, this is presently a mys­te­ri­ous project, very cut­ting edge (and I say that as a per­son who owns the expen­sive Fat Duck cook­book). The visu­als I’ve seen so far are STUNNERS. A mag­a­zine edi­tors dream!

    Reply

  25. It is an expo­nen­tial growth prob­lem!
    Just fit your 6,000 sales fig­ure into the for­mula.
    You need to con­sider inter­na­tional sales for pro­fes­sional and pro-consumer mar­kets. MC will also become stan­dard culi­nary text books world­wide.
    When you have demand out­strip­ping sup­ply, just keep the print­ing press run­ning 24/7.
    The prob­lem is sim­ply just how fast they can print.
    I am very opti­mistic on MC sales.

    Reply

  26. is the ques­tion really the num­ber of books to print or should the ques­tion be: how can we glob­ally mar­ket this prod­uct so that as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble are inter­ested in this and want to buy it? much as Pepsi decided it was not com­pet­ing with the soft drink mar­ket but with the total amount of flu­ids con­sumed by a human being (includ­ing water and milk).

    instead of polling for a mag­i­cal num­ber to print why don’t you co-create inno­v­a­tive mar­ket­ing strate­gies with your core com­mu­nity of already-converts?

    i’m writ­ing in from Malaysia and am inter­ested in this but it does seem inac­ces­si­ble at the moment: so many months away, will the price drop if i wait, will there be a cool mar­ket­ing offer with my plat­inum credit card points, etc.

    but mostly, thank you for cre­at­ing this stag­ger­ing object of beauty.

    Reply

  27. i made a pre-order on bookdepository.com in novem­ber and now they’ve refunded my money and told me that the book is unavail­able to them till fur­ther notice :(

    Reply

  28. Heh, it’s good to see we’re all agreed ;) It is a given that the bal­ance between demand and sup­ply needs to both gen­er­ate and sat­isfy demand, but the ques­tion is how eas­ily you can exper­i­ment within the print runs you have in mind. It isn’t a bad idea to con­ceal your hand, but sales are likely to peak over the next month or two, so I wouldn’t play hard to get too enthusiastically.

    Reply

  29. Pingback: Everything but the Kitchen Sink | trendcentral

  30. I pre ordered the book weeks ago, are there any ideas of when the next print­ing will begin to ship to those who bought the item?

    Thanks!

    Reply

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