HB: Grant, that’s a very wise move, self-publishing. I was lucky—and it’s only now that I realize that there was a big chunk of luck involved in it. We interviewed eight publishers, and we chose Bloomsbury because they seemed to really get what I wanted. From the beginning I said that I really don’t care about the money (probably not the best thing to say!), that I don’t care if I get no advance, if I get nothing at all—what I care about is having the book done the way that I want. There are always going to be some financial and practical constraints, but to a certain extent I just want the book that I want.
So I made all the right noises; and now we’ve gotten to this stage where it’s been delayed because I keep wanting more stuff in there. The book’s been getting bigger and bigger.
GA: How big is it?
HB: There are about 120,000 to 140,000 words of text right now. Loads of text. We’ve got 700-something pages, but with the weight of paper we want, we can only have about 450 to 500. And the book is in three sections: The first section is sort of biographical; the second will be 50-odd recipes and sub-recipes; then there’s the section on science. We’ll have info on ice cream science, meat science, etc., and a bit on equipment and ingredients; then there are 18 pieces by different academics (including a hydrocolloid specialist, the head of the UK Synaesthesia Association, somebody who works on pain and pleasure mechanisms, a perfumier, a flavorist, etc.). I’m sort of writing through those sections about how I translate the science into my work. I don’t want to leave anything out, but I might have to reduce the text in that third section and have it be like a reference book. But in those first two sections I wanted to try and have a lot of white page space, and we’ve got two photographers and an illustrator too.
What about yours, Grant? Yours must be—
GA: It’s big. I mean, it’s not 700 pages, but it’s big.
HB: I don’t think ours can be either. [The publishers] are being very polite—actually very clever: They’re saying, we’re not going to ask you to leave anything out, so if you want this type of book you’ll have to reduce the thickness of your paper by half—knowing that I’m not going to want to do that.
GA: I think right now we’re at about 425 pages. We just received what they call the dummy or the test-bind; we went with 10 inches by 13 inches, and it’s laid out horizontally as opposed to vertically. It’s a heavy book.
HB: I think ours is probably about 10 by 13 too, but vertical and not horizontal. Actually we’re probably about neck in neck, because I got my [dummy] about 10 days ago. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been living with this on the flipping computer screen for so long that to actually see something that looks like a book is pretty exciting.
GA: Yes, very exciting.
HB: When’s yours due out?
GA: October 15.
HB: Wow, I think that’s within a week [of mine]!
GA: Yeah? Ours is really photography-heavy, too. We’ve been fortunate enough to have a photographer in the restaurant every day. She just sets up her lights in the dining room and we do the deal. I remember when I was helping Thomas [Keller] do his book, he set up to photograph in his house, which is right on the property at the French Laundry—and it was kind of a pain in the butt running back and forth to the kitchen. But this is basically like serving dinner: You plate one or two dishes and you take them out there.
CH: It sounds like your books both really take a lot of risks. What audience are you hoping to attract?
HB: I don’t know about the States, but in the UK £40 is a really serious cost barrier for publishers. No chef has ever done a book more than 40 quid. I wanted mine to be more expensive than 40 quid, and eventually they accepted it. Then 40 became 50, became 60, and now I think it’s at 100. So it’s an interesting question because I don’t know—I’m hoping it’s got an international market. And like Achie [Achatz]—there are so many interesting parallels here—if you look at the reputation and stature that Grant’s got now with Alinea, I think there are going to be chefs all over the world wanting to buy the book, and I’m hoping that’ll be the case with the Fat Duck book as well. Whereas if you take chefs like Jamie Oliver, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, and Gordon [Ramsay], because of the main audience of their publications, those are going to sell really heavily in the big bookstores. But because of the size [of the Fat Duck book], it’s literally not going to sit on a conventional bookshelf. At one point I made the mistake of saying to a publisher “I don’t care how many copies it sells,” and I could see their jaw dropping, see them going “nooooo!”
GA: It’s really an interesting game when you start thinking about the marketability and the audience, and who you’re writing the book for. Ultimately we ended up writing the book for ourselves. But we also want to sell some books; and we ended up pricing it at $50—which, for a 425-page book of that size, is going to be a relative bargain.
Pinterest
