Sally Ekus of The Ekus Group On How To Grow Your Business or Brand By Writing A Book

Be organized. Have a central place for people to go to get information on you and your book. This includes communication with your publicity and marketing team and digital assets to promote the book or to provide to the media.

As a part of our series about “How You Can Grow Your Business or Brand By Writing A Book”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Sally Ekus.

Sally Ekus is the Lead Agent and owner of The Ekus Group, a full-service culinary agency specializing in Literary and Talent representation. She represents a wide range of culinary, health, wellness, and lifestyle talent, from first-time cookbook authors to seasoned chefs, RDs, professional food writers and bloggers, and internet and YouTube personalities. From concept to contract, she has brokered over 300 book deals with top publishers including Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, and numerous indie publishers. To honor The Ekus Group’s 40th anniversary in April 2022, she launched a self-paced online course called How to Write a Cookbook. Its bite-sized curriculum distills 4 decades of cookbook publishing knowledge into less than 3 hours. Leveraging Sally’s expertise, aspiring authors are already fast-tracking their success by overcoming the steep learning curve of today’s evolving industry climate.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into the main focus of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share a story about what motivated you to become an expert in the particular area that you are writing about?

My entry into the cookbook publishing field was accidental yet serendipitous. Early in my career, I worked as a psychiatric technician at an inpatient mental health facility in Upstate New York. While I loved the work, I figured out that it wasn’t going to be the right fit for my personality and moved home to work for my mom’s company, then called The Lisa Ekus Group.

When I started at the agency, I quickly realized that I had been immersed in my mom’s work from a very young age. I had essentially “grown up in the industry.” I also realized that my formal training — covering things like active listening, crisis counseling, and negotiation — would also be extremely practical in helping people achieve their writing and career goals as well as bringing books to market.

There was never an expectation that my mom’s work would turn into a family business. As much exposure I had to the work and the clients, I never felt any pressure in my individual career decisions. That freedom enabled me to choose this career and apply myself to an ongoing role with The Ekus Group that has now been my life for the last 14 years.

Can you share a pivotal story that shaped the course of your career?

Early on at the agency, I worked with Washington Post food and travel editor Joe Yonan on one of his first books. One essay that struck me in particular was about his experience killing a chicken and the desire to connect with our food, its production, and our eating patterns. His writing shifted how I look at my own meat consumption and general cooking practices.

It was an “A-HA” moment for me at the time, making the connection between what I put in my body and its source. From that moment on, I was able to reflect and engage with cookbooks and their influence on readers as well as my role as an agent in bringing these books to market in a meaningful way.

What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? Are you working on any new writing projects?

I am really proud of Frankie Gaw’s First Generation, a book that celebrates being a first generation Taiwanese-American, that came out this past Fall from Ten Speed Press. This book showcases stunning writing, incredibly thoughtful and intruding recipes, and the design of the book is stunning!

Personally, I have spent the past year sharing information about how people who want to learn about writing cookbooks can expedite that learning progress, through launching a course called How To Write a Cookbook. The course started as a passion project after getting asked the same questions year after year, about how to get started and how publishing works. Ultimately, I decided to consolidate all the answers in a course that people can interact with at their own pace.

Thank you for all of that. Let’s now shift to the core focus of our interview. Can you please tell us a bit about your book? Can you please share a specific passage or story that illustrates the main theme of your book?

Through the course, How to Write a Cookbook, I intentionally offered specificity and transparency into the non-fiction publishing industry. People are always asking me, “What can I expect to get paid to write a book?”; “Should I do a book?”; “Is self-publishing the right path for me?”; or “Which publisher should I work with and why?” Really there are so many nuances to figuring out what an author’s “right path” might be in publishing.

What I aimed to do is showcase all the different scenarios so that people can educate and inform themselves and then come to their own decisions. For example, there is a specific part of the course that provides three different book deals that I negotiated. Without identifying the specific book, I give the amount that the author was offered in the contract and the royalty structure. They are three very different but representative deals so students can see the range.

This is all in the hopes to showing that there is no one-size-fits-all in publishing. I hope to help my audience define what would make a successful path through the publishing process for themselves.

You are a successful author and thought leader. Which three character traits do you feel were most instrumental to your success when launching your book? Can you please share a story or example for each?

My clients often reflect to me that my honesty and transparency are reassuring to them. That was something I tried to carry forward when launching the course. They are also traits that I try to identify in the authors that I represent. Launching a book or any kind of product is an incredibly personal and intense experience that hopefully ends in a reflection of the creator’s most true and authentic self.

For example, the audience for my course have a first-hand experience of the things that I think through on a daily basis. Often when they finish and then follow up with me on the Facebook group, over instagram, or if they book a consult, people are surprised to see that the me in real life and the me in the course are not so far apart. I really enjoy hearing that feedback because I feel that I have expressed fully my work and understanding through the course.

In addition to honest and transparency, the third trait that I emphasis is accessibility. I make it clear at the outset of my client relationships that I am easy to contact. For someone who is focused on writing a book and getting it published in the nonfiction space, it is not hard to figure out how to pitch me and I strive to give honest and constructive feedback.

In my work, I have found that writing a book can be a great way to grow a brand. Can you share some stories or examples from your own experience about how you helped your own business or brand grow by writing a book? What was the “before and after picture?” What were things like before, and how did things change after the book?

I always encourage people to think of a book as a big, beautiful business card. It is a wonderful way to have your brand extended and to grow into new areas.

For example, Frankie Gaw of First Generation started by cooking with his grandmother to reconnect with his Taiwanese roots. That grew into recipes and content on Instagram that then gained attention from food publications. At that point, I stepped in as an agent and over time we worked on a book proposal which we pitched to publishers. With a book deal, Frankie’s star continued to rise. Upon publication, he landed Good Morning America and CBS Saturday Morning.

The book established credibility and authority which then opened doors and started new conversations. With the publicity and marketing efforts the book was another opportunity for growth. We started to reach out to food brands and different types of company for partnerships.

With every author launching a book, I encourage them to think proactively about what paths forward that they might explore with their book in hand. There are so many possibilities from national media coverage, brand relationships, partnerships, or other paid opportunities like teaching or being the keynote at a conference. The book is the new shiny thing to leverage opening new and meaningful doors.

If a friend came to you and said “I’m considering writing a book but I’m on the fence if it is worth the effort and expense” what would you answer? Can you explain how writing a book in particular, and thought leadership in general, can create lucrative opportunities and help a business or brand grow?

I get asked the question “Is it worth writing a book?” all the time. It is a very individual answer. That being said there are some general questions to reflect on to answer the question. Do I have time to write a book? How much time can I put aside that might affect other income producing work to write a manuscript? In nonfiction, you write a book proposal before the manuscript so I always encourage people to start by writing a book proposal and use that as a barometer. Writing a book is a consuming process both in terms of time and finances.

As I said above, the book establishes ones authority and credibility in a certain field which can be leveraged to open or strengthen media coverage, speaking engagements, brand relationships, etc. Whether or not a book should be the first thing that one does to grow your brand is a more individual discussion. When someone already has established themselves in media placements, or has a strong social media presence, or a regular byline, or they are called on to speak on certain topics consistently, these are signs that I look for in terms of readiness, aka the “time is now” to write that book.

The platform and content should warrant a book. Everyone thinks that they have something to say, and a lot of people do. The question is if that should be said in between two book covers or through a different medium.

What are the things that you wish you knew about promoting a book before you started? What did you learn the hard way? Can you share some stories about that which other aspiring writers can learn from?

It’s often surprising to authors that their book’s promotion is their obligation first and foremost. You want to think that the book will just find its audience but in fact it is the author’s responsibility to get the book’s word of mouth started. It is a tremendous amount of hard work and many times authors are introverted by nature and promotion requires an extroverted type of effort.

The more you can self-promote in meaningful ways the more success the book will find. This includes things like getting media trained, connecting to social media colleagues who have high visibility, interviews, sending out your own newsletter, asking friends to post in their newsletter, running excerpts, and a variety of other things.

The number one thing that authors realize about book promotion, often too late, is that they need to start the plan for promotion six months to a year before the book comes out. Helping make these launch plans is one of our agency’s specializations.

Based on your experience, which promotional elements would you recommend to an author to cover on their own and when would you recommend engaging an expert?

An author should always have a media kit at the ready whether that be on their website or available to the media. That would include a bio, their headshot, and relevant media links or interviews. When an author can afford to do so, a consult with a PR professional or an outside publicist would be worth exploring to augment efforts by their publisher’s in-house marketing team.

Wonderful. Here is the main question of our interview. Based on your own experience and success, what are the “five things an author needs to know to successfully promote and market a book?” If you can, please share a story or example for each.

1. Be prepared. Know your book’s core message and how you want to convey it in every possible scenario or platform.
2. Get media trained. Invest in yourself and the success of your book’s launch by getting professional direction on honing your unique message and how to successfully convey that to the media.
3. Be organized. Have a central place for people to go to get information on you and your book. This includes communication with your publicity and marketing team and digital assets to promote the book or to provide to the media.
4. Utilize your book proposal. If your book proposal was successful enough to land a deal, you likely outlined an initial marketing and launch plan in the proposal. Look back and use this as a springboard for making your launch plan.
5. Have fun. Authors work so hard to get to book publication. It’s an important recurring reminder to celebrate your successes, no matter how small, in real time.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we both tag them :-)

Tina Fay, want to have lunch?

How can our readers further follow your work online?

Readers can always follow our work at ekusgroup.com. For those who are interested in writing a cookbook, my course “How to Write a Cookbook” is linked above. I also monitor our Facebook group for aspiring cookbook authors which can be found by searching How to be a Cookbook Author on Facebook. Connect with us on Instagram @ekusgroup and @sallyekus.

Thank you for these excellent insights, and we greatly appreciate the time you spent. We wish you continued success with your book promotion and growing your brand.