Lille Allen/Eater
Martha is an icon, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to a hot market for her many books
In March, the TikTok creator Meredith Hayden, better known as Wishbone Kitchen, uploaded a video about her tedious and costly experience trying to track down a copy of Martha Stewart’s Entertaining, the food and lifestyle mogul’s first book, published in 1982.
Hayden explained that she found one copy of the book, gently used and with torn edges, for $400, before losing four bidding wars until she finally got her hands on a copy. In one, her bid hit over $112, she said. Hayden posted about this only after getting the book, she noted, so as to not add to her competition even more.
Hayden’s interest in Entertaining was inspired by CNN’s Martha Stewart docuseries that dropped in January. She wanted it, she explained, as research for the cookbook she was working on at the time. (That cookbook, due next year, appears to bear at least some of Entertaining’s influence.) How much Hayden ultimately paid isn’t clear since she wasn’t made available for an interview, but it suggests a hot market for old Martha Stewart cookbooks.
With 99 Martha Stewart books in the world and Number 100 out next week, I wondered: how collectable are they? People collect everything — Stanley cups (now, Owalas too), tinned fish, Lenox Spice Village jars, Pyrex, restaurant matchbooks — so they must also collect Martha Stewart cookbooks, right? According to the booksellers I spoke to for this piece, however, that’s not necessarily the case, in part because Stewart’s oeuvre is so ample.
Even though the first edition of Entertaining has been “hot” lately — it was re-released with a new cover in 1998 — “it’s hardly rare,” according to the New York City cookbook seller Bonnie Slotnick. Slotnick classifies the situation as “nonsensical,” writing in an email that “all it takes is a couple of enthusiastic write-ups in popular media (or one TikTok video) to send thousands of people searching online.” Though this pushes the pricing of Entertaining up, that interest inevitably dies down again: As of this writing, recent eBay sales of Entertaining have been more in the $5-$15 range. Aside from limited-edition releases, Slotnick adds, there’s no reason for Martha Stewart cookbooks to be rare or expensive.
Indeed, there are waves of interest in Martha’s books, according to a spokesperson for ThriftBooks, the largest online seller of used books. While bestsellers like Martha Stewart’s Homekeeping Handbook: The Essential Guide to Caring for Everything in Your Home and Entertaining continue to drive sales (the latter’s were spiked by the CNN series), interest in her books otherwise ebbs and flows with winter and the holidays. It also picked up with the start of the pandemic.
Interest in Stewart’s books also breaks down geographically, the ThriftBooks spokesperson noted. Compared to other authors in the same space, Martha’s books are the most popular in the Northeast and generally in “blue states,” with Connecticut, New Jersey, and Massachusetts showing a relatively higher proportion of her books’ sales compared to the national average. Age also seems to play a role: Most interest in Stewart’s books comes from young people, as well as the 55+ demographic. The seller hasn’t sold a lot of what it would consider “collectible” items from Stewart, it notes, likely because Stewart is still publishing frequently.
Stewart collectors might be a minor contingent, but they certainly exist: According to ThriftBooks, about 20 percent of customers who purchase Martha Stewart books purchase three or more of her books.
As of this writing, the New York culinary bookstore Kitchen Arts & Letters stocks Martha Stewart’s Cakes (2013), Cookie Perfection (2019), and Fruit Desserts (2021) (all three are on backorder). According to managing partner Matt Sartwell, Stewart’s baking books in particular “have always had a good rep[utation] and we stock them and sell them really well.” But while her older books carry the appeal of capturing a particular moment in food culture, “people don’t come sentimentally looking for copies of Martha Stewart’s [1983] Quick Cook,” he says.
To Sartwell, it comes down to a few factors. In the bigger picture, the culinary style that many of Stewart’s older cookbooks embodies “has changed in the same way that the way Martha dresses has changed, and so the food isn’t quite as appealing,” he says. As for the elements that do remain appealing, Sartwell adds, so much of what made Stewart’s food feel distinct at the time her books were published has since become a part of the everyday.
Moreover, if we’re to associate collecting with a completionist mindset — the goal being to have all of something — then Stewart’s compendium might offer its own challenges. For one thing, her books covered such breadth that it’s unlikely for any one reader to find all of them useful. Many are not cookbooks, like Gardening (1991) or Great American Wreaths (1996). “If you imagine a Park Avenue matron who really likes the way Martha entertains, they may not have a Martha-like garden to take care of,” Sartwell says.
There is also the fact that by a certain point, Stewart’s books became part of a larger project. A Martha Stewart cookbook no longer represented a book written by the grand dame herself, its stories and recipes all gleaned from her brain alone, but from a test kitchen and lifestyle brand. (That said, even Entertaining was dogged by allegations of recipe theft.) While this shift in production helped ensure that the recipes were rigorously tested and came at a steady clip, it also created a sense of distance from Stewart.
“I think it’s something of a fantasy of publishers that somebody might collect everything someone has done,” Sartwell says. “But at 100 books, I don’t know that there are too many authors out there whose reputation would drive people to feel like they had to own everything.”
Entertaining, then, is more of the exception than the rule. Its influence is outsized. Not only did its publication mark the beginning of Stewart’s lifestyle empire, it also coincided with a shift in how cookbooks were made. Big, full-color cookbooks, though a given now, were less common at the time, with publishers pushing cookbooks with small photo inserts instead. By comparison, Entertaining was ambitious, photo-heavy, and colorful. This approach almost hurt its chances of publication: A 1991 New York Magazine profile of Stewart noted that she’d met resistance from publisher Clarkson Potter, who’d suggested either making the book half black-and-white, or cutting its size in half.
Of course, Stewart won that argument and Entertaining’s approach not only impressed readers but also inspired them. The book “really gave people a sense of confidence that they could pull off something complicated,” Sartwell says. “It showed Martha in Laura Ashley dresses looking poised and confident, and that was appealing to people for whom ambitious [hosting] was something they hadn’t tried before.” Even still, the last time the shop sold Entertaining, it went for a modest $40.
In an appearance on the Kelly Clarkson Show last year, Stewart attributed her steady output of books to a tendency toward workaholism. However, it’s true that she’s also slowed her production in recent years; her last book was Fruit Desserts, published in 2021. This hasn’t been a bad choice, Sartwell suggests, as it’s prevented her audience from getting too burned out from yet another new release.
When Martha: The Cookbook drops next week, it — along with the new Netflix documentary — will likely drive up interest in, and the prices of Stewart’s old books once again. One might keep in mind, however, that patience is good for the wallet. There are plenty of books to go around.
