Happy, Happy “Joy”

Although the making of the newest revision of the “Joy of Cooking” had enough behind-the-scenes controversy for a prime-time soap opera, there’s no arguing about how it’s been received by the book-buying public.

This week the book will enter its fifth printing, putting an even 1 million copies into print in only six weeks. To put that in context, the last 66 years worth of the “Joy of Cooking” has sold roughly 10 million copies total. Most successful cookbooks sell about 20,000 copies.

“We’re flying out of Price Club like vats of peanut butter,” says Scribner editor Maria Guarnaschelli, who headed the three-year project that involved more than 100 food writers and recipe testers. “People aren’t buying one copy. They’re buying four or five.”

Guarnaschelli says that before this week’s printing, only about 100,000 books were left in stock. “The only thing holding us back is how much paper we can get.”