in the middle, requiring lots of travel and accommodations. Photography is very expensive. Printing is very expensive. Shipping and warehousing these large 3 to 4 pound objects are expensive. So they have to sell a lot to make money. I asked some publishers, what they think defines success: Bill LeBlond, head of food and drink books at Chronicle Books in San Francisco -- he and I hatched Ruhlman's Twenty -- wrote: "The simple answer is that most publishers frontload the expenses of a book into the first printing, so if a book sells out and is reprinted, the book can be counted as a success. Cookbooks are one of the best backlist categories, so the very successful cookbooks are ones that backlist for years." Meaning they continue to earn money long after the publisher and author stopped working on them.  Chronicle's first printing of Ruhlman's Twenty was 25,000.  It sold out in months, so quickly that Bill wasn't able to hit the reprint button fast enough and so Amazon has been out of stock for months (the second printing arrives this week, yay!). So by Chronicles standards, it's successful.  But as far as I'm concerned, what makes it successful is the fact that it encourages people to cook.  That's my main goal. If I can inspire more people to cook, the book is a success. If it furthers and spreads valuable cooking information it's successful. If it adds something new to the world and of food and cooking, then it