Percentage of people interested in your question: 0%
Probability of the world needing another book on gardening: 0%
Likelihood of you doing something rash with your passion for gardening: 100%

First of all, my passion for rash behavior would be much higher, if thats possible. I'm not interested in writing another book about gardening. And I had hoped the lack of response was due to no one knowing the answer not lack of interest. If you get a chance to look at the stats on the book market or publishing they do provide numbers for different categories, but they lump gardening in with cookbooks and home improvement and call it 'Lifestyle'. I'm trying to proove a point about America's so-called number one leisure activity, but without the data I'll be losing that debate. People don't buy gardening books because they NEED to! People don't even garden because they NEED to! this is all about the WANT TO'S.

Acj's comments made me laugh. They are sardonic but have an element of truth. Maybe he is the Paul Lynne of the Garden Web? (a compliment) I don't have an answer to your question and was waiting for someone who does to weigh in. I do remember at the last Garden Writer's convention someone talking about a garden survey they had conducted but I don't think it was specific to books and as with most of these surveys, it probably lumped lawn care in with real gardening. I can tell you that I plan to do something rash with my garden passion - I have retired and hope to self publish a garden book within a year or so although as acj says, it may not be needed. I just need to do it so I will have accomplished one of my major goals in life.

Here is a link that might be useful: Bittersweet Gardens.Com

We as writers get plenty of negativity via the regection slips and I thought this forum for writers was more for supporting our addiction to gardening and writing? Regardless if the world needs another book on gardening or not, we all need our dreams, so let's lighten up please!

Talking to several of my editors in recent days, I was told that the market for good garden books taking a "different angle" (whatever that may be) is looking UP.

I'm suddenly very hopeful.

I'm curious about this "different angle" because I've started two non-fiction book proposals in the last month. Would they like a nonfiction book written like a graphic novel, I wonder? Graphic novels are big right now ....

That'd be one heck of an angle.

The garden book market is as big as someone makes it. It's not a matter of too many books. There were tens of thousands of retail stores in North America in the 1960's but that didn't stop Walmart from making it's own niche (market).

There's room for a great garden book with a wide audience. I've just never come across one that I'm crazy about. I'll go 'flip', 'flip' but only buy regional books or books on specific topics. I NEVER buy 'picture books' or generic books with little substance unless they are in the bargain bin for $2. Most garden books are fluff with no meat on the bones.

One thing I have noticed is that garden writers usually want to write about a particular subject they are passionante about and NOT what they 'know' (other than through assuming) what the general gardening community is interested in reading. It's 'I really like this so I bet others will want to read about it' rather than interviewing a hundred gardeners and asking what they would want in a gardening book.

Bottom line. There's a huge market of tens of millions. Mcdonalds and Walmart and others prove that you don't have to invent some amazing new contraption just to sell millions.

It's important to ask oneself why one wants to write. For money? Fame? Usually, however, it's for the best of all reasons, a passion and personal satisfaction.

An editor at Wiley once told me "the secret of success in textbook publishing is to produce a book at least as good as what is out there and which is recognizably different". So match your competition while putting forth your own stamp of individuality. I suspect that is the "different angle" John's editor was referring to.
I think you guys are a bunch of whiners. As a writer of books about wild trees I look at the store shelves burgeoning under loads of new gardening books every year and curse my fate. Why, I ask myself, couldn't I learn to love domesticated plants and habitats as much as I do natural ones, and write about them, and make a cool fortune off the tillers of soil and planters of scabby city lots? Hmmm, putting that into words has actually given me an idea for a tree book that has never been done. I'm going to log off and get that on paper. Thanks, all.

Ron:
You write it, I'll buy it.

(Please excuse cross-posting with another thread)

I have a question for everyone: Is there a market for a new and comprehensive book on tomatoes? By that, I mean one that covers, at least to some extent, everything about tomatoes that a tomato enthusiast/aficionado/junkie/addict/head might want to know (and maybe more). I am considering writing such a book, and in fact already have prepared an outline and introduction. But before I put a year or two's work into it, I would very much appreciate any opinions anyone may have on the subject.

What I have in mind is something that would cover at least the following subjects:

1. Biology and cultivation (including different species and cultivars),

2. Genetics and genetic modification (e.g., sad story of the Flavr Savr gene),

3. Origin and evolution (meet your cousin, the tomato),

4. World-wide diffusion and subsequent history (how did the tomato get to India and China, anyway? The English? The Portuguese? The Spanish? One author suggests early sea contact with Peru)

5. Adoption and use in different food traditions (e.g., how do tomatoes fit in with the religious aspects of Indian food tradition?),

6. Health aspects (e.g., effect on prostate and lung cancer, macular degeneration, sun damage to skin),

7. Commercial and economic issues (do they really eat 200 pounds per person per year in Egypt?),

8. Connections with famous people (e.g., Ronald Reagan),

9. Film and literature (nobody should miss Attack of the Killer Tomatoes or its sequels),

10. Myths (e.g., the Robert Gibbon Johnson story) and misconceptions,

11. Tomatoes and sex (no misconceptions there, and no conceptions, either, I suppose [smile]),

12. Enthusiast organizations and festivals (the most spectacular is in Spain),

13. Etymology of popular and scientific names (where did the name lycopersicum -- Wolf Peach -- come from?), and

14. Home growing and cooking (somewhat).

I know of course that there are many books on how to grow tomatoes, and many recipe books, and I certainly don't intend to compete with such books. What I am thinking of is something that would not only contain quite a lot of information about a broad range of subjects relating to tomatoes, but also use tomatoes as a lens to look into some of the things mentioned (history, biology, even cosmology: for example, without supernovas, tomatoes could not exist).

Needless to say, with such a range of topics, I could only cover most things in a fairly summary manner; the selling point would be its breadth, not its depth on any subject. I would make reference to other books for more depth on a given subject.
Would you buy such a book? At Amazon prices? Would it be better to have lots of pictures, maps etc. and a higher price or fewer of such things and a lower price?

There the various books on other food items, some of which have done quite well in the market, notably Mark Kurlanskys three books, on cod, salt and oysters, respectively. There is also one on the potato by Larry Zuckerman and one on the olive by Mort Rosenblum.

Each of those is, however, somewhat less comprehensive than what I outlined above, which brings me to a second question: Should I cut back the scope and make it a bit deeper in the areas retained? If so, what should I leave in or keep out? Should I make it pretty much purely a history book with a particular twist, like KurlanskyÂs? Or would that narrow the audience too much?

Just to elaborate for a moment, a historical work would start with the break-up of Pangaea, the latest supercontinent, which started drifting apart 200 million years ago. The breakup resulted in separate biospheres developing in the Americas and Eurasia, which meant that the tomato was unknown to the bulk of humankind until the last 500 years. During that time humans have, from a biological perspective, re-united the divided parts of Pangaea. Before they did so, the tomato spread from its origin in the "alto plano" of the west coast of South America to what is today Mexico and Central America, but not to what is today the US (why it didnÂt is an interesting issue I would try to explore) or anywhere else. In the last 300 years or so, it has been adopted into almost every food tradition on earth. Sometimes that has been a dodgy process.

How and when it spread to various food traditions is a story that, to my knowledge, has never been fully told, except as it relates to the US (in Andrew SmithÂs book cited below). Telling that story would allow me to bloviate on various subjects such as international trade routes and social history.

As I write that last paragraph, it occurs to me that this story alone would be quite an undertaking, one that could not really be done justice in a single chapter of a broader book. But then ÂÂare the 30 million home tomato gardeners in the US going to buy a history book? Or will they want growing tips, recipes, cosmology, sexual innuendo and genetics and such thrown in? I suppose I could include some of those topics in a book that is primarily a history, but would a book that is primarily a history grab their attention, or, more relevantly, give them an uncontrollable urge to buy it?

Hey, maybe I could include OprahÂs favorite tomato recipes. I could put that in a chapter entitled, "the tomato and popular culture."

I would appreciate any thoughts any of you may have.

Thanks very much,

Jonathan

P.S.: I have looked at the following, none of which (it seems to me) is quite what I have in mind:

1. Tantalizing Tomatoes, ed. by Karen Davis Cutler (New York 1997)
2. The Tomato in America, by Andrew Smith (Columbia, S.C. 1994)
3. The Great Tomato Book, by Gary Ibsen (Berkeley 1999)
4. The Great Tomato Book, by Sheila Bluff (Short Hills, N.J. 1999)

(The preceding two books have the same title and were published in the same year; rather remarkable.)

5. In Praise of Tomatoes, by Steven Shepherd (New York 1996)
6. Exploring the Tomato, by Mark Harvey, Steve Quilley and Huw Beynon (Cheltenham, U.K. 2002)
7. All about Tomatoes, by Walter L. Doty (? 1981)
8. Terrific Tomatoes, by Mimi Luebbermann and Faith Echtermeyer (? 1994)
9. 100 Heirloom Tomatoes for the American Garden, by Carolyn J. Male (New York 1999)

Jonathan -- Is there a market for this tomato book?, you ask. Make a good book of it and there will be a market. Don't mess it up with cookbook directions on growing -- though a short humorous section on this would fit nicely with the light touch your description suggests. This book,in my mind, would fit with recent titles on tulipmania, orchid thieves, plant sex. Call it popular botany. It would be written lightly, literately and humorously, making surprising connections with the cultural and historical topics of your outline. I think you have something really good here.
You don't have to waste a year. Just write up a few of your suggested chapters so you can include them in a book proposal and see what reaction you get from editors at Houghton Mifflin, Holt and a few other such trade houses. If an editor gets interested, he/she will suggest how far-ranging the book could be without losing readers. Now get busy.

Thanks very much for your feedback and suggestions, pinetree. Yes, it is intended to have a light touch, although it's also intended to convey some information that I hope will be of interest to tomatoheads.

Jonathan

I notice that folks are suggesting sending proposals directly to publishing houses. Is there really no need for a literary agent? I just finished a book proposal based on an article I wrote for the Feb/Mar 07 issue of 'BackYard Living' and thought my next step would be to shop to agents. Am I wrong???