I have good news. We are going to be doing a new edition of our book with Scribner’s.
Last winter, Shou-Ching and I began exploring publishing options. We want to make a very professional cookbook; that project is very dear to Shou-Ching’s heart, and I am very excited about it too. It will be a “gourmet Paleo” home cookbook: delicious food that is extremely healthy, but can be made at home in 30 minutes or less. Recipes will draw upon cuisines from around the world.
Given the design and formatting issues associated with cookbooks, and the cost of printing in color, we began exploring the possibility of working with a major New York publisher.
At the same time, Scribner, one of the most prestigious New York imprints (home to Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Stephen King, Robert Heinlein, Thomas Wolfe, George Santayana, Edith Wharton, and many other great writers), decided to start a diet and health line. They wanted to have a Paleo book, and contacted us to see if we would produce for them a revised edition of Perfect Health Diet.
Well, long story short, we’ve reached an agreement; I’m reviewing the contracts today and we expect to sign them this weekend.
The new edition will be released in December this year, with prominent placement in bookstores in January. Scribner’s wants the new edition to have more of a weight loss focus: the tentative subtitle is Regain Health and Lose Weight By Eating the Way You Were Meant to Eat. The cookbook will likely be released a year later, around the end of 2013.
There is good news for foreign readers. Scribner’s has bought worldwide translation rights and foreign language editions will probably begin appearing in 2013. A Hungarian language version of the current edition is expected from Jaffa Publishers later this year.
We are extremely excited about the opportunity to work with Scribner’s. We see this as a tremendous opportunity to help bring Paleo, and the many health improvements that come with a Paleo diet, into the mainstream.
Given the timelines Scribner’s works under, the new manuscript has to be completed in June. This is an extremely tight deadline. We had plans for significant changes to the book in our second edition, and also plans for a separate book on obesity and weight loss. Weaving that material into the new Scribner’s edition, while also making the book more accessible to a popular audience but not lengthening it, is a big task.
In order to produce the best possible book by the June deadline, I need to focus my energies solely on writing. Until the manuscript is complete, therefore, I will probably do little or no blogging.
I do have one request. We would like to sprinkle “reader success stories” through the manuscript. If you’ve had success eating our diet, and haven’t left your story on the Reader Results page, please consider doing so. If we do use your story, I will contact you for permission and perhaps for edits or further information.
Thank you so much for your support. Publishing the original edition of Perfect Health Diet has been great fun, and we hope for even more excitement when the new edition comes out.
PaleoFX DVDs
PaleoFX has compiled a DVD set of the entire conference. The video is of extremely high quality, as you can tell by the highlight video below. The complete DVD set costs $197 before June 1, $247 after.
Keith and Michelle Norris did a tremendous amount of work organizing a great conference. To date, they have lost money, but hope to break even with good DVD sales. If you’d like to support Paleo gatherings, and see what you missed, this is a great opportunity to get professional-quality videos of your favorite Paleo speakers.
via this link:
Hi Paul,
I wanted to purchase the PHD. Money is tight for me right now so I’ve decided I’d either buy the original PHD edition or the new one for release in December. I don’t need to lose weight and not particularly interested in a cookbook so I’m wondering if I should purchase the first edition. Will the release in December include all the information in the first ediition? I guess I’m trying to resolve which book is best for me. Love the blog.
Hi John,
Yes, wait for the new edition, it will have everything valuable from the first edition, and more.
This is terrific, Paul. Good luck!
Congratulations on the book progress; i will definitely be replacing my present PHD copy with the new version. When I saw the announcement last May I intended to offer a few suggestions; principle among these would be to provide a bit more explanation of particular issues when applying PHD thinking to a vegetarian diet (for my wife).
Along with a few other commenters above, I feel is a bit unfortunate that the publisher has played the weight loss angle on the cover (though I can appreciate the business motivation). I fear that readers seeing the reference to weight loss on new cover will tend interpret the word Diet in PHD as “a diet”, meaning a temporary tool involving restricting or distorting eating habits to get pounds off, rather than “diet” meaning comprehensive, long term eating habits.
That said, my own path suggests that this may not be so bad after all. To be sure, I started off eight months ago simply wanting to lose some weight, having hovered just around the technically obese mark for 15-20 years and recognizing that as i was approaching 60 this really raised my risk profile for other health issues.
Starting with a few weeks of Atkins, with mixed results, I really dug into the research more, stumbled onto Mark Sisson’s site and several similar sources, and through these resources found my way to the PHD book. This I read and reread several times, and have eaten following PHD guidelines ever since.
The key point here is that while initially I set out go on “a diet” to “lose some weight” to improve my health, this book really turned my thinking on its head, so that I now tend to regard overweight as more of a symptom of poor general health. I view the PHD principles as the key to use “diet” (in the second sense above) to achieve and maintain optimal health, on a permanent basis.. The 45 lbs I lost (easily, and while enjoying every healthy bite) is just one of the many improvements or markers of good health I have gained in the process.
So if your publisher wants to tout weight loss to get more people to buy and read the book, that’s fine, but I trust in the early paragraphs you will be able to help people put their weight loss goals more correctly into the context of long term, general good health, just as your previous edition did for me.
Best luck and I look forward to the new edition.
Thanks, MH. Glad to hear you’re doing well!
I think the emphasis on overall health is just as strong in the new edition. There are a few more discussions of the problem of obesity, but they are additions to the book and I think they support the message that nourishment and detoxification are the keys to a healthy diet.
Best, Paul