Emily Bushman: On the Collaborative Process of Publishing a Cookbook
Self-taught cook and baker Emily Bushman discusses how content-creation burnout led her to write her new cookbook, Bake Anime.
Emily Bushman is a self-taught cook and baker who started her blog targeting food in anime, called Penguin Snacks, in 2015. A high school English teacher by day, Emily began her blog as a way to spend more time on her cooking hobby in the evenings, particularly focusing on her fascination with food in anime.
The blog has since sprawled into a career working on video creation for the likes of anime streaming platform Crunchyroll, and for beloved franchises like Naruto, One Piece, Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma, Jujutsu Kaisen, and more. She currently lives, works, and bakes in a small apartment (with an even smaller kitchen) in Tokyo, Japan. Find her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
In this post, Emily discusses how content-creation burnout led her to write her new cookbook, Bake Anime, what surprised her in the process, and more!
Name: Emily J. Bushman
Book title: Bake Anime
Publisher: Simon Element
Release date: November 8, 2022
Genre/category: Cookbook
Elevator pitch for the book: In this cookbook, anime meets desserts! You’ve seen some incredible looking sweets in anime, and this book will teach you what those desserts are, how to make them, and even how to make sweets inspired by your favorite anime! Perfect for bakers and anime fans of any age.
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What prompted you to write this book?
After years of dedicated online anime food content creation, hundreds of videos, and millions of views, I was ready to throw in the towel. I was bored—not with anime food, which I’d spent five years tirelessly creating cooking tutorials around—but with the never-ending stream of videos that I had to make to feed the online content monster.
So, after a year of the pandemic and some serious video-creation burnout, one of my editors, Natasha Yglesias, reached out to me in early 2021 with the initial idea for an anime desserts-themed cookbook. I knew this was just what I needed to reinvigorate my passion for anime food.
I’d always wanted to write a cookbook and have the chance to weave a larger narrative around some of my favorite anime desserts, and after years of trying to get people to listen to my anime cookbook pitches, Tasha’s offer was a dream come true. Once the opportunity came along, I hit the ground running!
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
From idea to publication, it took almost two full years. The initial publishing date was set for Spring of 2022, but it got pushed back about six months, so for me, this book has been a long time coming!
The idea Tasha and I generated at the beginning of this project really didn’t change all that much as we started to work—I was really keen on creating a narrative around these desserts that referenced the fascinating food culture and history in Japan, and use this as a springboard to look at how the dessert shows up in any given anime to see if we can draw forth any additional significance for the show itself.
As we went, we streamlined this idea to be as concise as possible, but otherwise there were remarkably few conceptual changes. I’ll admit, for a cookbook, the founding idea was a little high-concept. I’m still shocked they let me get away with it, and didn’t insist on cutting out all my fun food-history facts.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
There were a lot of learning moments in the publishing process for this book. Since I’ve never published a book before, pretty much everything was new to me, so I worked really hard to be open-minded and curious about everything in the name of learning as much as possible.
Probably the best surprise was how wonderful it is to work with like-minded creatives and passionate publishing professionals. As someone who has been creating content online by herself for years and years, suddenly having a team to collaborate with, who could help me refine ideas and teach me the ropes of publishing, was amazing.
Equally amazing was knowing that I could trust my team to be the experts in situations where I was out of my depth. The ability to lean on others and ask for help is truly unmatched in any creative endeavor, and I’m lucky I had so many great people take me and my book under their wings.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
A big surprise was the food photography element, which isn’t necessarily writing, but was a crucial element to the final product. Because I live and work in Tokyo full time, I was responsible for all the food photography myself, which I gather isn’t always very common for cookbook writers.
I’ve been doing video content creation for a long time, so I know how to position food for video, but my food photography has always been a bit dismal. I was worried at first about whether or not I could deliver, but the photography element quickly became one of my favorite parts of the cookbook! I loved the challenge of finding props for the photo, fiddling with the lighting, and balancing colors and textures for a beautiful photo.
As for the writing itself, what surprised me was that I had so much to say! I didn’t realize just how passionate I was about desserts in anime until I sat down to start outlining the book and came to find I had almost too much to say.
I also have never been very good at carrying out big projects. I’m good at starting them, but finishing them? Not so much. So, I was surprised at my own perseverance with this cookbook, and I think I attribute that back to my passion for the topic. My desire to totally nerd out and share my love of sweets with the reader trumped my inherent laziness. That and the impending deadlines, of course, the fear of which trumped my desire to watch more Inkmaster.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
I hope readers will first and foremost take away a renewed or newfound passion for anime desserts! From the writing to the recipes to the photos, I put as much of my love for the subject into the book as possible, so I hope it rubs off on anyone who has a chance to hold my book in their hands.
I also hope that readers will be inspired to try out a recipe or two and get baking! For as long as I’ve been doing content creation, my goal has always been to get people in the kitchen and let their love of anime or good food move them to try something new.
For those intrepid readers who are as into anime desserts as I am, I also hope that they walk away with a bigger appreciation and understanding for the food history in Japan, and, with any luck, they’ll be able to have a new perspective with which to appreciate desserts when they see them in an anime.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
The same old advice most writers give—write every day! That was how I got through this cookbook—with some good old-fashioned time management. You really do have to take on big writing projects one step at a time and build out that routine of daily writing.
For cookbook authors specifically—be careful in the kitchen, and don’t go crazy after the fifth or sixth time of retesting a recipe. It’ll be worth it in the end to have a recipe you feel confident in.
Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Editor of Writer's Digest, which includes managing the content on WritersDigest.com and programming virtual conferences. He's the author of 40 Plot Twist Prompts for Writers: Writing Ideas for Bending Stories in New Directions, The Complete Guide of Poetic Forms: 100+ Poetic Form Definitions and Examples for Poets, Poem-a-Day: 365 Poetry Writing Prompts for a Year of Poeming, and more. Also, he's the editor of Writer's Market, Poet's Market, and Guide to Literary Agents. Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.
