Stephanie:

Hello, everybody, and welcome to Dishing with Stephanie's Dish, the podcast where we talk to cool people in the food space. We talk to a lot of cookbook authors, and today I'm excited to talk to Sally Ekus. She is a literary agent, which, if you've written books or you're trying to get a book published, you know how important the agent process is. She leads a boutique culinary and lifestyle division via @JVNLA and is the lead agent at the Ekus Group. Did I get it right?

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Sally Ekus:

Oh, I was just gonna say, yeah, I lead the Ekus Group. So we're a culinary and lifestyle division within a broader agency.

Stephanie:

And the Ekus Group was started by your mom.

Sally Ekus:

Yeah.

Stephanie:

A legend. Your mom has, like, one of the largest cookbook collections that I'm aware of.

Sally Ekus:

In fact, the largest, according to Guinness. Yes.

Stephanie:

A couple of months ago, I think maybe it was on your Instagram page, someone posted a picture of her library of her home that is literally looks like a library that you would see in New York city or Washington, D.C. or somewhere fancy with just walls and walls of books. It was so gorgeous.

Sally Ekus:

Yeah, It's a two store, all cherry wood, gorgeous library. She built the edition. It was a dream edition. It took a lifetime to build. And it is filled with cookbooks, almost exclusively cookbooks. Her fiction and children's books and other personal books are scattered elsewhere around the house. But the library is almost entirely culinary with over 6000 titles. It's really cool.

Stephanie:

It's amazing. And your mom's name is? Lisa. Please, can I ask you a question? I'm going to go all over the place here, but sure, please. I have a daughter and only one daughter and no sons. So my only child. And there are things that we have in common about cooking and about food, and I always think, like, oh, maybe she'll follow in my footsteps. But then she is quick to point out, like, no, I'm never doing that. But then she's sort of leaning sort of my way.

Stephanie:

How did that work with you and being in the publishing space?

Sally Ekus:

Yeah. So how old is your daughter now?

Stephanie:

26.

Sally Ekus:

Okay. Yeah. So growing up, my mom had this vibrant culinary business. At the time, it was a PR agency before we did agenting, and it was never supposed to be a family business. She never pressured me or said, you know, maybe one day. In fact, it was just like. If you had asked me before I started working with her, what does Lisa do for a living? I would have said something with books and something in food. So I was like, growing up in this.

Sally Ekus:

And I was immersed and sort of absorbing by osmosis. And, you know, in the, in my younger years, I would be like, collating press kits for PR campaigns and, you know, I was like earning a allowance, mailing catalogs and whatnot. But it wasn't, it wasn't something she was really like, whatever you want to do, follow your heart. I was on a different path. I went to school for counseling and I was about to go for a master's in social work. And I deferred. I broke up with a bad decision, moved home, started helping out at the agency and realized that I'd been informally training for this my whole life. I really fell in love with it.

And I was very fortunate to step into the legacy of her reputation. And then also, once we decided this is something I wanted to do, talk about what the succession plan would look like and really carve out my own, you know, vibe and skill set and cultivate my own list, supporting her list. And so it was really a unintentional natural progression that then became quite intentional and, you know, quite effortful. So I think that's kind of why it worked out. And if, you know, but it's hard to say in hindsight.

Stephanie:

It's funny too. You talk about this like being in training of knowing this thing and you not even really realizing that until you've left and gone to do something else. And also, it does track that you were going to be a social worker.

Sally Ekus:

Absolutely.

Stephanie:

And now you're an agent.

Sally Ekus:

Yeah. I somewhat sarcastically but realistically acknowledge that I was trained in crisis counseling, active listening, and negotiation. So all of those things play a very big role in the work that I do as a literary agent working with books. But, you know, at the end of the day, it is a book. It is you know, not somebody's. Well, it is somebody's mental well being, but in a. In a different light. So I get to utilize those skills all the time.

Sally Ekus:

And it feels, it feels quite, quite lucky. And, you know, it's really the client management and author care and author advocacy that I love so much. And that has kept me, kept me in this, in this business for as long as it has.

Stephanie:

What is it about cookbooks in particular that makes you solely focus on that?

Sally Ekus:

Well, that I stepped into, you know, that was Lisa's area of expertise. She was one of the very first cookbook publicists. Publicist. She essentially created the category of culinary publicity before there were massive agencies handling, you know, influencers and brand campaigns. And so that was her area of expertise. So that's what I stepped into and was hyper mentored in. And I also equally just felt in love with it. I mean, there are many different things that bring people together, and at the end of the day, it feels like food is that one.

Sally Ekus:

Through line. Everyone has some relationship to food, recipes, cooking, memory, good, bad, complicated, probably somewhere in the middle. And so to have a little. To have a role in helping to bring that to fruition in published form is a tremendous honor.

Stephanie:

You are the publisher, or the agent, actually, of Entertaining 101 with Beth Lamana.

Sally Ekus:

Yeah. Yes.

Stephanie:

We just talked with. With her last.

Sally Ekus:

Yeah, I listened to that. It was such a fun conversation.

Stephanie:

Yeah, she was pretty great. And the weirdest thing happened to me the other day. I was at my radio partner's office, and we were talking about a project, and she had a stack of cookbooks, and I was like, oh, what are you working on? She's like, oh, I'm. I'm helping our friend from Muriel, Karen Tomlinson, put her proposal together.

Sally Ekus:

Oh, my gosh.

Stephanie:

Oh, that's interesting. And she goes, yeah, she's got a really great agent already. And I'm like, who's her agent? And it's you.

Sally Ekus:

Yes, it is. Yeah. I'm so excited to be working with her. Yep. Yeah.

Stephanie:

Her point of view on food and her storytelling of the purveyors that she works with and her just completely beautiful recipes. I'm so excited for you, and I'm so excited for that book.

Sally Ekus:

Thank you. Yeah, I mean, that's a great example of really early development. You know, I often say that I work with people, not proposals. You know, we can get to the proposal. I help guide people through that process as an agent. And, you know, this is a great example where it's like, you know, I'm so captivated by the food and the media attention and the accolades and the intentionality of what is happening from the farm to the plate. And so, you know, sometimes chefs work with writers or collaborators to help bring that to the. To the printed page.

Sally Ekus:

And that's where we're at with that project. So it's in very early stages, which is super exciting.

Stephanie:

Yeah. You're going to not be disappointed. She is just a great person. She's a great storyteller, and that you had a really good eye to pick her up, because I think she's.

Sally Ekus:

Thank you.

Stephanie:

What other projects do you have on the docket right now that you're excited about? I see Potluck Desserts behind you.

Sally Ekus:

Oh, yeah. Justin Burke, Potluck Desserts. Justin's book came out the same day as Beth's just a couple weeks ago.

And I try to rotate in my background the books that are sort of newly rotating. So The Meathead Method over here, that is Meathead's second book. His first book called Meathead, came out almost 10 years ago. And it's all. Both books are all about the science and art and science of barbecue and grilling and outdoor cooking.

Sally Ekus:

I have books in a bunch of different levels of activity, so that's also fun because I have something that's like, you know, proposal and development and then things that are coming out. So it really, it really runs the gamut. I just saw Frankie Gaw, whose Instagram handle is <a href="https://www.instagram.com/littlefatboyfrank