Is Martha Stewart the Next Julia Child?
Following a new documentary, interest spiked in Stewart's books
When I ran a general used bookstore, from 2007 to 2019, we wouldn’t take donations of Martha Stewart’s 1982 first book, Entertaining. This week, a copy sold for $1750 on eBay.1
I usually send out these Substack newsletters when I have a list of new arrivals to promote. I just did a list on Friday, so I don’t have a new one ready, but I do have some nice lots of McMurtry and Crews for auction on eBay. I may add more auctions later this week.
Back in the 2000s, Entertaining was seen as too specific to its time. The aesthetic, while immensely popular in the early 1980s, looked dated to buyers in the 21st century.
Even a year ago, the book’s reputation hadn’t changed. A handful of copies sold on eBay in November 2023 for $6.42 (an auction with two bids), $8.50, $9.00. One lucky seller managed to get $17 for one. A signed copy made $45 on November 25, 2023. Another signed copy, lacking its jacket, sold the next day for $15.
From a practical, used-book-store perspective, books by TV celebrities tend to have short shelf lives. They are hot until they are not. While they are hot, the books are hard to find used; as soon as they are not, the books are everywhere; you can find stacks of them at thrift stores. Martha Stewart, whose TV show and magazine set the standard for taste in home decor and cooking for a generation, followed the same pattern.
She put out one book after another. Almost all of which sold well at first and then vanished from stores. Her forthcoming book (to be published November 12), Martha: The Cookbook is, in the words of her publisher, “her landmark 100th book.” That’s more than two books a year, every year, for the 42 years since Entertaining first appeared. As soon as one book faded, she and her publishers were ready with another.
Martha Stewart is, unquestionably, one of the most significant and influential figures of the late 20th and early 21st centuries in her field. She was the original influencer. The styles and products she featured in her magazine and on TV moved entire industries.
Martha Stewart’s world collapsed when James Comey (yes, that James Comey) successfully prosecuted her for insider trading. She went to jail, and reinvented herself in surprising ways when she got out. Her reality show with rapper and marijuana enthusiast Snoop Dog, Martha and Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party, was perhaps the most unexpected turn in her public life and career. Episode one set the tone, it was called “Putting the Pot in Potluck.” Stewart, known for her exacting style, proved to be just as comfortable in the improvisational black world of hip hop as she was in the hyper-planned, mostly white Hamptons.
One could make an argument that Stewart should have attracted some collector interest as a significant cultural figure. But historically, books by TV celebrities rarely become collectible2, and books about home decorating may attract even less interest than the average TV tie-in. Martha Stewart’s Entertaining thus had two strikes against it.
In January, CNN released a well-reviewed four episode series, The Many Lives of Martha Stewart (now streaming on Max). Based on eBay sales, that show started to move the price of the book. A February 4 auction finished at $1,175 and one in July hit $600, but others ended under $100.
The collecting zeitgeist really changed this month when Netflix released its documentary, Martha. Martha Stewart is reportedly very unhappy with the film, but it seems to have done wonders for the market for her first book.
Copies of Entertaining are selling steadily for prices that would have been scoffed at twelve months ago. Just this week, nearly 200 copies have changed hands on eBay, with nearly 30 copies selling for more than $200 each. One signed copy sold for $450 (a tenfold increase from last November) and then another sold the very next day for $1750. An auction for a first edition ended on November 4 after 94 bids. It sold for $530, a 5000% increase over last year at this time. One seller, lod.24, has sold nine copies of Entertaining this week for almost $2000. Lod.24’s prices started at $40 on October 30 for a copy without a jacket, increasing to $85 on November 1, and $150 on November 3. Copies with jackets sold for twice as much.
This looks a lot like a bubble. A similar rapid price increase happened in early 2021 after Dr. Seuss’s estate announced that it would no longer publish some books with racially insensitive illustrations. Those books sold like hotcakes for a while and then the market cooled down again. I kept statistics for the week following the announcement: $800,000 in Dr. Seuss sales on eBay in seven days. The most recent seven day total is $10,000.3
Entertaining will probably drop in price—it’s objectively not a scarce book if two hundred copies sell on eBay in a single week. However, an argument can be made that Entertaining was undervalued for a long time and that signed copies have never been common. $1750 seems like a lot, but I could make a case for $450 as a reasonable price, with the expectation that it would go higher over time as Martha Stewart’s reputation and legacy solidify.
Julia Child co-wrote Mastering the Art of French Cooking before she had a TV show, but the book wasn’t widely collected until the book Julie and Julia and the film of the same name reminded people what an influence she had been. The Ahearns’ Book Collecting 20004, a guide to first books with a record of historical prices going back to 1985 doesn’t even list the book. The Ahearns estitmated Mastering at $1250 in their 2011 price guide. No copies of the book appear in the auction records before Julie and Julia came out, which is further evidence that the book wasn’t really on collectors’ radar. Since then, prices of Mastering have held firm or even increased, particularly for signed copies. It could well happen again with Martha Stewart’s Entertaining. Only time and the buying decisions of hundreds of collectors will tell.
If you are still interested in this topic, check out Eater’s Martha Stewart Has 99 Books: Do People Collect Them?
Just to head off readers who want to complain that I’m writing about eBay again, I’ll point out that the site is the only one that provides records of sales, which makes it invaluable for essays like this.
Anthony Bourdain, another TV food celebrity, is one of the few exceptions. Signed copies of his books are very sought-after.
I calculated the Dr. Seuss totals using eBay’s product research tool, which, for example, reports 708 Seuss books sold in the last week for an average of $13.80 each.
My thanks to the member of the Independent Online Booksellers Association (IOBA) who looked this up for me.