When Lisa Ekus was awarded the Guinness World Record in 2019 for owning the most cookbooks — 4,239, according to the records — she was honored, but she knew this award was only representative of a moment in her collecting. She estimates that her personal collection is now somewhere closer to 7,000 cookbooks. She says her personal library, devoted almost entirely to cookbooks, “will be and is in progress,” for her whole life.
Her vast collection of books is organized primarily by regional cuisine and lines the walls of the addition she had built onto her 200-plus-year-old farmhouse some 30 years ago. There is a section for French food (including a whole shelf devoted to Julia Child), Japanese food, food from Louisiana, Pennsylvania (which includes an Amish cookbook section), and, of course, New England. There are shelves devoted to vegan cookbooks, vegetarian cookbooks, and gluten-free cookbooks.
There is even a section devoted to books written by authors that her publishing agency, the Ekus Group, represents. She gives them the special honor of being directly next to her kitchen. Inside the kitchen and scattered across her home are, somehow, even more cookbooks.
Lisa Ekus says that she finds a way to explore the recipes in nearly all of her cookbooks. One book, “Cooking for the Weekend” by Michael McGloughlin, holds a special place in her heart. She says that this book was the most influential in her cooking journey, second only to her experiences cooking with her mom.
Lisa Ekus and her daughter, Sally Ekus, agree that for members of their family, cooking together is an essential activity. Lisa Ekus says that her family “lives to eat” rather than eating only as a routine activity to get through the day. Both mother and daughter can recall many memories of cooking together, from making homemade soft pretzels to sharing comfort food; a chicken and cheese dish which Sally Ekus recalls with vivid detail, noting that she “can still taste that memory.”
Mother and daughter share their love for food, cooking, and representing passionate authors on a more logistical level as well. Lisa Ekus officially retired from her position as head of the Ekus Group a few months ago and Sally Ekus has since taken over.
Though the Ekus Group has operated out of Lisa Ekus’s home in Hatfield for 41 years, it has gone through many internal shifts. She was inspired to launch the company after leaving her previous job at Crown Publishers in New York City. Over the years, the Ekus Group has transitioned from public relations work to an agency representing authors. Today, the agency does everything from scouting authors, editing and promoting books.
Sally Ekus did not begin her career with the intention of taking over her mother’s company. She was planning on attending a master’s program for social work when she deferred and moved back to Hatfield. She began to help out with the Ekus Group and suddenly realized that she had been “informally training for this” her whole life. During a month when her mother was recovering from a full knee replacement surgery, Sally Ekus took on two big projects for the Group, pitching two meatless cookbooks to publishers. Though she was still operating under her mother’s advice, it was this experience that made Sally Ekus realize that she loved the publishing industry.
Since then, Sally Ekus has designed the online course “How to Publish a Cookbook” for clients of the Ekus Group, and spent more time seeking out authors through social media. The elder Ekus admits that her daughter has skills that she lacks when it comes to parsing through the depths of social media to scout emerging authors.
When Lisa and Sally Ekus began discussing the passing of the baton a few years ago, it was never an expectation that Sally Ekus would maintain exactly what her mother had cultivated. In fact, Lisa Ekus said that she “was hoping she (Sally) wouldn’t continue on the way I would do it.” Though Sally Ekus asserts that the Ekus Group “will always have a culinary focus,” she is open to exploring new and related niches, such as lifestyle or gardening.
Recently, Sally Ekus successfully pitched the book “Tiny Humans Big Emotions” by Alyssa Blask Campbell and Lauren Stauble (the latter is a local author who lives in Holyoke).
For Sally and Lisa Ekus, family life and professional life will always intersect. Lisa Ekus explained that while she was running her company out of her home, she might have been on a work call signing a new client while her kids watched a movie in the next room over. She also said that being able to work at home was unusual for a mother at the end of the 20th century. She credits the “warm, personal” environment of western Massachusetts for her ability to be both a mother and a businesswoman.
“There’s no place I’d rather be,” she said.