Chef’s cookbook tops 2017 sales charts

Home-cooking proponent Chelsea Winter’s latest book has topped the sales charts for 2017.

Her fifth cookbook, Eat, was the highest-selling book title in New Zealand last year, grossing $1.1 million in sales, according to Nielsen BookScan.

Winter has a massive social media following, thanks in part to her winning turn on the third series of MasterChef. She is known for a down-to-earth approach to cooking – and a love for old-fashioned ingredients like butter and white sugar.

In October she told Stuff: ‘‘ I don’t want to be preachy, and I don’t think I’m better than anyone else with what I cook.

‘‘I try and keep my cookbooks pretty simple – they’ve got an intro at the front, which basically says: ‘‘Eat home-cooked food as much as you can, and you’re on the right track’’, and I have some photos of me doing what I do, wearing my normal clothes.’’

Promoting Eat, she promises ‘‘no fancy stuff, complicated instructions or hard-to-find ingredients – just real food with real flavour, made with love, for you’’.

Total book sales last year were $122.1m.

Of those, 47 per cent were nonfiction, 29 per cent children’s books and 24 per cent fiction.

The highest-selling author by value was British children’s writer and comedian David Walliams, who sold $1.5m worth of books in New Zealand last year.