Cooking Up Success: The TikTok Personality Behind a Bestselling Self-Published Book

Every month, I compile three bestseller lists that showcase what books are currently selling through online retail, using Bookstat data.

Two of these lists focus on self-published books exclusively (print format and ebook format), and a third list looks at both traditionally published books and self-published books (print format), but excludes Big Five publishers and other major houses. I call it “Hidden Gems.”

All of these lists tend to put self-published authors front and center, authors who often miss out on appearing on national bestseller lists. Too often that’s because their sales are online-driven or ebook-driven, not because they don’t have sufficient sales. (For example, the New York Times won’t list a book if it’s sold and distributed only through online retail.)

On the July 2024 list, I noticed a new author and title I had never seen before: Matthew Bounds, author of Keep It Simple, Y’all. The book hit #2 on Hidden Gems, and #1 on the self-published print bestseller list.

I immediately searched for Matthew Bounds online and saw that he has a combined following of millions across TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook—built in just a couple years. And I discovered that Keep It Simple Y’all is not his first book, it’s his second. He’s known informally as Your Barefoot Neighbor and is based in Gulfport, Mississippi.

I reached out to Matthew to ask if he’d be willing to talk about his journey and the publication of these two cookbooks. He graciously agreed.

Update: Matthew struck a deal with a Big Five publisher for his work not long after this interview.

So to start from the beginning, I gather from your social media posts that you started all this during the pandemic. Is that correct?

No, I was a little late to the game. All the people who kind of got popular during COVID started in 2020. I didn’t get started until 2022, it was about two years ago. Because actually, after the 2020 election, I was like, I need a break. And I completely deleted all my social media apps. I got rid of everything. I spent over a year just completely off the grid. I read a ton of books, did a whole lot of stuff for myself.

In spring 2022 a friend of mine was like, Hey, I started the TikTok channel for my French Bulldog. Can you go make a TikTok account so you can heart my videos and stuff? I was like, yeah, absolutely. So I went and I made a TikTok account. And that was the first social media account I had made since I got rid of everything. And it did not take me long to get the itch.

What did you start posting on TikTok?

I was posting DIY content, projects I was working on around the house, yard work. I was building a fence, so I was posting footage of that. I was goofing around, doing the trending audio and stuff.

I was also learning to cook. That was my project during the pandemic. I was 39 years old, and I had never learned how. But I had not planned on having a cooking channel, because I can’t cook.

One night, I posted what I was making for dinner, and a few people seemed a little interested. I didn’t even talk through it. I literally just got shots of what I was doing and put music over it. So I did it again. And then I started doing voice overs, saying what I was doing. A few of those popped off and went really viral. So I was doing that more and more.

Your handle is Your Barefoot Neighbor—has that always been the case?

Yeah, when I started that first TikTok account, I had to come up with a username, and I wasn’t officially planning then. Again, I was just getting on there to support my friend. I didn’t know if I was going to make content or not, but I guess I had the foresight to know that if I wanted to make content at some point, I needed a good handle. It was gonna be yard work and DIY, and I just wanted something really casual, approachable and fun. And so I came up with Your Barefoot Neighbor. But now that I cook, people think it’s a play on Barefoot Contessa. It’s not, but it kind of works both ways, I guess.

Tell me about your first book, Come Fix You a Plate—how did that happen?

Last February [2023], a friend of mine called me and she said, “Hey, there’s this printer-publisher, and they’re wanting creators to sign on. They’re gonna make a book for you, I’ve already done one. I told them you would do it. I’m not asking, I’m telling you, you’re good. You’re going to do it. They’re going to call you today, just say yes.” And I was like, All right, cool, yeah, let’s do it.

This is the company Found?

Yeah, they called me and we wrote it in like six weeks. In May 2023, that one launched, and that’s when I got serious. I was like, Okay, I guess I’m officially a cooking show. So, that’s what I did all last year and then this year.

Six weeks to publish a book, that is blazingly fast. Did you just take existing recipes that you had, or did you have to create more on the spot?

Found told me they wanted 50 recipes. I literally got off the phone with them, and I just sat down and started writing everything. There was no theme. It was just, what have I made that’s going viral, right? What’s easy that I know how to do?

I called my mom. I said, Hey, give me your pound cake recipe. There’s a recipe of my mother-in-law’s in there that she always makes. It was a lot of stuff that I already knew. And there were a few fillers because I gotta get 50. Like the stuffed bell pepper recipe. I’m not a big stuffed pepper fan, but, recently, for some weird reason I’ll go through phases where I’m just getting all these people commenting about the same thing they want. And all these people have been commenting and wanting a stuffed bell pepper recipe. I don’t eat stuffed bell peppers. So I was like, OK, you know what? It’s going in the book. I’m gonna come up with a stuffed bell pepper recipe.

There were a ton of typos, because [Found] is more of a printer than a publisher. The appeal is you get it out quickly, but you better double-check yourself, because they’re not editing. They’re going to copy what you send them, and they’re going to put it in the book, and it’s going to go out. I mean, they really have a good model for social media, because social media is fast. If you’re on the upward trend and you’re climbing and you got videos going viral, you know, it’s great, because they can get a book out as fast as you can send them material, and you can ride that wave. So it worked for me at the time. It was perfect.

They send you regular sales reports?

I get one every two hours, so it’s pretty cool. I’m very much a numbers person. When I’m doing big pushes, or I’m trying to hit a goal, it’s really cool to see real-time numbers coming in.

If you wanted to do this book on your own, could you? Do they take any rights?

The contract was for 12 months. After that, you can just take it and go do what you want with it. So I’m past my year mark. At any point, I can just pull my book and redo it myself if I want to.

Found doesn’t sell any place except through their site, correct?

Yeah, that’s one of the big reasons I did the second book myself. Found was great for me when my following on social media was one-tenth of what it is now, so I was pretty much a nobody. They gave me a shot, and that was really great of them. For me to have had such a small audience, and I’ve sold 80,000 copies in a year, I mean, that’s outstanding considering that it’s only available at that one link. [Editor’s note: Matthew later emailed with a more accurate figure: 78,634 copies sold]

Yes, it is! For your second book, Keep It Simple Y’All, that’s just you self-publishing?

This year came around, and I’m literally 10 times the size [on social media]. And I’ve done a TED talk, and I get invited all these places, I go speak at events. I’m always meeting people, and they’re like, “Oh, you have a cookbook. What’s the name of it?” And they open up Amazon, and I’m like, Yeah, so you can’t get it on Amazon, you can only get it at this one place. And I got really tired of having to explain it. I need something that’s really easy for people to find. And so I did it myself.

How many have you sold?

I don’t know the exact number, but between 35,000 and 36,000. We’ve done almost 6,000 in August so far. That’s not too shabby for me. I don’t know what industry standard is, but for me, I’m over the moon.

That puts you at the top of the traditional industry, too! I notice there have been some bad actors mimicking your book or trying to trick people into buying a book that’s not actually yours. That must be very frustrating.

It’s extremely frustrating. It really got to me at first, but I kind of hit a point where I’ve talked about it so much. I put direct links to my book, everywhere, and I’ve posted it a million times. If someone gets scammed at this point, it’s on them. I can’t be responsible for every single purchase. If you look it up on Amazon, it comes right up and it’s got 600 reviews, so I feel like any reasonable person should be able to tell.

There’s a ton of fake Facebook pages that impersonate me, and I do my best to keep up with everything. But at some point people just have to use some common sense. Obviously I am not going to be messaging you, asking you to go buy $125 in Walgreens gift cards. Like, why would I do that?

Do you see much difference in the type of audience you’re attracting on each platform? Stereotypically we say Facebook is older, TikTok is younger. Do you see that come through?

Yeah, my TikTok analytics say that my average viewer is between 34 and 44 or about my age. They seem to trend younger or more progressive, more technologically savvy than my Facebook crowd. On Facebook, they’re the ones where you have to hold their hand and explain, “This is a scam.” The TikTok crowd just seems to get it, they know how to differentiate.

Is this now your full-time living?

It is, I went full time a year ago, last August. I took a two-week break from my job. I was an insurance adjuster, and I was on the customer experience side of it, and I was in between projects. So my boss was like, “Hey, if you want to go focus on your social media for a couple weeks, and then just call me and let me know how you feel.” And on day one, I was like, I’m never going back to work.

Do the books make up a good portion of the income? Or is it gravy?

The books are definitely bread and butter. The books are the biggest part of my income. My day-to-day money is mostly social media income, Facebook money, TikTok money, sponsorships and stuff like that.

I haven’t had time to watch your TED talk, but I was really intrigued by the title of “The Recipe for Aggressively Positive Online Communities.” It’s obviously a philosophy that’s guided you and has led to success. Could you give us the one-minute version of that talk?

The recipe for aggressively positive online communities started out by saying, “Give me a stick of butter and a casserole dish. In less than five minutes a day, I’ll build an active, engaged online community.”

The whole talk is about how social media is what you make it. And if you are determined to have a positive experience, you will attract a positive audience. And there’s also a bit in there where I talk about how I’ve been called an aggressive, swearing Mr. Rogers. And I really love it. I might be kind, but I’m not always nice, and I do cuss a little bit, and I’m very quick to set the tone and tell people what the boundaries are. I think that’s really important. You do have to stand up and kind of snap back at people a little bit and let them know what will and will not fly.

Parting advice?

If anybody is reading this, just do it. It’s never going to be perfect. It’s never going to feel like the right time. You’re going to think of 100 other things you should have done differently after you hit the publish button. But just get it out. Just get it out there, because it’s not doing you any good sitting on your computer. Upload it, get it out there. It’s gonna have typos. You misspelled something, Amazon’s gonna send out literally thousands of copies that are missing pages 72 and 73, but it’s out there, and you don’t know who’s gonna see it, or who’s gonna hear about it or read it or want something more from you. None of that’s going to happen if you don’t just get it out there.

Thank you so much, Matthew.

Jane Friedman

Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.

Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.