agray

There's an interesting article about some of this on Publisher's Weekly. To paraphrase: sales of cookbooks and food-related titles are up at least 4% this year so far, while sales of adult fiction overall dropped by 9%. So books are still going strong, and interestingly there are some complementary things going on electronically - so not necessarily a replacement by ebooks or the web (not yet anyway). There are more and more food and cooking related websites out there (the article mentions several sponsored by publishers: the Mixing Bowl and Delish websites, as well as cookbook trailers and some experiments with video websites by the likes of Molly Katzen). In terms of e-books, things are just getting started, but Kindle cookbooks are coming (if they're not here yet), and there is talk of enhanced books too, with video content, in the future. http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6675427.html For my own part, I love the form of the cookbook - the heft and authority of it, the photography, the ability (as others have mentioned) to sit in an easy chair and page through them. Plus the resistance to the grease stains and spills of the kitchen is hard to beat. But I also adore the ease of use of the Internet. Being able to search quickly through thousands of recipes is a compelling counterpoint to the durability and form of the paper cookbook. I actually thought about this a lot a couple of years ago, and decided to try to do something about it. I wanted, as OliverB mentions, a way to use my cookbooks like I'd use something like Epicurious. After kicking ideas around for a while, I started a website (link in my signature line) that lets people catalogue their cookbooks and food magazines and rate and review the recipes individually. The idea being that you'd write all your notes on the site and then you could search through them later: find recipes quickly. As more people use it, eventually we'll get complete indexes of most books, rated and ranked so you could get ideas about what you haven't cooked yet. It's about a month old now. I do hope that cookbooks don't vanish, and I really don't think they will, but I'm very curious to see what new technology will bring; multimedia, connections to other people with interesting tastes, community - all these things could very much enhance the cookbook without diminishing it.

That's unfortunate indeed; I'll note this on the page. Another one who was initially on my list (Books for Cooks, in London, Canada) emailed me to let me know they are also closing this year. I wonder how many of the ones in my 'vanished stores' list were knocked out by online competition? Apparently Cook's Library closed due to loss of sales. The LA Times wrote: "She and her staff might spend 30 minutes with a customer, she says, only to have them write down the recommendations and leave — to buy the books over the Internet". I know people want to save money, but that's terrible behaviour...

I'm resurrecting this topic as I was frustrated by the lack of a good list of cookbook stores, and I needed one for my website. I've spent the last week or two combing through every listing I could find and I've put together what I think is a comprehensive list of every specialty cookbook store in the world. The Sally's Place link posted by the Original Poster is seriously out-of-date, but was a useful starting point. I'd love to be corrected or find new ones to put on there, so anyone who wants to make suggestions, please do. I've put a list of defunct stores at the bottom of the page (ones I know to be gone or which I couldn't confirm). http://www.cookbooker.com/bookstores.php

I've become quite wary of the restaurant cookbook - though there are some fine examples of the form out there, and as was mentioned before in this thread, they're not for everyone; certainly not for home cooks who want something fairly straightforward and reliable. I also have a suspicion that some of them are rushed out, that sometimes preparation steps are omitted or recipe testing is not given as high a priority as it is with more 'regular' cookbooks. I was a big fan of Lumiere restaurant in Vancouver a number of years back and happily picked up Rob Feenie's "Lumiere" when it came out, but was quite disappointed in the lack of success I had with several of the recipes, and the sheer complexity of some of them. Conversely, around about the same time, I found that John Bishop's "Bishop's: the Restaurant" was an excellent example of the form. Yes, the recipes were often complex, but they were very clearly explained and just seemed more well-tested and reliable for a home cook with aspirations...