jane@eatyourbooks

I don't get to eat out in London as often as I'd like (I'm a Londoner tranplanted to the US) but I have fond memories of the fantastic set lunch at Tom Aikens in Chelsea. Though I just looked at their website and it doesn't seem quite the bargain it used to be. I remember it being under £30, whereas now the 1 hour business lunch is £39 (2 courses plus petits fours) and the tasting menu is £49 (5 courses plus petits fours). So not such a bargain as some of the others listed but the food is exceptional.

So you would divide up the chapters between you? I'll have to think how that would work. The recipes have to be in a sort order so they appear in the same order as they are in the book. Yes, we know the quality control aspect will be critical. We will have to do a lot of proofreading!

We are hoping that once we open up the indexing to member volunteers that more of the less "popular" books will get indexed. We obviously had to make our priority the cookbooks that the most members want indexed. But it was never our intention to just index recent books - our indexed books are mainly from the 80's up to date, with a few from the 60s and 70s. The problem with vintage collections is that the number of people owning each book is bound to be smaller. It is very expensive to index each book so it's not possible to index every book that EYB members own. That is hopefully where members will get involved - and as we expand our membership there will more members with older collections who will share in the workload. So you shouldn't have to index all your books to access the recipes. Though it actually is quite fun indexing the books - you get to know them really well. Although at the moment we just list books with ISBNs we will in the future be opening up the EYB Library so members can add books without ISBNs as well as foreign language books (not sure we will have foreign language ingredients though). We are still in beta, so we have a to-do list a mile long of improvements we want to make to the site. So I can't give you a date when the pre-ISBN imports will happen, but it will be done.

We use a combination of index requests and the numbers on members' Bookshelves when compiling our indexing chart. So the fact you have added a book to your Bookshelf will move it up the chart but if it's something you really want indexed then doing an index request will help more. Yes, we know it is clunky - it will be much better when the new site goes live in a few weeks. You don't have to send the email - just clicking the button sends the index request through to us. With the new site the index request will gray-out so you know you have already requested that book.

We're not set up for members to add new books. But we do have a Books Import feature that lets you import ISBNs. Any books that are not in the Library are being added to a list that we will add when we set up affiliations with other booksellers in the next couple of months. When they get added to the Library they will automatically go onto your Bookshelf.

You can have any tags you like by going to Classifications and clicking Add New Categories. Once you have set up "Tried" as a category it can be added to any recipe you want. The whole tags system is going to be greatly improved in the new site version launching in a few weeks. There will be a Bookmarks button for every book and recipe that will allow you to enter any tags there - Favorites, Do Laters, Menus, Locations, etc.

Where the book has been revised or updated we do not link them and if they are popular enough we will index each edition. So for Joy of Cooking we have so far indexed the 1975 7th edition and the 75th Anniversary edition from 2006. We have assigned the 1997 8th edition to an indexer but it is going to take a while to complete - those books are monsters.

Indexing rates vary enormously according to how complex the recipes are - if there are foreign names, lots of ingredients, confusing layouts, etc it takes far longer than a simple recipe per page with a straightforward ingredients list. We estimate that indexers should be able to enter between 50 and 100 per hour. We try to vary the complexity of books and subject matters for them.

This is a great topic. Since there are so many questions raised about how EYB works I thought I should jump in with some answers. We are launching a new version of the website in the next few weeks which will have a much better user interface and resolve a lot of the niggles with the current searches. Escoffier's Guide to Modern Cookery is on our indexing list. Books move higher up the list, the more members who own it. So cocktail books will get indexed, as long as enough members own them. Catalan Cuisine and the Culinaria books are already high up on the indexing list so should appear in the next couple of months. We have indexed quite a few UK versions of the most popular cookbooks (Nigella, Jamie, Delia, Nigel, Madhur, Ottolenghi, etc) and will be indexing a lot more as we get closer to launching the website in the UK. In the same way we have indexed the most internationally available Australian books (Stephanie, Maggie, Bill, Donna, etc) and will be doing a lot more in coming months. In any event, if you search for recipes in the US indexed versions the search recognizes the UK/Aus version of the ingredient name. So search for courgettes, you will get all results for zucchini (and vice versa). We do not list page numbers as there can be many different editions with different page layouts and hence page numbers. When we index one edition of a cookbook we link it to all other editions so no matter which one you own, the recipes will appear in your searches. If we entered the page numbers for the edition we indexed it could be wrong for the other editions. I'm happy to answer any questions about how EYB operates.