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Ebooks


jmridd

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Quick thought:

A lot of textbooks these days are going digital; the publishers offer a copy to download from their website at a lower cost. Do you think the same could or would or will happen with cookbooks? I think it would be wonderful if they did... just think about the database of recipes you could search through instantly on your computer...

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While I prefer the printed paper thing, I'd love it if at least the index and contents for books were available online in a way so that one could add them to a personal database. I often remember a recipe but not the book it was in.

Eventually the electronic readers will be better too, I'd rather not have my expensive laptop anywhere close to hot and wet things for now.

But I'm sure the future will bring that and there are wonderful possibilities. Links to instruction videos, printable shopping lists, cross references, a database of possible substitutes for that one thing I forgot to buy, etc. Also being able to highlight and add notes (which I don't like to do to my books - I use post it notes though), marking favorites etc.

Also updates and error corrections, additional chapters that were cut from the book for size reasons, a database of beverage suggestions (that could stay updated with new vintages/wineries/breweries etc [business idea!]) etc.

I love physical books, but I'm sure the future will be mostly electronic. And while my wall of cook books is nice, having one device that would contain all of them is intriguing for sure. As the publishers have all the books in electronic for anyways, also not that hard to deliver.

"And don't forget music - music in the kitchen is an essential ingredient!"

- Thomas Keller

Diablo Kitchen, my food blog

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I have the Kindle2 and a freebie download of the Cooks Illustrated How To Cookbook. It's a pretty good implementation, and of course searching is a piece of cake. But there seems to me to be something more "artistic" about a cookbook. More styling, design etc. than can be represented by text and gray scale pictures, for example.

All of that will be solved in future, I am sure though. For normal type reading, I :wub: my Kindle.

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Jon, I don't understand how you find recipes in the "Inside the Book" feature on Amazon. I have found that I can only see the cover flaps, the table of contents, and/or the index of recipes, and perhaps the first few pages of the book. Where do you find the recipes?

"My only regret in life is that I did not drink more Champagne."

John Maynard Keynes

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Jon, I don't understand how you find recipes in the "Inside the Book" feature on Amazon. I have found that I can only see the cover flaps, the table of contents, and/or the index of recipes, and perhaps the first few pages of the book. Where do you find the recipes?

Hullo Bella.

Yes, normalyl amazon just gives you access to front, back and a randon excerpt. However note that the "Search Inside The Book" allows you to search for a particular text string. The search result then gives you access to that page and a couple before and after it.

If you know you're looking for, say, "Black Cod" in the nobu cookbook that makes it pretty easy to track down a particular recipe as they are rarely more than a page or two.

I'm not sure what the copyright complexities are around this (maybe saving the pages amazon brings up is not permitted?), but I've used this quite successfully when I've been round my mums house and been trying to track down a recipe I know I have in one of my books at home.

Regards

J

More Cookbooks than Sense - my new Cookbook blog!
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I love my version 1.0 Kindle for normal reading but I don't think it is quite big enough to work from easily. Now with the Kindle DX they are solving that issue, but I still want to see color pictures in a cookbook.

Think about the ability to add more color photographs to a book without putting the cost through the roof! I want to know what a dish or item is supposed to look like, and having a few technique shots would really add value too. Remove the cost of full color printing on paper and you open up a lot of possibilities.

A lot of cookbooks are already digital in the MasterCook software, though probably not the ones you would be looking for.

I believe that once large format color readers become popular most cookbooks will go digital.

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You could take it one step further.

I've seen waterproof flatscreen TVs for outside which can be washed with a hose.

Why not have a flat-screen, touch-screen on the wall in your kitchen? It could link in to your recipes, photos of your recipes or else relevant e-books. Read from the screen mounted on your wall and save on bench space as well.

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You could take it one step further.

I've seen waterproof flatscreen TVs for outside which can be washed with a hose.

Why not have a flat-screen, touch-screen on the wall in your kitchen? It could link in to your recipes, photos of your recipes or else relevant e-books. Read from the screen mounted on your wall and save on bench space as well.

Love the idea but lack the wall space :hmmm:

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