New cookbook website ckbk

[chefmd]

Just came across this new website that seems to have features of Eat Your Books for free or you can upgrade to paid version and access full recipes.  It is not up yet but I signed up to be notified when it is launched.  I am probably interested in the free version.

 

https://www.ckbk.com/

[jane@eatyourbooks]

Hi chefmd - Eat Your Books has a free option as well. In fact you can search our database of 1.6 million recipes without even being a member. You need to be a member to create your own Bookshelf - for a free member that is up to 5 cookbooks/magazines and unlimited online recipes or with a Premium paid membership you can add as many cookbooks and magazines to your Bookshelf as you own.

[Okanagancook]

I did not realize there is a free option for EYB.  I will let a few friends interested in EYB know that.

With the great search features it is easy to find what you are looking for.

I wonder if the new website can match all the information and articles provided at EYB.

I go to the site daily to read their new articles.

Also, the membership is very active at making comments about recipes they have made.  I always check the notes section of recipes I am about to make to see what is said about it.

[blue_dolphin]

It seems to me that the site that @chefmd linked to is trying to replace individual user collections of cookbooks by licensing content of their own selection of cookbooks - their website says, "500+ licensed books with more than 100,000 recipes," much less than is indexed on EYB but it apparently includes the actual recipes.  

I think I read of it being called, "Spotify for food,"  or "Spotify for cookbooks."

 

1 hour ago, Okanagancook said:

Also, the membership is very active at making comments about recipes they have made.  I always check the notes section of recipes I am about to make to see what is said about it.

I really appreciate that feature and have been trying to be better about adding comments.

Edited April 8, 2018 by blue_dolphin
to add link (log)

[BetD]

I signed on to the free trial and half price offer this morning and will use an upcoming road trip to see how I like it. On first encounter, I am finding the navigation and browsing rather clunky. I am used to using cookbooks on my Kindle, and was expecting that look... not even close!  That being said, I will withhold my final verdict until I have given it a fair try out.

[blue_dolphin]

Earlier this year, Eat Your Books announced they had linked up with ckbk so that users could search both their own book collections and the books that ckbk offers, with direct links to the ckbk recipes. 

Both services offered some sort of discount to the subscribers of the other service. I decided to try a year's worth of ckbk (@ $29.99) and thought I'd share my early observations, mostly how it compares with my own collection. 

 

Initially, ckbk had not appealed to me.  I have plenty of cookbooks and like using them.  I enjoy reading the books, getting to "know" the author through stories and header notes and found the idea of being taken direct to a digital recipe less appealing than using my books.  I feel the same way about randomly searching the internet for recipes, though I do it sometimes.

 

I was quite curious to see what overlap existed between my cookbook collection and the ckbk offerings.  At present, I have 513 cookbooks, 125 of them are Kindle e-books, the others are hard copies. 

ckbk offers 751 books, 462 have been indexed on EYB.  The remaining 284 haven't been indexed on EYB yet so it would be necessary to search for their recipes directly on ckbk.  

Interestingly, only 17 of my 513 cookbooks are on ckbk.  This tells me that ckbk isn't going to replace my own collection any time soon.  On the other hand, with so little overlap, my ckbk subscription is mostly providing access to books I don't own.  This is at least in part because the ckbk selection skews towards UK publications and my own collection has more US authors. 

 

I thought ckbk might be a good way to sample new cookbooks that I was considering purchasing but I don't think that will be the case.  Of the 462 ckbk books that are indexed on EYB, only 21 of them were published between 2021 - 2023.  On the other hand, ckbk does offer access to a number of older and out-of-print books.  Sometimes you can find OOP books for a song, other times they can be hard to track down. 

 

ckbk has apps for mobile devices.  I've only played around with it a bit on my iPad. As with the browser interface, all the recipes are imported into a standard format.  Photos appear in a small-ish "thumbnail" that can be expanded with a click.  It seems adequate enough for accessing recipes while cooking but I'm not sure it offers any advantage to just using a browser.   For example, there's no way to increase the font size within the ckbk app, you need to use device settings or access ckbk via a browser and use browser tools to zoom in or out.  While ckbk has MFK Fisher's How to Cook a Wolf, (though none of her other books), the ckbk interface, either web or app, isn't where I want to read it. Neither are designed for the best reading experience IMO.

 

The browser interface for ckbk has a "print" button that could be a convenient way to get a copy I could mark up while cooking but the formatting on the recipes I tried printing was awful with a narrow column of text printed down the middle of 6 pages for one recipe and even shorter recipes broken up over multiple pages. 

 

I'm very familiar with EYB's search functions and ckbk seems awkward to me so clearly, I need to play around with ckbk a lot more to get familiar with it.  

 

Any ckbk users have any tips or experiences to share? 

 

 

[Okanagancook]

Thanks for your thoughts on this topic.  I do not think I need anything more than EYB.  As you do, I like using the cook books I have and do not like just using internet recipes unless they are from a very trusted source.  So much garbage out there.

 

I have not bought a lot of cook books in the last few years after I got ill.  I find I have to sift through all the comments on new books to see comments on the books I have at EYB.  Oh well.  I am getting old and really do not need any more books as I haven’t even cooked from quite a few books I have.

 

i have so many recipes saved on MacGourmet and in various note books I can’t possibly get to taste these before my time.  I am feeling stressed deciding what to cook…just the two of us and my mobility is bad so I have little in the way of energy expenditure.  Weight gain is something I do not want so it is difficult.  I am sure many of our older members are struggling with a reduction in Basal Metabolic Rate and physical activity.  The two components of the energy balance equation.  
 

I think recipe organization is an interesting topic and open to lots of discussion.

Edited August 26, 2023 by Okanagancook (log)

[Mjx]

On 8/24/2023 at 8:54 PM, blue_dolphin said:

Earlier this year, Eat Your Books announced they had linked up with ckbk so that users could search both their own book collections and the books that ckbk offers, with direct links to the ckbk recipes. 

Both services offered some sort of discount to the subscribers of the other service. I decided to try a year's worth of ckbk (@ $29.99) and thought I'd share my early observations, mostly how it compares with my own collection. 

 

Initially, ckbk had not appealed to me.  I have plenty of cookbooks and like using them.  I enjoy reading the books, getting to "know" the author through stories and header notes and found the idea of being taken direct to a digital recipe less appealing than using my books.  I feel the same way about randomly searching the internet for recipes, though I do it sometimes.

 

I was quite curious to see what overlap existed between my cookbook collection and the ckbk offerings.  At present, I have 513 cookbooks, 125 of them are Kindle e-books, the others are hard copies. 

ckbk offers 751 books, 462 have been indexed on EYB.  The remaining 284 haven't been indexed on EYB yet so it would be necessary to search for their recipes directly on ckbk.  

Interestingly, only 17 of my 513 cookbooks are on ckbk.  This tells me that ckbk isn't going to replace my own collection any time soon.  On the other hand, with so little overlap, my ckbk subscription is mostly providing access to books I don't own.  This is at least in part because the ckbk selection skews towards UK publications and my own collection has more US authors. 

 

I thought ckbk might be a good way to sample new cookbooks that I was considering purchasing but I don't think that will be the case.  Of the 462 ckbk books that are indexed on EYB, only 21 of them were published between 2021 - 2023.  On the other hand, ckbk does offer access to a number of older and out-of-print books.  Sometimes you can find OOP books for a song, other times they can be hard to track down. 

 

ckbk has apps for mobile devices.  I've only played around with it a bit on my iPad. As with the browser interface, all the recipes are imported into a standard format.  Photos appear in a small-ish "thumbnail" that can be expanded with a click.  It seems adequate enough for accessing recipes while cooking but I'm not sure it offers any advantage to just using a browser.   For example, there's no way to increase the font size within the ckbk app, you need to use device settings or access ckbk via a browser and use browser tools to zoom in or out.  While ckbk has MFK Fisher's How to Cook a Wolf, (though none of her other books), the ckbk interface, either web or app, isn't where I want to read it. Neither are designed for the best reading experience IMO.

 

The browser interface for ckbk has a "print" button that could be a convenient way to get a copy I could mark up while cooking but the formatting on the recipes I tried printing was awful with a narrow column of text printed down the middle of 6 pages for one recipe and even shorter recipes broken up over multiple pages. 

 

I'm very familiar with EYB's search functions and ckbk seems awkward to me so clearly, I need to play around with ckbk a lot more to get familiar with it.  

 

Any ckbk users have any tips or experiences to share? 

 

 

 

The owner of ckbk is an eGullet member, @mjcockerill and I'm hoping he'll weigh in, because I'm certain the feedback here would be useful to him, and contribute to offering a stronger product.