Subscription for epicurious.com and Bon Appétit?!

[JeanneCake]

I went looking for a recipe (google) just a moment ago, and learned that epicurious is now a subscription only service - $40/annually or $5/month.

When did this happen?!

 

I don't know that I want to spend $40 a year just to access recipes but I'm going to miss the winter root vegetables with dill recipe, and the brussels sprouts with chestnuts (I never use the chestnuts but this is a great recipe).  At least I have the Havana Moon Chili recipe....

 

[Kim Shook]

I have this problem with Cooks Illustrated.  Sometimes I can get around it by doing a general Google search for the recipe if I know the name (usually from one of the TV shows).  A lot of people who have blogs will make the recipes and post them.  Might help.

[gfweb]

I discovered this a few weeks ago.  Outrageous. I subscribed to BA and Gourmet for 30 yrs and helped finance the content on the site behind that paywall. 

 

Screw them. 

 

[Kerala]

I was just on The Guardian website looking at Porchetta recipes, and it led me to a questionnaire asking if I would pay to use a Guardian Food app. We're generally happy to pay for cookbooks, so why not for massive online content? I guess we're just used to free online information.

[gfweb]

Just now, Kerala said:

I was just on The Guardian website looking at Porchetta recipes, and it led me to a questionnaire asking if I would pay to use a Guardian Food app. We're generally happy to pay for cookbooks, so why not for massive online content? I guess we're just used to free online information.

But Epicurious isn't new content. Its the recipes from bonap and gourmet. I bought them once already. 

[Kerala]

Sorry@gfweb

My comment was being typed while you posted your first response. It does sound like they haven't treated you fairly.

I don't know epicurious. I was really reflecting on my own reluctance to pay for online content.

[JeanneCake]

That's what I'm thinking.  I subscribed to the magazines for years and I could probably try to find the (very dusty) boxes of magazines I kept ......   I don't object to subscriptions, - I don't mind paying for new content or updated content but this isn't it.  I'd be paying for their upkeep (which I am sure isn't cheap) but keep what's been free, free, and charge for the new stuff......

[TdeV]

I'm a subscriber to The Guardian and Washington Post, so I expect to get that content "for free." I'll let you know if it ain't so.

[kayb]

Oh, no…there goes my chicken liver pate recipe!

[Nyleve Baar]

I have the Epicurious iPhone/ipad app and it still seems to be working as usual. Should I expect this to be affected as well?

[blue_dolphin]

17 hours ago, JeanneCake said:

I don't know that I want to spend $40 a year just to access recipes but I'm going to miss the winter root vegetables with dill recipe, and the brussels sprouts with chestnuts (I never use the chestnuts but this is a great recipe).  At least I have the Havana Moon Chili recipe....

 

From what I can tell, the site is allowing 3 recipe views before requiring a subscription.  If there are a few recipes you want to grab, you can delete your browser's Bon Appetit and Epicurious cookies, use another browser or use another device. 

 

I don't expect everything to be free but $40/year is too much. 

[gfweb]

19 minutes ago, blue_dolphin said:

 

 

 

I don't expect everything to be free but $40/year is too much. 

 

Especially when I already bought it in print form.  Grrr.

[Maison Rustique]

Thankfully, when I find a recipe online that I like, I save a copy of it on my PC, so if I had a favorite recipe for something, I've still got it. I stopped subscribing to BA a while back as I found little of interest in their newer format. They obviously target a vastly different audience than 69 year old women.

[ElsieD]

2 hours ago, Maison Rustique said:

Thankfully, when I find a recipe online that I like, I save a copy of it on my PC, so if I had a favorite recipe for something, I've still got it. I stopped subscribing to BA a while back as I found little of interest in their newer format. They obviously target a vastly different audience than 69 year old women.

 

I do/did the same thing.  I really liked Gourmet magazine, I was a subscriber for years.  I used to get Bob Appétit also, but like you, I lost interest in it.  I don't have any interest in subscribing to Epicurious, at least not at this time.  

 

[Dave the Cook]

It's possible -- probable, even -- that when you first purchased your subscription to Bon Appetit/the NYT/F&W/whatever, they didn't even have recipes on line. In those days, the money from your subscription paid to develop a recipe. The publisher wrote it, tested it, printed it and mailed it to you. That was their end of the deal, and if you wanted to save the recipe in some other form, that was on you.  Dogear it, clip it and put it in a scrapbook, photocopy it -- they didn't really care. They got their money, you got your recipe. Done.

 

Then the world wide web came along, and its adoption seemed to create an obligation on the publisher's part to make their content available 24/7, because on the internet, everything ought to always be free. But these things are not free: computers, server space, software licenses, editorial support, people and technology to extract content from its pre-internet format and put it on a pretty web page, indexed, secure, and searchable. At the same time, the web robbed publishers of their unique selling proposition: that they could create recipes more reliable and more beautiful than anyone else. There are two things to be said about this: One, they didn't see this coming, and that might be their fault; Two, now anyone with the time and money (much less time and much less money than publishers needed, because the barriers to entry were simultaneously lowered) could become, at least for a time, a food-and-cooking authority. Meanwhile, readers decide that publishers are no longer holding up their end on the print side, so they let their subscriptions lapse -- the publisher loses the subscription money and the substantial advertising income that print editions command. 

 

To put it very, very bluntly: people feel like the recipes that they helped pay to develop should be available in perpetuity and in a form convenient to them, but they don't want to help pay for that upkeep, let alone pay to develop any more content. Publishers' obligations have increased, yet folks decline to cover the costs of what they want -- nay, what they say they deserve.
 

[Annie_H]

5-6 years ago I won a subscription to FineCooking. A vegetable lasagna recipe. They forgot that they were paying for it for years, then cut me off eventually. 

I don't miss it but did enjoy the freebie. My car guy for simple oil changes has a massive magazine stack while waiting. I was so impressed by one I asked to take it. (His wife gets all of them)..."take it!". No, I don't miss hard copies but have saved a few classics. 

I have a few thanksgiving FoodAndWine I saved when we moved. The rest I took to the post office that has a share table. Books and such and they appreciate the NewYorker.

 

 

[ElsieD]

1 hour ago, Dave the Cook said:

It's possible -- probable, even -- that when you first purchased your subscription to Bon Appetit/the NYT/F&W/whatever, they didn't even have recipes on line. In those days, the money from your subscription paid to develop a recipe. The publisher wrote it, tested it, printed it and mailed it to you. That was their end of the deal, and if you wanted to save the recipe in some other form, that was on you.  Dogear it, clip it and put it in a scrapbook, photocopy it -- they didn't really care. They got their money, you got your recipe. Done.

 

Then the world wide web came along, and its adoption seemed to create an obligation on the publisher's part to make their content available 24/7, because on the internet, everything ought to always be free. But these things are not free: computers, server space, software licenses, editorial support, people and technology to extract content from its pre-internet format and put it on a pretty web page, indexed, secure, and searchable. At the same time, the web robbed publishers of their unique selling proposition: that they could create recipes more reliable and more beautiful than anyone else. There are two things to be said about this: One, they didn't see this coming, and that might be their fault; Two, now anyone with the time and money (much less time and much less money than publishers needed, because the barriers to entry were simultaneously lowered) could become, at least for a time, a food-and-cooking authority. Meanwhile, readers decide that publishers are no longer holding up their end on the print side, so they let their subscriptions lapse -- the publisher loses the subscription money and the substantial advertising income that print editions command. 

 

To put it very, very bluntly: people feel like the recipes that they helped pay to develop should be available in perpetuity and in a form convenient to them, but they don't want to help pay for that upkeep, let alone pay to develop any more content. Publishers obligations have increased, yet folks decline to cover the costs of what they want -- nay, what they say they deserve.
 

 

Well put.  I hadn't quite thought it through.

[Dave the Cook]

Thanks, @ElsieD. All I want if for peeps to think things through like you have. Look around you, even at just eGullet -- none of this happens without effort, money (some of it yours, thankyouverymuch) -- and good will.

[Kim Shook]

On 3/25/2022 at 11:32 AM, Nyleve Baar said:

I have the Epicurious iPhone/ipad app and it still seems to be working as usual. Should I expect this to be affected as well?

You can't copy and paste, though.  I just tried to do it with @kayb's pate recipe and it blacked it out.  

[ElsieD]

1 hour ago, Kim Shook said:

You can't copy and paste, though.  I just tried to do it with @kayb's pate recipe and it blacked it out.  

 

That is also annoyingly true of the NY Times Food unless you are an Apple user.

[kayb]

13 hours ago, Kim Shook said:

You can't copy and paste, though.  I just tried to do it with @kayb's pate recipe and it blacked it out.  

I discovered I had in fact saved it several years ago. Whew! Don’t make it often, but it’s the only recipe I like.

[gfweb]

18 hours ago, Dave the Cook said:

It's possible -- probable, even -- that when you first purchased your subscription to Bon Appetit/the NYT/F&W/whatever, they didn't even have recipes on line. In those days, the money from your subscription paid to develop a recipe. The publisher wrote it, tested it, printed it and mailed it to you. That was their end of the deal, and if you wanted to save the recipe in some other form, that was on you.  Dogear it, clip it and put it in a scrapbook, photocopy it -- they didn't really care. They got their money, you got your recipe. Done.

 

Then the world wide web came along, and its adoption seemed to create an obligation on the publisher's part to make their content available 24/7, because on the internet, everything ought to always be free. But these things are not free: computers, server space, software licenses, editorial support, people and technology to extract content from its pre-internet format and put it on a pretty web page, indexed, secure, and searchable. At the same time, the web robbed publishers of their unique selling proposition: that they could create recipes more reliable and more beautiful than anyone else. There are two things to be said about this: One, they didn't see this coming, and that might be their fault; Two, now anyone with the time and money (much less time and much less money than publishers needed, because the barriers to entry were simultaneously lowered) could become, at least for a time, a food-and-cooking authority. Meanwhile, readers decide that publishers are no longer holding up their end on the print side, so they let their subscriptions lapse -- the publisher loses the subscription money and the substantial advertising income that print editions command. 

 

To put it very, very bluntly: people feel like the recipes that they helped pay to develop should be available in perpetuity and in a form convenient to them, but they don't want to help pay for that upkeep, let alone pay to develop any more content. Publishers' obligations have increased, yet folks decline to cover the costs of what they want -- nay, what they say they deserve.
 

 

That is exactly what I'm saying.

My share of what the yearly fee would be for the web archiving is far far lower than what they are charging, which if I recall correctly is more than a magazine subscription.

So something is wrong about this

[ElsieD]

I broke down and took out a subscription.  I looked for an ice cream recipe I have made in the past which I could not find, but I did find another one.   It was incomplete as it listed one ingredient that was not mentioned in the instructions and only part of another ingredient was mentioned.  Worse, these omissions was mentioned a few times in the comments sections but the recipe was never amended.  The dates of the comments ranged from 2017 to 2022.  I would have thought Epicurious would have fixed it.  Do they even bother looking at the comments?  Kind of disappointing.  

 

 

 

Edited March 30, 2022 by ElsieD (log)

[ElsieD]

I wrote to them and this is part of the message they sent:

 

"The recipe you mention was removed by our team as soon as we saw that there were errors in it. We want you to know that we are constantly reviewing our website in order to bring you the most updated and accurate recipes."

 

And remove it they did.  Full marks for a speedy reply.  I did ask if anyone read the comments on their recipes but that wasn't answered.  I'd still like to know.

[BetD]

On 3/27/2022 at 7:58 PM, Kim Shook said:

You can't copy and paste, though.  I just tried to do it with @kayb's pate recipe and it blacked it out.  

Try taking screen shots and printing those.