The future of the cookbook
What makes a cookbook? It鈥檚 a curated collection of recipes, but so are . It can include stories or specialized cooking instruction, but so do . These days, it鈥檚 a hybrid, with modern apps and additions from to .
Small wonder that a cookbook conference is in the works to look at what their future holds.
鈥淲e so often think about text and photos. And so often now it鈥檚 becoming more than that,鈥� says Adam Salomone, associate publisher of Harvard Common Press, which is helping lay the groundwork for a 2012 conference in New York.
鈥淚t鈥檚 becoming video, audio, enhanced functionality 鈥� where you can (for instance) change serving sizes, engaging the community and seeing the content they produce. All of that stuff is not in our core toolkit of where we necessarily know what to do,鈥� Mr. Salomone says.
The Boston-based publisher, which specializes in cookbooks and parenting books, 鈥渉as known for a couple of years that we needed to think even beyond the book and the digital book,鈥� says publisher Bruce Shaw. It needs to figure out how to best make use of its 鈥渄atabase鈥� of 20,000 recipes from some 125 cookbooks, and figure out how people will want to read and use them in future years. (Harvard Common is already in , a recipe search and recommendation site.)
The traditional cookbook is hardly in immediate danger, with the US and a steady stream of new publications. But it鈥檚 time, say some in the industry, to figure out what鈥檚 possible with the technology that鈥檚 now available, and what readers want.
How did Harvard Common get involved? In an old-media-new-media mashup. They met award-winning through a , which brought them together with .
They鈥檇 like publishers and authors to be involved in the conference, agents and bloggers and food magazines. 鈥淓verybody is really trying to figure this out.鈥�
What do you get from a cookbook that you don鈥檛 already get from blogs or recipe sites?
Seattle writer Rebekah Denn blogs at
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