What’s the point? Surely cookbooks are all about the physical book?
That used to be my default position, before I started thinking about it and looking at what’s on offer in the world of digital cookbooks.
There are a lot of immediate benefits to digital cookbooks that aren’t exactly revelatory, things like:
Immediate delivery – one click and you have the cookbook on your device of choice.
Access on multiple devices – via the Kindle App (more on that below) you can access a digital cookbook on any of your devices.
Take recipes with you wherever you go – all you need is your device, and you have recipes to hand when away from home, wherever in the world you are.
Space savers – cookbooks are beautiful display items, but it can all get a bit much sometimes. Digital cookbooks relieve the pressure on your valuable shelf space.
Price – digital cookbooks are so cheap! Many are even free on Kindle Unlimited.
Cosmic good vibes – digital cookbooks save on paper, packaging and transport require to delivery physical books.
All good, but I know I won’t have persuaded the true cookbook aficionados out there. A cookbook is, to many of us, an object of love. A thing of beauty on the coffee table. A status symbol almost, it’s dog-eared and splattered pages adding to the esteem in which it is held. You really can’t match that with a digital cookbook and you wouldn’t bother trying.
It seems like most of us zig zag between our reverential love of the physical cookbook and a slightly desperate pillaging of recipes online. Quick dash to the ipad to google something for dinner and off we go. Somewhere between those two things, I think there’s a space for the digital cookbook to sneak in and prove itself mighty useful.
Here’s why.
A digital cookbook saves you the effort of searching and it does the curating of the recipes for you – you don’t need to find the best website, the right recipe, the best reviews, locate the JUMP TO RECIPE button (before you find yourself scrolling through a lot of unnecessary anecdotes). There is enough of that kind of caper in everyday life without having to do it at DINNER TIME!
If you have a digital cookbook that you like and trust, you eliminate all that.But the appeal of a digital cookbook does not stop there. It’s the functionality of a good digital cookbook that stands out.Consider the following very useful features of a well-produced digital cookbook:
Links from the contents page to recipe and back again – so you can skip around through the recipes at the click of a button. Sweet!
Search – use the search bar to easily locate what you are looking for – search for a recipe, an ingredient, or type of meal, and you will probably find it in less than a second.
Bookmarking – it’s so easy to save your favourite recipes and return to them in a single click.
Recipe Annotation – highlight areas of the recipe you want to return to or add a note/comment for next time you make the same dish.
Taken as a whole, the big picture benefits of a digital cookbook, plus the functionality of a good digital cookbook make them a very appealing proposition. This is particularly the case for cookbooks where what you really want is the recipes in an accessible format, as opposed the beautiful packaging.
Digital cookbooks lag far behind their physical counterparts when it comes to book sales. I get that you can’t replace the physical object. But maybe we are all missing a trick when it comes to using digital cookbooks rather than webpages for our day-to-day cooking. Low in cost, high in function, and totally portable. I dig it.
Note on terminology
A digital cookbook is a product that has been created with all of the functionality addressed above. A digital cookbook generally needs to be purchased and downloaded from a vendor, like Amazon.
A PDF is generally a fixed-format copy of a print book. It doesn’t have that functionality. PDFs are often sent via email or can be downloaded from websites.
A kindle is an electronic device to read books on. Most digital cookbooks are not accessed via the kindle, but via the Kindle App, which allows the digital book to be read on a device more suitable for 4-colour books, such as a mobile phone, iPad, laptop or desktop.