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As apps rise in popularity, will cookbooks fall out of favor?
With so many ways to find recipes and cooking tips these days, many food enthusiasts wonder if cookbooks will go the way of the dodo.
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It's a great time to be a foodie.
You can find celebrity chefs cooking on prime time television, cable channels dedicated to covering every possible food fad, and thousands of free recipes available with the click of a mouse. So it strikes many as odd that cookbooks sales represent a bright spot in the struggling publishing industry.
Slate's food editor Laura Anderson is one observer who wonders if cookbooks have reached their twilight years.
"I think in a few generations people will look back at the cookbook as an item that was useful for a very specific period of time," says Anderson. "As a popular item, they are a relatively new phenomenon. Before the 20th century, most people learned how to cook by just watching other people and just learning from other people. So I think that people will look back on it as relatively a flash in the pan in history."
So what accounts for the 5 percent rise in sales for cookbooks over the course of the recession compared to other books?
"People I think are cooking more at home as opposed to going out because it saves them money. I think that that's part of why people still enjoy opening a book and why they're maybe a little resistant to bringing their tablet or iPhone into the kitchen because they feel like they're surrounded by screens all the rest of the time and they want to just get away from it for a little bit," says Anderson.
Sarah Gardner: So I'm curious, are you cooking today? Seems like the holidays are the only time many of us have to make a memorable meal. But now we've got celebrity chefs and thousands of online recipes to help us. And even that old throwback, the cookbook. Laura Anderson is the food writer at Slate. She's predicting the demise of the cookbook. Laura, thanks for being here.
Laura Anderson: Thank you, Sarah.
Gardner: Do you really think that some day we won't have cookbooks anymore? I mean, they'll be something sold in antique stores and my cookbook collection I'll be showing my grandchildren and they'll be thinking oh my gosh, like that old typewriter.
Anderson: I happen to think that is true. I don't know if it's going to happen in the next 10-20 years, maybe even 50 years. But I think in a few generations people will look back at the cookbook as an item that was useful for a very specific period of time. As a popular item, they are a relatively new phenomenon. Before the 20th century, most people learned how to cook by just watching other people and just learning from other people. So I think that people will look back on it as relatively a flash in the pan in history.
Gardner: I must say, maybe this is a generational thing, but what you said makes me really sad because I'm one of these people that loves my cookbooks. I'm a little emotionally attached to them. I'm not a great cook, but I love going into the bookstore -- which I guess is also dying -- and looking at the cookbook section. I mean, somebody must still be buying cookbooks.
Anderson: Oh people are definitely buying cookbooks. Cookbook sales have risen about 5 percent over the course of the recession compared to other books, which is pretty impressive. People I think are cooking more at home as opposed to going out because it saves them money. I think that that's part of why people still enjoy opening a book and why they're maybe a little resistant to bringing their tablet or iPhone into the kitchen because they feel like they're surrounded by screens all the rest of the time and they want to just get away from it for a little bit.
Gardner: I mean, when I buy cookbooks generally I have to admit I buy them for other people as gifts.
Anderson: Mmhm. I feel like this is a big part of what is driving the cookbook economy. It's a nice, discreet, usually aesthetically pleasing object. And it's about the right price that you want to spend on a gift, $20-40. You don't feel like a cheapskate buying that for someone. I don't really know how that's going to change. It's possible in the future people will feel OK about giving apps or online subscriptions to cooking websites to people as gifts instead, but obviously you lose something tangible when that happens.
Gardner: Yeah. And you can't wrap them in pretty gift wrap.
Anderson: Right. Exactly. You can't attach a card. I think that generally speaking publishers are tentatively embracing and trying to branch out into technology, so I think that you will find cookbooks are being released accompanied by apps that either contain all of the recipes in the cookbook or maybe just some of them. Or maybe just of a little bit of sort of added value, a few videos or a few techniques. I think that's a trend that will continue to grow.
Gardner: Let me ask you, do you bring your iPad or whatever tablet you have into the kitchen and set it up on your kitchen counter and actually cook from there?
Anderson: I have been known to cook from my iPhone. I have also been known to cook from just my laptop and just like set it up. I think people are afraid of bringing their devices into the kitchen because they think that they are going to spill all over it and basically ruin it. There's this very strange emotional attachment to stained cookbooks with like the pages stuck together and I actually think that's a little bit gross. I think people are going to look back on that type of emotional attachment and think that it's kind of strange that people used to idealize the stained cookbook.
Gardner: Laura Anderson writes the "You're Doing It Wrong" column for Slate. Laura, thanks a lot and bon appetit.
Anderson: Thank you so much for having me, Sarah.
My opinion is different. I own a smart phone and a laptop, and while I enjoy the community of websites like Food 52 and the instant gratification of apps like Epicurious, I do not feel that they take the place of cookbooks. For me, cookbooks are an experience. I have some handed down through my family; the notes and cautionary tales written in the margins are priceless and incredibly helpful. I went to a culinary school where all our textbooks were issued as e-books. It's an incredible pain, especially when all you want to do is easily cross reference pages in the book, write on the pages, enjoy the smell of the book, and not worry about batter, grease, or water destroying your e-device. My position is probably biased since I am in the culinary profession and have a fondness for cookbooks, but I do not think they are a recent fad.
There has been a lot of online chatter about this topic. Why does it have to be one or the other? If apps win, cookbooks lose or vice versa?
In truth.. Apps allow authors to do more, be shared more, reach more people or simply give a new author the chance. Traditional cookbook publishers simply can't produce every type of cookbook that is thought of. Publishing a cookbook app is accessible to everyone. (Yes, everyone can make their own cookbook app nowadays -- I know because I built a platform that does just that.) Apps are also convenient in size, weight and have the ability to quickly search for that recipe that would take you a long time to find in the index of a hard cover book.
Traditional cookbooks are pretty, but they tend to evoke aspirational cooking ("One day I'll make something in this"...) At least an app can layer instruction with video, twitter feeds, facebook updates and allow us to get to know the authors.
So maybe the question isn't 'is the cookbook dead?'... but what's next in kitchen inspiration? How can these cookbook authors inspire us with new technology? Never before have we had so much help in the kitchen. Why not just embrace evolution and celebrate that all cookbooks are unique regardless of paperback, hard cover or app icon.
Babette Pepaj
Founder, http://BakeSpace.com (creator of http://CookbookCafe.com, the first DIY Cookbook Publishing Platform (ebook & ipad app) & Marketplace)
I completely agree with you. I reluctantly bought an ipad to read from (amongst other things) about 8 months ago and now I wouldn't want to buy another book to just read. It's so convenient to read off an ereader/iPad and I've even cooked with it, downloading my recipes to follow and being careful not to get grease on the screen! So will I buy another cookbook, probably. Why? Because cookbooks are so much different/better than a novel on paper. The beautiful pictures, the sense of ownership, the feel....yadda yadda!
Recipes online have their place. I live in China. It's hard to find Western ingredients, so looking for "how to make homemade sour cream" on the net for example is great for me!
I have always wanted to publish my recipes in book format. Now finally I have completed one cookbook with another on the way - all epublished. If a publisher were to pick it up and put it into traditional format, great, but if not, I'd be satisfied to continue on with my epublishing method.
Regards, Roz
www.rozw.wordpress.com
www.pinterest.com/rozweitzman
What is missing from the digital options today is the perspective that an author brings to a book. I am fully in favor of the content becoming more digital and moving away from print. But, I don't agree that cookbooks will disappear, instead they will become digital. Just as there is a market for affordable cars and luxury cars, there will be a market for free recipes and premium collections of recipes. Remember that a cookbook is more than just a collection of recipes. We look to authors to provide a certain level of quality assurance and also an opinion to cooking that we agree with. The large recipe portals overwhelm the consumer with unfiltered options, whereas a cookbook provides insights and lessons that can be more broadly applied.
Surely over time we will take greater advantage of what the digital medium offers and premium cookbooks will definitely move to a digital format. There we can enhance them with insightful videos and useful tools that make the cooking process easier, faster and more enjoyable.
I may have misunderstood, but one comment in the interview struck me as false or naive: it is not true that cook books are some sort a 20th century fad that came up from nowhere. During the Italian renaissance, dozens of textbooks were published in the Tuscan, Venetian and other Italian dialects (De quinquaginta curialitatibus ab mensam, Anonimo Meridionale, Il libro della cocina ou Anonimo Toscano, Il libro per cuoco ou Anonimo Veneziano ou Anonimo Veneto, Frammento di un libro di cucina del secolo XIV, Libro de arte coquinaria, Anonimo Napoletano ou Cuoco Napoletano, Recettes du cuisinier Antonio Camuria, Banchetti ... , La Singolar Dottrina, Opera, Epulario e segreti vari, Brieve racconto ...) and the examples extends into the end of the 19th century (the 1896 famous "L'arte di magiar bene" by Artusi). Very rich is also the culinary textual tradition of ancient Greece ("Edipatia, Deipnologia e Opsopeia" by Archestrato in the IV century B. C. and culinary-medical texts of Ippocrates, Teofrasto, Galeno, Dioscoride, and Artemidoro), Rome ("re coquinaria" by Celio Apicio, 230 A. D., the multi-author "Rei rusticae) and late middle-age ("Liber ruralium commodorum"). The fact that their diffusion was somewhat limited was more a technological-socio-economical problem, not the lack of a desire to own and read such books. Increasing average income, educational levels and mass production simply created a fast growing market. but that can be said of almost any other type of book.
Cooking is a big part of the expression of many cultures. The fact that traditionally that has not been the case in America, at least until recently, does not allow us to single handedly ignore the whole of human history and reach shaky conclusions.
