During the course of my workday today, I read about cookstr.com. This website, which will go live later this month will feature recipes by well-known chefs.
Another recipe site? Yes. But the cookstr creators believe this will actually help contributors sell more hard copy books.
Hmm...on the one hand, I can see how it can be used as an effective marketing tool. Other types of books have snippets published online in order to entice people to buy them, but I'm not sure if this will be very effective for recipes. I mean, we pretty much know how the book will end.
On the other hand, I have millions of recipes at my fingertips via the internet and I still do love cookbooks. I have a nice collection. Though I have a tendency to scour the internet first when something pops into my head. And certainly if I have one or two ingredients I want to use in a recipe and need a little inspiration. Lately, I have been forcing myself to actually look in the books and, quite frankly I do find it a more satisfying experience. But I still tend to get more inspiration from blogs and restaurants...real experience with a specific dish.
Nonetheless, I plan to see what's up on cookstr.com when it gets up and running. At least I can already tell that there will be photos (very necessary). I hope that they will allow for comments and tips from users as well. Chefs tend to forget that most people following their recipes have little experience or knowledge about how to actually prepare food. So a little user input goes a long way.
3 comments:
Thanks for the post. And I'm glad you'll be visiting cookstr when we launch (November 20 is the date we're hoping to make). We are trying to bring great cookbook content to the web and help people discover wonderful books and authors they might not know. One of our goals is to celebrate cookbook authors in addition to chefs. There are so many great cookbook authors who aren't chefs and who don't have restaurants.
We will definitely have comments -- but for various reasons won't be able to enable them until a few weeks after launch. But in the meantime, we will be using "Get Satisfaction" so that all our early users can post and share in public their comments about the site -- and about the content, the search, everything. We are committed to bringing comments on as an integral part of the site as soon as we can.
We will be featuring lots of vegetarian authors and chefs.
Again, thanks in advance for checking us out. And do come say hello next time you are visiting NYC.
Will, founder
see, i totally have a prob with ignoring my cookbooks and i am trying to do better. i buy all these books and then i rarely crack them. but i am changing my tune. and cooking from my books more. yes i am.
I'll be really curious about how cookstr fare. It probably would have worked better, like, 4 years ago. There are so, so many cooking sites nowadays that i'ts hard to stand out. I love taste-spotting, for instance, and I completely forget to visit.
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