Why We Are Self-Publishing the Aviary Cookbook
I&#x27;m actually surprised that printed cookbooks are still economically viable using <i>any</i> kind of publishing model.<p>They remind me of those books from the 1980s filled with printed copies of the source code for computer programs.  You would input the text from the book using your keyboard, and compile&#x2F;interpret the program.  That was how many programs were distributed, because a printed book on a truck had higher bandwidth than any other readily-available channel.  And then there were also books about <i>learning to write your own programs</i> that may also have included some source code.  I think that cookbooks filled with recipes are like the former, and books about <i>learning to make your own recipes</i> are like the latter.<p>Those recipe books simply became obsolete with ubiquitous Internet access.  Countless recipes are open source and freely available.  Barely anything in a recipe book is eligible for copyright protection.  You can basically rewrite instructions in your own words and make your own drawings or photographs, if any, and that boxed spaghetti with canned marinara recipe is now printable as part of your own cookbook.<p>So it is very smart to--as with the book in the article--load up all your recipes with copyright-protected photographs, rather than leaving them out to cut print costs.  But even so, that book as described seemed more about trademarks and brands than content.  It might be useful for franchisees or for professional imitators.  When I am cooking at home, I rarely even refer to a recipe, and when I do, it is just one of the thousands of results from an Internet search.<p>Does anyone here still bother buying cookbooks?  Would it not be more useful to simply learn how to cook without referring to recipes?  Who needs that level of restaurant-style uniformity and consistency in their own kitchen?