Mr OT here.
IMO the best cookbook ever written was the one my mother had in secondary school. I don't know the name of it and I'm sure it's long out of print. She swore by it, used it all her life and was a marvellous cook.
Why We Are Self-Publishing the Aviary Cookbook
51–60 of 79 posts
Re: Why We Are Self-Publishing the Aviary Cookbook
#52Mr OT here. IMO the best cookbook ever written was the one my mother had in secondary school. I don't know the name of it and I'm sure it's long out of print. She swore by it, used it all her life and was a marvellous cook.
I'll go OT with you. Is there any attribute of 'the best cookbook' that you can remember that'd help us figure out which one it was/is - example recipes, cooking style, memories of the food made from it, or the book itself? Is the book still in the family?
I once had a copy of the Alinea cookbook, it's a wonderful object. For mere mortals like me, 'The Way To Cook', by Julia Child is the cookbook I refer to most often and suggest most often to those looking for 'the best cookbook.'
Re: Why We Are Self-Publishing the Aviary Cookbook
#53Why We Are Self-Publishing the Aviary Cookbook?
too many birds ...
Re: Why We Are Self-Publishing the Aviary Cookbook
#54Mr OT here. IMO the best cookbook ever written was the one my mother had in secondary school. I don't know the name of it and I'm sure it's long out of print. She swore by it, used it all her life and was a marvellous cook.
I'll go OT with you. Is there any attribute of 'the best cookbook' that you can remember that'd help us figure out which one it was/is - example recipes, cooking style, memories of the food made from it, or the book itself? Is the book still in the family? I once had a copy of the Alinea cookbook, it's a wonderful object. For mere mortals like me, 'The Way To Cook', by Julia Child is the cookbook I refer to most ofte…
All I can remember is that it was hardback with a plain red cover (if there had been a dust jacket, it was long gone) and she'd have used it in home economics class in 1950s Ireland. It was mainly what I'd call wholesome simple British/Irish food, beef steak and kidney pie and the like but the sweets and cakes are what I most fondly remember, queen of pudding, bread and butter pudding, eve's pudding, dundee cake, shortbread, lovely dark soft gingerbread, sponges, madeira, buns etc etc.
Look at what we've lost!
Re: Why We Are Self-Publishing the Aviary Cookbook
#55The publishing industry is slowly going to unravel. If you write a very successful book with traditional publishing cut you might make 30-40k. Average is lower. There are power laws at play, but as few as 5% make it past six figures. So when I wrote a book about step-by-step user acquisition ( https://secretsaucenow.com ) I self-published. Made $60,000-ish in presales, sold another $60,000 while I was finishing the b…
Can you tell us what processes you used to sell well / point us at resources? Especially re pre-sales, but also for how to make a good book sustainable like that?
Re: Why We Are Self-Publishing the Aviary Cookbook
#56The heart of this piece is the author's realization that (relative to their cover price) glossy, expensive cookbooks don't actually cost that much to print: "Until one-day I got lucky. Just by chance I spoke to the print broker who actually worked on the exact bid for that famous book. And he told me precisely: that super amazing cookbook that I truly loved, which at the time retailed for $50 and had won every award…
> While a weighty tome may literally feel like it's worth a hefty premium If you asked me what about a big cookbook with glossy pictures would make it cost more than a regular book, I'd go with the glossy pictures, not the mass.
The mass implies both many pages and/or high quality heavier paper, both of which are more expensive.
Re: Why We Are Self-Publishing the Aviary Cookbook
#57The heart of this piece is the author's realization that (relative to their cover price) glossy, expensive cookbooks don't actually cost that much to print: "Until one-day I got lucky. Just by chance I spoke to the print broker who actually worked on the exact bid for that famous book. And he told me precisely: that super amazing cookbook that I truly loved, which at the time retailed for $50 and had won every award…
This is true, yet the cost is not calculated this way. It is not only the print cost. Large publishers have overhead cost that can exceed the publication cost itself such as the different departments, legal issues, marketing, renting for booths...etc. While the self-publish look promising it face lots of barriers. Most self-publishers can hardly sell their books as they focus on writing and neglect other factors such as marketing which make take equal effort and more cost comparing with the writing itself.
Re: Why We Are Self-Publishing the Aviary Cookbook
#58The publishing industry is slowly going to unravel. If you write a very successful book with traditional publishing cut you might make 30-40k. Average is lower. There are power laws at play, but as few as 5% make it past six figures. So when I wrote a book about step-by-step user acquisition ( https://secretsaucenow.com ) I self-published. Made $60,000-ish in presales, sold another $60,000 while I was finishing the b…
Can you tell us what processes you used to sell well / point us at resources? Especially re pre-sales, but also for how to make a good book sustainable like that?
Download a sample of the book at https://secretsaucenow.com - it explains it
Re: Why We Are Self-Publishing the Aviary Cookbook
#59I'm actually surprised that printed cookbooks are still economically viable using any kind of publishing model.
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/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 learning to write your own programs that may also have included some source code. I think that cookbooks filled with recipes are like the former, and books about learning to make your own recipes are like the latter.
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.
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.
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?
Re: Why We Are Self-Publishing the Aviary Cookbook
#60Kind of off-topic on-topic: I went to that restaurant/bar in Chicago to try their cocktails and it was one of the best experience I went through there. Way better than the Milk room (haven't tried Violet hours though). I wish there was an Aviary where I live now :(
They do "experimental" cocktails (or artistic cocktails). Cocktail in a bag, Smokey cocktail, bubble tea cocktail, cocktail in a tea pot, ... and they taste amazing as well.
If you read that blogpost I suggest googling or checking on TripAdvisor/Yelp for some visual pictures :)