# ebook cookbooks?



## david scruggs (Dec 17, 2012)

I received a few B&N gift cards for Christmas this year and was thinking about picking up some cookbooks with them but wasn't sure how well they translated to ebooks. I don't see any reason why they wouldn't work well but I wanted to double check before I get anything. It seems like they would work out well but I was just curious about formatting and such to make sure they're legible at a glance like a book would be and whatnot. I'm pretty sure there wouldn't be any trouble with ebook format but I was hoping some people here had some experience with them to see if there were any major problems with them. If they work well, I would much rather have 40 cookbooks on my tablet than on the bookshelves that I don't have lol. Thanks guys.


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## phatch (Mar 29, 2002)

3 things.

device Small devices like 7" tablets and phones will often have trouble with formatting tables, photos and such. Photos are usually downsized as well so don't expect the same experience on an e-device as on a coffee table style book. If you're looking at a book that's heavy on photos or tables, and don't have a large screen device, you'll probably have some dissatisfaction. Example, How to Grill by Steve Raichlen is heavy on photos and some tables. Still a great book, but better on larger devices. Example. Complete New Techniques by Jaques Pepin Many many photos and a large book as well. Book takes a long time to load, but once loaded is quick and responsive even if the photos are reduced in size.Most phones won't display all of a recipe at once. be prepared to scroll around.
age of book This matters mostly because of how the digital conversion was made. Many older books are physically scanned into e-format because they don't have a digital text version available. Scanning columns and fractions, common things in cookbooks, can be tricky. So it's too common to find nonsense for fractions. With some experience you can often figure out what they should be. You'll also find ? inserted for times the OCR couldn't decipher a character. Those are more troublesome to figure out.
editing High profile books tend to have their conversion checked more carefully than more specialty, niche or fringe cookbooks.
I have a lot of ecookbooks and I generally quite like the format and concept and I think you will too.

You can load a tool like Aldiko and pick up some cookbooks off of project Gutenberg and see what you think before you commit to ebooks financially. http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Cookery_(Bookshelf) Download the epub format as that's the format B&N uses for their ebooks.

You should also install calibre on your computer, a great tool for managing an e-library. http://calibre-ebook.com/

And lastly, take a look at http://www.cheftalk.com/a/going-electronic-in-the-kitchen which might give you some other ideas to explore.


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## thetincook (Jun 14, 2002)

I've got a bunch of cookbooks on pdf, and a few in azw (amazon's format) on my kindle. I'm pretty happy with em. I don't bring my kindle into the kitchen though. I just write down what I need.


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## david scruggs (Dec 17, 2012)

awesome, thanks for the info. I think I'll try to get some books from project Gutenberg this weekend. The tablet I have is a 7" so it might not work out like I want it to but I'll give it a shot. Thanks!


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## phatch (Mar 29, 2002)

Do you have a report on your experience? And good ecookbooks to recommend?


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## dasher (Jan 15, 2013)

How do these scale down to a smartphone screen? Im guessing not well since the screen is so small, but I dont have a tablet yet but would still like to have some ebooks with me on the go...


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## phatch (Mar 29, 2002)

Depends on the book. The simpler the formatting of the book,  the better for a smartphone.


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## david scruggs (Dec 17, 2012)

I haven't had much luck getting my Nook app to work so not much luck with books so far. I had Ratio in ebook format already so I got that imported and that looks fine. If most cookbooks are displayed something similar to that, I'm thinking my bookshelf won't get much more weight on it lol.


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## phatch (Mar 29, 2002)

I'm surprised about the Nook app. It's been pretty stable for me.


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## david scruggs (Dec 17, 2012)

sorry, I need to clarify what I meant, I was in a rush as my lunch break was coming to an end with my last comment. The app itself seems to be working fine, no trouble reading Ratio anyway. The problem I had was I was using the Shop part of the app or whatever it's called and I picked a few books and they offered the "Sample" so I figured I should try that to see how they looked before spending the money on the whole book. Anywho, when I clicked on the sample, it said it had been added to my library but when I go to the main menu, it show (0) in my library and sometimes I get a sync error. I haven't messed with it for a few days so I might try again tonight or tomorrow if this snow actually shows up!


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## david scruggs (Dec 17, 2012)

Ok, what I ended up doing was getting an older version of the nook app. I think I got version 2.2. I downloaded 2.6.2 but no luck. I don't know if it's just my tablet (which admittedly is an old cheap one) or what, but I got 2.2 and it works pretty well. I got The Flavor Bible and it works well. I haven't gone through it too much but everything seems to be peachy thus far. I'll probably continue to pick up some more cookbooks for it now!


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