Fascinating article in the NY Times about the difficulties of producing this cookbook in ebook form.
“Cookbooks often have incredibly complex layouts,” said Jennifer Olsen, the manager of digital production for the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. “They are very tricky to produce as e-books.”
Knopf first tried to convert “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” which Ms. Child wrote with Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck and released in print 50 years ago, into an e-book more than a year ago. At the time the technology was not available to replicate Ms. Child’s distinctive two-column format, which allowed the reader to see the ingredients alongside the corresponding instructions in the recipe, step by step, rather than the more conventional format of listing ingredients at the beginning. …
When Knopf tried again this summer, the production staff had the entire book retyped by hand, since no electronic file of the book existed.
Thanks to Michael von Glahn for the link.
