If you own an iPad, you should visit the App Store and grab a copy of Appetites while it’s temporarily free (as in, right now). This video cookbook app was released late last month for $5, and while the price has jumped around since then, this is the first time you can get it without paying anything.
You might not want or need a cooking app, but I think Appetites is worth checking out for research purposes if you’re interested in digital publishing, specifically enhanced ebooks. It’s one of the best presentations of video+audio+text that I’ve seen, especially when compared to Vook titles, or to the overstuffed animated text edition of Dracula.
To be fair to those apps, I’m being very loose about the term “ebook” when applying it to Appetites. Text is relegated to a supporting role at best, and any sort of page metaphor is thrown out. Instead, content is mostly presented on what looks like a wooden chopping block or counter top, with most of the video and imagery dressed up to look like recipe cards spread before you. Most of all, the cooking tutorials are called “classes,” and the dishes are organized by author/instructor, not food category, a presentation that borrows more from Food Network than any cookbook I’ve seen.
But these things do not matter — or rather, I think it’s because it avoids so many “book” design metaphors that it’s such a pleasing experience. As I was learning how to make a spring roll dish this morning, I thought, “This is how cookbooks are going to be from now on.”
And possibly other book categories, mostly those that are instructional or that rely on a human connection, for example self help or language studies. It’s true that the farther you go in this direction of user experience, the less the product looks like any book we’ve grown up with. But the trade off, as Appetites shows, is you can provide a vastly more immediate and useful presentation to your audience.
My one complaint is that while it’s free (for now) for the dabbler, Appetites would be fairly expensive for the completist. The app comes with 7 free recipe lessons, but each one after that (there are 20 more) costs a dollar. Since the featured cooks aren’t TV celebs but rather food bloggers, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I could probably get this content online for free, albeit without the high quality video component.
However, that’s the consumer in me; for publishers, I think it provides a compelling real world example of how to build a product that’s capable of generating revenue even after the initial sale, which makes it much easier to justify the cost of developing such a polished, user friendly app.