A Kindle book titled “The Cook’s Illustrated How-to-Cook Library: An illustrated step-by-step guide to Foolproof Cooking” was formatted to really shine on the Kindle. Not only is it a great cookbook filled with meaningful recipes and instructions (rather than a TON of mediocre ones), it feels like it was designed for the Kindle.
A couple of weeks ago, I saw a promo for this illustrated cookbook for Kindle owners. To celebrate the Kindle, this book was selling for a mere $0.00, available on pre-order. Even though the Amazon Kindle Store page for this item shows that it’s not available until March 26th, my Kindle 2 somehow managed to get it delivered this morning. I ordered the book on February 13th, long before the Kindle 2 was released.
Based on seeing existing books that have no exciting Kindle formatting, I expected this book to be unattractive. In fact, I expected that the illustrated cookbook would come without illustrations, and just not be formatted with the Kindle in mind. Newspapers and magazines seem to be poorly formatted on the Kindle, with their authors often leaving out pictures and illustrations, and only doing a text export. But for this cookbook, boy, was I wrong! It looks great!
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
The book has a table of contents, with clickable links to take you into the chapters you’re interested in. The illustrations seem to fit perfectly on the page, and you can tell that they intentionally put page breaks in place so that its layout is maintained, even if you increase the font size.
This is an example of a Kindle book formatted to maximize the Kindle experience. Thankfully, the book is still available for free pre-order, and if you’re lucky, you’ll receive it early like I did.
What do you think about publishers taking more efforts to setup their content for the Kindle’s particular format?
