As infinite in variety as cooking itself, cookbooks touch on every aspect of the culinary arts. Cookbooks are simultaneously reference works; do-it-yourself manuals; and cultural Bibles. More than merely recipe collections, the most successful are literary and artful. Cookbooks are deeply personal possessions –arranged carefully or haphazardly on a kitchen shelf, these volumes capture family history and traditions almost as closely as photo albums.
On Thursday, February 7, the second annual Roger Smith Cookbook Conference opens a three-day service of workshops and panel discussions — not mention lunches, receptions, and dinners. The setting is the boutique Roger Smith Hotel in midtown Manhattan, and in attendance will be an eclectic gathering of those who publish, write, edit, agent, research, or simply buy and use cookbooks. One of the principal organizers, Adam Salomone, Associate Publisher of The Harvard Common Press, has details to whet literary appetites.
Conference highlights includes sessions on the competition between cookbook publishers and digital media upstarts, as well as a session on “The Frontlines of Copyright Infringement — Preventing and Combating Recipe Scraping and Other Threats in the Online Food World.”
“The issue of copyright infringement is increasingly a prevalent problem,” Salomone tells CCC’s Chris Kenneally. “The problem is not only centered on having content stolen from a website, it also has a ripple effect as it relates to generating traffic and revenue from our content.”
Harvard Common Press is a Boston-based independent publisher and a national leader in high-quality cookbooks and parenting books. Salomone oversees the company’s digital strategy across individual book/author brands. He is also involved in a number of outreach efforts related to cookbook publishing, including active involvement in organizing numerous events, such as the Roger Smith Cookbook Conference.
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