Reviewers for Wood-Fired Cooking e-Book

[james]

We are going to have a reviewable draft of Wood-Fired Cooking mid next week. I wanted to ask if a handful of folks would volunteer to read the PDF before we publish it, and give edits and feedback by email. XJ and CJ have been very helpful doing editing inside the original Word.doc, and I appreciate their contriubtion very much. This has become quite a project, and I can see why some cookbooks take a year to produce.

At this point the e-Book is about 100 pages. The source Word.doc is about 100MB, and the compressed PDF is a little over 5MB. I think the size precludes us from doing a Wiki style edit on Google Docs. They have a file size limit that is really small.

Also, with the size of the basic Wood-Fired Cooking book getting large (and it will grow over time), I think it would be best to produce a separate Wood-Fired Pizza book. That will give us for e-Books:

Wood-Fired Cooking
Wood-Fired Pizza
Wood-Fired Bread
Pompeii Oven

So, if you are interested, send me an email, and I will send you the PDF. When we all feel good about it, I will publish it in the FB Store.

Thanks for all your help. I think this e-Book will make a good contribution to the community.
James

[james]

Re: Reviewers for Wood-Fired Cooking e-Book

This is your last shot at being a reviewer for the Wood-Fired Cooking e-Book before we publish it in the Store. There are a couple of forum members who are looking at it, and CJ has really knocked himself out editing.

Personally, I'm tired of looking at it.

Anyway, let me know if you want to see it early, otherwise it will be in the FB Store in a couple of days. It's a 6MB PDF, and about 100 pages.

James

[Richard]

Re: Reviewers for Wood-Fired Cooking e-Book

James,

I will asssit in reviewing.

Have you given any thought to having recipes 'field tested' prior to publishing.

[james]

Re: Reviewers for Wood-Fired Cooking e-Book

Hi Richard,
Thanks for the assist. It's on its way.

Your field testing idea is very interesting. Each of the recipes has been made by me, a forum member or a pro, and most (though not all, which is a good project for all of us) have photos. Still, not that many have been done by someone other than the contributor.

Thinking about it, one of the powerful aspects of the Internet is that it allows us to do what we are doing -- and to continually update documents, share ideas, fix things, etc. Is a sense, we will be field testing the e-Book for many months to come. One tricky part is that wood-fired cooking is not as exact as conventional cooking, so input will be important.

I was in a group that field tested Peter Reinhart's upcoming bread cookbook, and that group was really good at tightening up the techniques and recipes, and making recommendations, and it was really impressive. It also took a long time and work to produce a best-seller like that.

I hope this is something of an answer. If anybody ever tries a recipe and says "it would be better if you did it this way" we would add that information into the next release of the e-Book. We are also always open to new recipes.

If the Pompeii Oven e-Book is a guideline, a lot of people are going to use this cookbook, which is pretty cool.

James

[CanuckJim]

Re: Reviewers for Wood-Fired Cooking e-Book

James,

From editorial and gastronomical points of view, I'd have to agree with your approach and conclusions. Over time, I think that people who try these recipes will post comments, suggestions, alternative ingredients, etc. that can be incorporated. More and different photographs would help, too. More and different recipes as well. More desserts, for example. Personally, I can't think of anything I've cooked in the past that couldn't be done in a WFO, with proper handling and timing.

This is one of the great things about what's going on here. The eBook, by nature, is a fluid thing, and the net allows continuous update, change, addition, correction. Remember, we're not dealing with a paper second edition or third edition, with all the delays, expense, redundancy---and MEETINGS .

Four eBooks in so short a time is an outstanding achievement. I think I can say for all of us who have been deeply involved that we're breaking some new ground here. No small thing in itself. Add to that the fact that they're good, useful and very personal to this group.

One more thing. We should all give a vote of thanks to James for coming up with the idea and working harder than any of us.

These four titles, I'm thinking, are just the proverbial tip of the proverbial iceberg. With the resources in this group, we could probably come up with a series of 20 minute videos to accompany these and future titles. Now, I ask you, how cool is that ?

Jim