A New Chapter for Eat Your Books

September 27, 2024 by
 |  18 Comments  |  Leave Comment

Dear Eat Your Books Community,

We’re excited to share some big news about the future of Eat Your Books. As we embark on this new chapter, we wanted to take a moment to share our thoughts with you directly.

A Note from Jane Kelly, EYB Founder & CookShelf COO:

When Fiona and I launched Eat Your Books back in 2009, we had a simple goal: to help cookbook lovers make the most of their collections. Over the years, with your support and enthusiasm, we’ve grown into a vibrant community of passionate home cooks and cookbook lovers.

Today, I’m thrilled to announce that Eat Your Books is entering an exciting new phase. We’ve joined forces with a partner, CookShelf, who shares our vision and passion for cookbooks. This partnership will bring fresh energy and resources to EYB, allowing us to enhance your experience and bring you new features faster than ever before.

I’ll be staying on for at least two years to ensure a smooth transition and the continued growth of the service you love. Fiona and I have had approaches from potential buyers in the past, but we were always concerned that the site would just have the data stripped out and be closed. With Katie and CookShelf, EYB’s future is assured. I’m excited about what the future holds and confident that this move will allow EYB to flourish and reach even more cookbook lovers.

Now, I’d like to introduce you to the person who will be leading EYB into its next chapter.

A Note from Katie Thacher, CookShelf Founder & CEO:

Hello, EYB community! I’m Katie, and I’m absolutely thrilled to be joining the Eat Your Books family. As an 8-year EYB member and cookbook enthusiast myself, I understand firsthand the value that EYB brings to home cooks.

My background is in consumer tech product management, and I’ve spent my career building digital products that people love, including working on Kindle apps and podcast discovery experiences while at Amazon, and prior to that working in startups including Walk Score and ChefSteps. I’m excited to bring this experience to EYB, working alongside Jane and the team to grow and improve the experience we all love and rely on.

Eat Your Books will now operate under the umbrella of CookShelf, a new company I’ve founded with the specific goal of helping EYB reach its full potential. Here’s what you can expect:

  1. Continued Service: EYB will continue to operate as usual, with all staff staying onboard. Your Bookshelf, Bookmarks, Notes, and account information remain intact.
  2. No Price Changes: We care about keeping EYB affordable to our members. We have no plans to change pricing. If you’re a Lifetime Member, you’ll continue to have access to eatyourbooks.com.
  3. Accelerated Development: With additional resources, we’ll be able to move more quickly towards EYB’s mission. We’re particularly excited about developing a mobile app to make your cookbook collection even more accessible, and to make it easier for us to serve even more people.
  4. Community Focus: Your input has always been vital to EYB’s success. We’ll be reaching out more frequently for your feedback and ideas as we develop new features.
  5. Expanded Reach: I believe EYB is just getting started – there are so many more cookbook lovers to share this experience with! We’re committed to growing our community while maintaining the personal touch that makes EYB special.

Now, the boring stuff: we’ve also updated our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy to reflect this ownership change. Rest assured, your privacy and data security remain top priorities. You can review these documents on our website, and your continued use of the service confirms your agreement to these updated terms.

As I dive into this new project, one of the most important things to me is to get to know how you as EYB members use the site, what you love, and what you wish for going forward. Your feedback is essential to making sure we’re building the right features. Please take a moment to fill out a short survey to share your experiences and ideas.

Thank you for being part of the EYB community. We’re excited about this new chapter and look forward to serving you even better in the years to come.

Best regards,

Jane and Katie

Category: What's New on EYB

Post a comment

18 Comments

  • jhallen  on  September 27, 2024

    Wishing you all continued success and look forward to continuing to use EYB as it grows and expands over the years.

  • Thrasymachus  on  September 27, 2024

    I too would like to wish you continued success. I know that without this website many of my cookbooks would be sitting on a shelf, unused and gathering dust.

  • Indio32  on  September 28, 2024

    Can’t seem to find out much about Cookshelf… just interested really.

    • Jane  on  September 28, 2024

      CookShelf is a new company that Katie has formed specifically for this venture – building EYB to make it even better and developing an app.

  • Marsthedog  on  September 28, 2024

    Have been longing for an app since the beginning, but stick around because I love EYB!

  • TrudieA  on  September 28, 2024

    Will EYB/CookShelf be app-only going forward? I know it says lifetime members will be able to access the website, but I subscribe yearly.

    • Jane  on  September 28, 2024

      The Eat Your Books website and the CookShelf app will be working in tandem – a membership for one gives you access to the other and your data will be the same across both. This applies for all types of membership – Annual, Monthly, Free and Lifetime.

  • averythingcooks  on  September 28, 2024

    As another yearly subscriber, I am wondering how you become a lifetime member?

    • Jane  on  September 28, 2024

      The lifetime membership was only available at the start of the site in 2010, when we were in beta testing.

  • averythingcooks  on  September 28, 2024

    Thanks for the quick response Jane…have a great weekend!

  • racheljmorgan  on  September 28, 2024

    Wishing all the best to EYB throughout the changes! I’m excited to see what kind of new features are in store and relieved that there will be continuity.

  • KarenGlad  on  September 29, 2024

    Oh my gosh…that’s a relief. Was holding my breath as I started to read lol. I’ve been here since 2011 and a dedicated EYB fan and user. A heartfelt thank you to Jane and Fiona …I hope you know how appreciative I am for this site. And hi Katie! Looking forward to a lot more cooking and baking from the books on my shelf… and adding more books to my library …of course.

  • Idubinsky  on  September 29, 2024

    Cool update. Sounds like a good move. Looking forward to the tech improvements.

  • Jeanenekk  on  September 30, 2024

    Congratulations!
    I hope expanded reach means more international books available (about 1/3 of my Australian cookbooks arent available) and I bet they’d be lots of other countries to tap more into 🙂

  • sarahduclos  on  October 2, 2024

    This all seems really positive! I am excited about the prospect of accessing my library on an app!

  • cbrowne  on  October 5, 2024

    Ah I finished the survey and thought of another suggestion but can’t add it, so I will post it here in case:

    Unsure if this is already being considered in app development, but: the ability to download the indexes of books in your shelf to your phone for offline use would be AWESOME.

    For whatever reason grocery stores are cellular dead zones and I resort to wandering around trying to get enough reception to look at the ingredient list for something. Or maybe you see something nice in store and want to check your books to see what you could make. It would be very convenient and might prompt some users to use the app over the mobile website (I know I would!)

  • EmilyR  on  October 5, 2024

    I also have a suggestion… can we get something to show books that we’ve cooked a recipe or more from vs. the stragglers on our shelves that need to be used or purged? It would be so useful to be able to shuffle the titles around and sort them that way, too.

  • EmilyR  on  October 5, 2024

    …one more thing. I can never seem to find my wish list. It would be nice if it was easier to locate around here.

Seen anything interesting? Let us know & we'll share it!

Categories

Archives