Alta Editions Kickstarter features a “pioneering digital cookbook”

Alta Editions, publisher of award-winning digital cookbooks like Laurent Gras: My Provence and The Journey, was launched a couple years back as a project inside a large mobile content company. Earlier this year, the team that started Alta purchased the business from the parent company. This independence, while fostering continued innovation in digital cookbooks, comes with a catch: fewer resources available for publishing. So Alta is turning to Kickstarter to fund its latest project called Unconventional, the next release in the Cooking Series.

Unconventional will feature “delicious recipes and stories from rising star chefs” including Jesse Schenker, Jehangir Mehta, and Francisco Migoya, head chef at Modernist Cuisine. Veteran food photographer Evan Sung will be shooting all photos including step-by-step photos and short videos. Unlike other e-cookbooks, all of Alta’s cookbooks are available online so you don’t need any specific reading device or app – you can log in from your phone, tablet, or computer. Alta also promises plenty of helpful tips, instructional videos, shopping lists, and other interactive features.

Most of the cookbook development, such as recipe testing and editing, is complete, but funds are still needed to complete the photo shoot and for final design and production work. Some of the backing options include one-year and  lifetime subscriptions to the Alta Editions Cooking Series. If you’re interested in backing this project, you need to act quickly – the campaign ends on October 3.

Alta believes “innovation is critical for the future of cookbooks in a world where bookstores are slowly disappearing and where the majority of cooks look to Google and online recipe databases for inspiration.” They hope to create better online content by “combining the quality of traditional cookbooks (i.e. professionally-tested and edited recipes, top notch photography and quality writing) with the convenience, interactivity and the social capabilities of the web.” You can learn more about My Provence and other Alta Editions books in our publisher profile.