On reading the posts today I thought I should clarify what the Eat Your Books website is about. It absolutely does NOT contain the recipes - there are no quantities, store-cupboard ingredients or methods on the website. It is an online index to find recipes in your own cookbooks using main ingredients, ethnicity, recipe type, meal/course, special diet and occasion as the criteria. There would be no point in adding cookbooks to your EYB Bookshelf that you do not own as you will need the book to cook the recipe.
NCPinDC - EYB is the opposite of your statement "it seems to strip any economic value the cookbooks have for their authors" - cookbook authors love the website as it increases the value of the cookbook for the owner, the cookbook author is getting more publicity through EYB, we provide information about the authors (book tours, links to their websites, etc) and they are joining themselves in order to better use the cookbooks they own.
Monavano and DCS - we have not copied the cookbooks. We have created a master index that allows you the search and find recipes in your own cookbooks. You have to own the cookbook to cook from it. Having said that you can search the entire EYB library for recipes (more than 176,000 currently) if you are looking for a specific recipe. But you have to buy the book or borrow it from the library to cook it.
Pat - I hope you will try out EYB (there is a 30-day free trail). It is not at all "clunky" like the print index you used. The searches are fast and easy.
I hope this clears up any misunderstandings. Contrary to the suggestion that we are somehow cheating cookbook publishers and authors, they in fact love Eat Your Books. We consulted all the major cookbook publishers before we set up the website and they are very enthusiastic. Think about it - one of their major worries must be the proliferation of online recipe sites. And one of the major reasons people like online recipe sites is the ease of finding recipes. Now cookbook owners can have the same search facilities for their books. This really increases the value of cookbooks and encourages future book sales. EYB also promotes new cookbooks, provides a forum for cookbook lovers to discuss books and recipes, provides links to cookbook authors' websites, and many more benefits to the publisher and author. In reality they should be paying us to index their books as it is a very expensive process - that is why there is a membership fee ($2 a month).
I do hope that people will check out the website at www.eatyourbooks.com so you can see for yourself how it works. Even if you don't want to register for the free trial there are a lot of pages you can view without joining up.