[Foundation-l] Offering Wikibooks content for sale

Tue Jul 4 15:41:03 UTC 2006

Brad Patrick wrote:

>
>Robert, what would an efficient process look like to you, assuming the
>licensing component is a requirement?
>
>  
>
To make it simple, on Wikibooks we have been developing some content now 
for close to three years, some of which is nearing a publishable state 
that the contributors would like to be able to "share with the world". 
 And since these are books that have been developed, it seems reasonable 
that they be made into bound printed matter at some point, particularly 
if they are of value to other people.  One of the stated goals of 
Wikibooks is to produce textbooks that can compete with other 
educational texts, and that would also include physical books as well 
for this purpose.  Having physcial books like this is something that 
adds value to the Wikibooks project as a whole, and acts as a validation 
for what we are trying to accomplish.

I think I can speak for most Wikibooks users to say that we don't want 
to harm the WMF, but rather even see that this can be something 
beneficial to help out the foundation and "pay back" for the generosity 
of being able to have a place to develop this sort of content.  Even in 
the case of the Wikijunior Big Cats, the user who put it up for sale 
wasn't even making any profit, all he wanted was to make it available in 
some form, and the cost was simply the publication fee alone.  From my 
own experience trying to publish similar content, the price he was 
asking was typical in North America for small print runs for books of 
that size if you went to any printer.

This needs to be a community-driven approach, where ordinary Wikimedia 
users who contribute to various project have the opportunity to 
participate and make this sort of content available.  There is also no 
need for having a dozen independent "publishers" that all go off on 
their own direction.  Certainly once it is apparent that you can make 
some money off of publishing content like this, there will be a dozen 
different companies offering Wikimedia content for sale, so your caution 
is justified.  In this case, we are talking about publishing content as 
a Wikibooks community rather than as a bunch of mavericks.

Ideally, what I'd like to see is some sort of "official" WMF store that 
is able to offer books like this.  There should be some restrictions 
placed on such content that are primarily quality based restrictions. 
 This would imply some sort of "editorial board" or some others that 
would have the ability to accept or offer suggestions on improving the 
content to meet publication standards.  All of this can be accomplished 
with volunteers, and doesn't require anything new other than some extra 
web pages to help organize the effort and helping select the editorial 
board.  In addition, any such gatekeepers should be selected by the 
community and come up from the users rather than something appointed by 
the WMF board, as is the tradition for other such people like admins, 
stewards, etc.

If you want to "publish" a book you've written that has Wikimedia 
project content, you can organize it and then submit it to this board 
for review.  If the book is accepted for publication, it is somehow 
added to the WMF store.  Other "features" at the store can include 
featured books, or the host of things you find for book retailers.  Or 
simply make the book available with an ISBN and it would be available 
from Amazon.com or a bunch of other on-line bookstores.  The exact path 
to publication isn't so important as that it is made available.

This is something that I see local Wikimedia chapters being involved 
with, as they can help find local printers to make content like this 
available to people in their respective countries.  Certainly it would 
make much more sense to print a book in Poland for Polish readers than 
ship something from North America to do the same thing.  Still, it would 
be nice to have an established process to show high quality Wikimedia 
materials that would enhance rather than detract from Wikimedia projects.

I guess I would like to see it done through the community as well to 
help reduce costs.  Particularly in the printing business, there are 
economies of scale that help to reduce costs significantly.  This book 
which was for sale at $12 a copy could be brought down to $4 or even 
less in large volumes.  It only makes sense that this is something that 
can and should be done with a centralized coordinated effort for this 
reason alone.

One huge issue on top of everything else is simply inventory control. 
 As this is physical items, that means they can be damaged, stolen, 
cause damage, and a host of other related problems.  Lulu Press does 
offer this sort of inventory control, and there are other for-profit 
businesses who are willing to do print-on-demand, but that does involve 
other compromises.  Certainly we shouldn't be tied down to one printer 
in any case, and in this situation the Wikimedia Foundation should be 
the publisher of the content, not Lulu Press.

There are some legal issues such as placement and usage of trademarks. 
 You hit that one well, and in this situation we need to have it defined 
exactly how and in what ways that the WMF would like to have their 
trademarks and logos used on publications.  If it is an "official" 
publication, there is obviously some more lieniency than for 
"non-official" publications, and some clear guidelines should be in 
place for at least people like me (an admin) can point to and say "it 
says here that you can (can't) do what you are asking."  I think 
[[b:en:Wikibooks:Copyrights]] does a pretty good job for instance, but 
that was something written by decidely a non-lawyer when Wikibooks was a 
much smaller project  (Thanks mav for your work on that!)  Certainly 
that needs to be reviewed formally by the WMF to see if that is what is 
intended, together with similar copyright statements on the other 
Wikimedia projects.

BTW, thanks to everybody for your comments on this matter.

-- 
Robert Scott Horning