[Foundation-l] Printed on Demand Books from Wikipedia articles

Wed Jul 12 16:29:28 UTC 2006

This is a very good idea.

Y'know, I came up with this same idea yesterday!

On 7/12/06, Volker Haas <volker.haas at brainbot.com> wrote:
>
> Hi everybody,
>
> as the title suggests I would like to introduce a website to the
> wikimedia community that offers books consisting of wikipedia articles
> that areprinted on demand. The unique feature is that every user can
> individually pick arbitrary articles from the wikipedia (currently only
> from the english version) and add them to his book. Once the user is
> satisfied with the book's content, he can download a pdf-preview and
> check how the book will look like when printed. The last step is to
> order the book and get a unique encyclopedia containing only selected
> wikipedia articles.
>
> The service is located at http://www.pediapress.com and has not yet been
> publicly announced.
>
> I would like to know the opinion of the wikimedia community about this
> service, since I am aware of the fact that a couple of copyright and
> also "moral" issues are related to selling wikipedia content.
>
> Some of these issues are pointed out in the thread "Offering Wikibooks
> content for sale"
> (http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/63024).
>
> I would like to give you some details about our efforts to comply with
> the GFDL and also the spirit of the wikipedia content and community:
>
> * on the pediapress.com website and in the printed books it is clearly
> stated that all articles have their origin in the wikipedia project
>
> * below each article a link (in case of the book the plain URL) to the
> original wikipedia article is shown
>
> * all principle authors are listed below an article in the book if
> possible
>
> * pediapress does not generate any unnecessary traffic on wikipedia
> since we use the wikipedia dumps
>
> * we e-mailed with Angela Beesley (member of the Board of Trustees of
> the Wikimedia Foundation) and Brad Patrick (general counsel to  the
> Wikimedia Foundation) who did not see anything problematic with our
> service
>
> Last but not least I want to point out that the pediapress affiliate
> program has the goal to generate donations to the wikimedia foundation:
> after ordering a book, users have the option to publish and promote
> their book. Thereby others are able to buy the published book. The
> publisher receives a provision of 10% of the books price which he can
> donate to the wikimedia foundation.Please note that pediapress is still
> in a "beta" phase even though compiling, printing and ordering books is
> perfectly possible. But since all processing and layouting is done
> automatically there are still some shortcomings that will be fixed asap.
>
> I don't want to deny that my company (brainbot technologies AG -
> http://brainbot.com) and I hope that pediapress supports itself
> financially. The main motivation nevertheless was to give something back
> to the wikipedia community. Since me and my colleagues aren't exactly
> good writers but heavy consumers of the wikipedia, we thought it would
> be a better idea to try to promote the offline usage of the wikipedia by
> building pediapress.
>
> Thanks for your patience - I hope some of you check out pediapress and
> post their opinions.
>
> Volker Haas
>
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