I recently made a "book" via the PediaPress Book Creator[1] prior to my trip to India, and it has been delightful to use and read on the flight and in my hotel room here. It had been awhile since I tried to make one, and I wanted to say great work and good job to PediaPress! Also, the integration with Kiwix was wonderful, and I love that it now shows up so seamlessly in my "Library" within Kiwix.

I am not sure if you are aware, but in the recent Readership survey of Wikipedia readers (from Sept 2011, which is only just now being analyzed), the number one request by readers was saving of articles for offline use (as a PDF): 40% of readers said they would be MORE LIKELY to use Wikipedia if such a service was available (note: this % is even higher in target areas like India (50%) and Brazil (52%). This is fascinating, for it shows that we (a) have a broader desire for offline content than just those without Internet access, and (b) indicates there is great opportunity for marketing the "Book Creator" tool.

I want to discuss the points needed to get to (b). The Book Creator tool is great, and I think is the exact right type of tool to meet the needs of our readers; but there is much room for improvements. Right now, I personally find the experience getting to and from the Book Creator tool to be not as straight forward as would be most beneficial. As this service has such a huge demand, I think there are some opportunities for the refining of the "book creator" tool and process. I'd love thoughts on the following and more:

Rebranding: What are our thoughts on the title "Book Creator"? I wonder if the title itself is a bit confusing, since people are apparently unaware of the ability to download as PDF at all! Plus, I personally don't utilize the tools as a means for creating an actual book, though I recognize this was the initial purpose: I view it as a way to read a couple specific articles offline. I think using the word "collection," which we do informally anyway, is likely more appropriate here. Perhaps "Offline Collection Creator" or "Article Aggregator" (both terrible ideas, I know, but I'm just throwing things out there:))
Website placement: I think it is obvious the space the Book Creator takes on the Left Hand tool bar is not enough to draw attention to the feature. I wonder if we should attempt to have some sort of a "Save for Offline Use" button on each article, which would then open a new window into the collection creator screen? This could look similar to the "Share this" links which exist on most information websites (for Facebook, Twitter, email, etc.). This could be next to the "Print" button.
Marketing: Once we feel a bit more confident about usability, it would be great to market the tool. We can do this in three phases:

Phase 1: emails to different mailing lists announcing the project, and asking for suggestions and feedback on the tools
Phase 2: "pilot" testing of the tool, with banner advertising to logged-in users
Phase 3: advertise this functionality via a banner at the top of Wikipedia!

Measurement: clearly, we should have careful tracking of books created and downloads by file type by day. @PediaPress: is this available yet?

I have some other ideas as well, but wanted to throw these out there for some immediate reactions. What are people's thoughts? Any other ideas? Anyone good with website design who could help with rearranging of the "Book Creator"?? :)