Karl Wick wrote:

Here is a website where folks can purchase printed books based on Wikipedia content:

http://pediapress.com/

Note that on the info page they admit that they may not be in full compliance with the GNU FDL, and that it seems to be so new that there is no Wikipedia article about it.

Comments?

Karl

From what I can tell, they are barely in compliance with the GFDL, as they do state that "The articles are free to use within the conditions of the GNU Free Documentation Licence". They do need to come up with a better algorithm for determing authorship, but that has been discussed on the Foundation-l thread.

One of the major complaints that I have about this site is that they are doing an completely automated HTML to printed matter conversion, and that is spotty at best. It might just barely work for encyclopedia articles, but if they tried this approach with Wikibooks it would be simply ugly and not be worth getting. I prefer a more human hands-on approach where the printed form has a little more artistic flair that copies the content but is definitely a different medium and should reflect that medium. The Wikijunior Big Cats book that Munchkinguy put together certainly fits in as an example of what Wikibooks could look like when made into a printed version.

I have long stated (at least for much more than a year now) that we as Wikimedia users and in particular Wikibooks users, need to get together and do our own publication of content so at least we have control over what is happening with it. As we are getting more polished content, Wikibooks is moving into a new phase of development where the fruits of our labors are finally going to be noticed and available to a large number of people.

The question is, how should we proceed with printed physcial publications of Wikibooks? If we wait, more and more people are going to be doing stuff like this "Pedia Press" group, especially if we have very inviting plums to copy like the PDF versions of Wikibooks on the front page.

The other aspect to keep in mind is that money is going to be changing hands with stuff like this. That means that money is involved in these decisions, and people are going to get bent out of shape if they don't think the money is being handled properly, or that somebody is making money off of their labor that they thought was donated to a worthy cause.

There is also legitimate needs to spend this money that is directly related to the publication of this content. This includes formal copyright registration (I think it would be a good thing for stuff that gets to this point), buying and maintaining ISBNs and ISSNs (if Wikijunior becomes a serial publication for example), and perhaps even a "legal insurance" policy to help protect us against potential liability issues that keep being brought up. Of course, it would be nice to have this as a fundraiser for the WMF, but that should be assumed.

The question then comes up, should this be something done through the WMF, or should we as independent but like-minded individuals set up another organization enitrely that would take on the issues of publication of content? There are a number of reasons why I think this should be a seperate entity, mainly for liability and tax reasons, but there are other advantages of being independent of the WMF. The important aspect, however, is that I want the content providers (aka Wikibooks contributors) also being involved with the physcial publication as well, and if money is to be made that the people writing the content will also get "something back" for their efforts.

Due to places like Lulu Press, the startup costs don't have to be all that high, but it will be taking some money to get things going. And some policies do need to be made on Wikibooks regarding links to printed versions of Wikibooks that are both fair and reasonable to any independent efforts.

I'm serious about trying to get a "Wikibooks Press" going (I'm not planning on using the Wikimedia trademark name for the group), and if anybody is seriously interested in getting something like this going, please either respond here or e-mail me directly. There are a few individuals I've already floated this idea to in the past, but I think we now have content available to pull this off and get it going.