In the past, people did these compilations using whatever free material was available, generally government documents. Using the cheapest ways of reproducing, it was still profitable if you could sell 100 copies or so, and it was usually possible to find enough people to buy at least one of them before they realised--especially in the days when some libraries would buy anything that sounded possibly on topic.

The difference now is that the break-even point is probably at a single copy. Or fewer--possible 1 copy sold per 10 titles produced.

On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 1:23 PM, Eugene van der Pijll eugene@vanderpijll.nl wrote:

David Gerard schreef:

...

If you thought Volapuk Wikipedia was egregious ...

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6237305.html

Would there be a market for individual Wikipedia articles? Hmmmm. I'm not sure about that.

But I think you could make a living out of selling compilations of articles from Wikipedia categories. Perhaps not "Your Guide to Living People" (267,482 chapters), but "Your Guide to Ontario Hockey League first round draft picks" or "Your Guide to Aviation accidents and incidents in Indonesia" or "Your Guide to Bosnia and Herzegovina classical guitarists" should be possible. Print-on-demand, of course; no need to keep 300,000 books in stock.

Eugene

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