

Wikipedia lets you create books - sz
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Books

======
randomwalker
For a couple of years I've been thinking that e-books created out of
collections of Wikipedia articles could actually be a viable business. It's
not going to make you rich, but it could provide a comfortable stream of
revenue on the side.

I'm thinking about topics that would make good study, reference, or
entertainment material, like "weight training," "atomic physics," "Bay Area
travel," "Paradoxes" (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paradoxes>) or "50
most interesting Wikipedia articles"
([http://copybot.wordpress.com/2009/04/07/the-50-most-
interest...](http://copybot.wordpress.com/2009/04/07/the-50-most-interesting-
articles-on-wikipedia/)). Needless to say, there are thousands of potential
good topics.

I would happily pay a dollar or two to read these on the Kindle/iPad etc. As
far as I can tell this is neither against the letter nor the spirit of the
GFDL or CC-BY-SA. There are a few value adds here compared to reading
Wikipedia directly: 0. the obvious one of figuring out which articles to
include 1. ebook reader-specific formatting 2. for study topics, creating a
more-or-less linear flow out of a web of articles on a topic 3. quality
control -- checking for vandalism, etc.

I really hope someone will create the infrastructure for this: i.e., a web
interface much like the one under discussion, but which also formats the books
in AZW, ePub, and whatever other formats and lets you automatically push them
to all the self-publishing stores. (I envision a revenue sharing arrangement
with users who create books.) I will even offer to put together a dozen books
for free to sweeten the deal :-)

~~~
_delirium
There's unfortunately already a whole boatload with extremely poor quality
control, totally crapping up Google Books and Amazon results, especially for
more niche topics. They're generally automatically compiled by a script for
tens of thousands of titles, and then printed on demand, attempting to pass
themselves off as original books on the subject (no mention of "Wikipedia"
anywhere). Two of the more notorious publishers are Icon Group (some examples:
[http://www.google.com/search?tbs=bks:1&tbo=1&q=%22we...](http://www.google.com/search?tbs=bks:1&tbo=1&q=%22websters+quotations,+facts+and+phrases%22))
and Alphascript (example: <http://www.amazon.com/dp/6130070446>). Sort of a
meatspace version of content farming.

(That doesn't mean a non-scammy version isn't still a good idea. But the
market for bookifying Wikipedia articles is definitely currently not too
upstanding.)

~~~
ableal
Discussed here, 6 months ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1183986>
(similar 'Betascript' in Amazon UK)

(The numbers I collected haven't gone down - they're at 36k/23k today, and the
"books" seem available. Actually, the listed prices now seem higher than I
remember back then, e.g. currently 32 GBP for 124 pages worth of Wikipedia
articles.)

P.S. also, last April: [http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/04/03/2112203/Print-
On-Dem...](http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/04/03/2112203/Print-On-Demand-
Publisher-VDM-Infects-Amazon)

------
sushi
Not new but something very useful.

Creating school and college projects is now whole lot more easier :P

------
10ren
Ironically, that page doesn't have the _"Print/export" box on the left hand
side_ , which made it a bit confusing for me to get started... and made me
wonder how easy the rest of it would be to use if this (first) usability issue
hadn't yet been noticed... All other pages seems to have it. It's probably
because it's a "help" page, not a regular page. But why shouldn't someone want
to print it out? It's a confusing exception. </rant>

------
sabalaba
This needs to have an export as eBook, PDF or DVI feature.

~~~
anigbrowl
It does. Well, pdf and open document format. That should meet the needs of
most people.

~~~
Gormo
ePub would also be useful.

------
danpker
I'm thinking something like this would really make a great gift for someone.

------
mahmud
Any recommendations for a new book author? I currently use Emacs and org-mode
to organize my notes, but I will need something more suited for book writing.

I have a notebook where I write sample code, tables, and draw diagrams. It's
becoming difficult to maintain 'state' between text and supporting materials,
and I find myself leaving notes such as "Table showing Foo of Bar".

Established book authors, specially those using emacs/vi/$POWERFUL_EDITOR,
what are your tricks?

I am currently interested in proof-readers and beta-testers who can hack some
Lisp and have a decent command over the JVM. Priority will be given to Android
and J2EE hackers. Shoot me an email please.

~~~
mahmud
People thought it was worth downvoting me to -1 because I am writing a FREE
book?

WOW!

~~~
jonhendry
No, because what you wrote is entirely unrelated to the original post.

~~~
mahmud
Given the abundance of online communities for computing book authors .. oh
wait! there is no such a community. So excuse moi if I piggy-back on this
thread; I don't have that many options, except contacting individual authors
and asking them for help in private.

At least when I ask here others will have a chance to see the feedback. Unlike
email.

~~~
zitterbewegung
It would be more appropriate to do an askhn: post instead of piggy backing on
this thread. If people think your question is interesting enough it should get
attention and I think it would.

~~~
mahmud
I never thought "I am writing a programming book" would be off-topic on HN.
This hatred is both out of place and unwarranted.

Nevertheless, I am off to find real help where I am most likely to find it;
among friends and acquaintances. Thanks for fostering a curious community!

~~~
johnfn
There is a difference between off-topic on HN and off-topic in this specific
topic. No one on HN hates you, and if you were to make a Ask HN post about it
instead of continuing to post here, I'm sure you could even get some valuable
feedback.

