German Wikipedia To Be Published As a Book

David Gerard writes "Bertelsmann is to publish a single-volume book of the German Wikipedia in cooperation with Wikimedia Deutschland. It will cost 20 Euros, and 1 Euro from each copy will go to Wikimedia. They're editing down the most popular 50,000 articles for the 1,000-page book, to be released in September. Because of the open-source origin of the material, the publisher cannot claim copyright in the book." The German-language Wikipedia is second in size only to the English version, which has 2.3 million articles.

5% too low...

[adam]

I didn't see a reference [in linked article] to percentage of sale paid to Wikimedia, but found one here [yahoo.com]. My kneejerk reaction is that if only 5% of the sale price ends up in the pockets of Wikimedia: that sounds a little thin to me. The article does note that a staff of ten was required to edit the articles for content and length, but it still sounds like the publisher is profiting perhaps a bit more than normal off of the work of others. And knowing that many people will likely purchase the reference to support Wikipedia, it would be nice to see around 10-15% gross sale returned to the author (or, in this case, to Wikipedia).

My ballpark of "10-15% of gross" comes from the fact that although I am not in the literary world, I do work in entertainment (aka: cinema), and it's common for DVD producers to receive between $1.50 and $4 on each sold copy. On two of my films I receive around $3.50 after each wholesale transaction (when a chain retailer buys copies at $12/each wholesale to sell for $19.99 on their shelves). The second film in question was offered distribution to WalMart, and because of the bulk they buy in, the deal with them was closer to $1.50. (In the end, for artistic reasons that had to do with creating a specially "WalMart-friendly" edited version, we passed on the WalMart deal). I wonder if someone in book publishing can speak to whether the numbers I'm used to from video publishing are generally commensurate? I don't know what the cost-of-goods-sold for books is, so perhaps it's substantially high enough that it pushes authors' margins to a fraction of what they are in video publishing, but my kneejerk reaction is that 5% is too low.

5% higher than required.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

My kneejerk reaction is that if only 5% of the sale price ends up in the pockets of Wikimedia: that sounds a little thin to me

My kneejerk reaction is that if nothing is required to be contributed back to Wikimedia, then 5% is awesome!

Remember wikipedia's content is licensed under the GNU FDL [wikipedia.org], which states:

The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and useful document "free" in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially.

Re:Citing

[Chairboy]

Who cites an encyclopedia? It's not a primary source. It doesn't matter if it's electronic or print, but this is one of those long standing annoyances with the "zomg you can't cite Wikipedia!" folks. Of COURSE you can't cite it, it's an ENCYCLOPEDIA! Citing encyclopedias becomes unacceptable once you pass the 5th grade.

I know you were joking, but someone modded you INSIGHTFUL for crap's sake. +3 Funny, sure! But modding it up as insightful suggests pretty strongly that my mean ol' response here is appropriate.

Re:Citing

[iNaya]

You realise that modding as funny doesn't give the poster any karma. Modding as insightful does... that's the most likely reason someone modded it as such.

Re:I may disagree

[Zibblsnrt]

How many of them would seriously damage the understanding of a layman browsing the subject? As in, they're not trying to actually put what they read into practice, but are trying to gain a general and basic knowledge set?

Spending some time trawling the Hellenistic parts of Wikipedia a few years ago, this [wikipedia.org] was the current incarnation of the article on Philip II Philomaerus. Not only would I say that qualifies as pretty fucking seriously damaging a layman's understanding of the subject - compare it to the current version - but it was stable in that form for seven months.

Re:1 euro to wikimedia...

[David Gerard]

It's a thousand-page book. $30 cover price is cheap.

That's NOT the summary text I submitted

[David Gerard]

This is:

"Bertelsmann is to publish a single-volume book of the German Wikipedia [monstersandcritics.com], in cooperation with Wikimedia Deutschland [wikimedia.de]. 20 euros a copy, 1 euro from each copy to go to Wikimedia. They're taking the intro section from 25-50,000 articles for the 1000-page book, to be released in September. Who says open source writing can't work?"