In Need of a Great Birthday Present? Think of the Birthday Book!

In our series "What kind of book can I make with PediaPress?", here is our second installment. There is one "book" that comes back again and again in the books that our users make, the Birthday Book. Not a book about Birthdays, no, but a custom book for someone who's dear to you and who you want to surprise with something a bit out of the ordinary (I've found that as we get older, surprising gets more and more difficult). People have gone out of their way to make books that reflect the "Birthday person"'s life, in one way or another.

We've seen different kinds of "Birthday Books". The first one is a book that retraces what happened in the world during someone's life. The editor chooses an event for each year of someone's life and puts all of these events together in a book. Wikipedia makes this rather easy as it provides lists of notable events per year. See for example all that happened the year Wikipedia was born, 2001. Browsing the different years of someone's life, you can choose important events or people to add to your collection and make your custom book. It's a rather nice an interesting way of looking back at the years gone by. I am sure none of us remember the events that happened during our life quite in the same way.

Another idea is to make a book that gathers all the events that happened on the day the person was born. If we stick with Wikipedia, we could gather all the events that happened on January 15th across the years. This would range from the crowning of Elisabeth I in 1559 in Westminster Abbey to the launch of Soyuz 5 by the Soviet Union in 1969 to the landing of US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009. Quite an amazing scope in events.

Last, but not least, there are people who simply put together a book with the topics that interest the Birthday person, or have to do with their life. It is always difficult to buy the right book on the right topic, especially for someone who's interested in a lot of things. Wikipedia provides such a range of articles on every subject that it becomes fun to put together things that have no apparent link to each other except from the fact that they all have a link to one person. My Birthday book would probably gather such disparate subjects as Languages, American cinema of the 1930s and 1940s, Open Source and Photography, Carcassonne and Languedoc Roussillon to cite just a few. So topics range from what the person has studied to the places they were born, they have studied or spent their holidays to their hobbies and professional interests.

In the end, the great thing about Wikipedia and PediaPress in the "birthday context" is that they open a range of infinite possibilities to make a Birthday gift that your friends or family shall never forget, and to which they can go back anytime they want.

Time to Travel! Get Your Holidays Wiki Book

While following up on the books that have been ordered through our PediaPress website, I have been trying to keep a list of the great ideas people have. What are the books that people make for themselves? It's actually very interesting, because depending on the country of origin, the time of the year and Gutenberg knows what other deciding factor, the custom books we see go through our printing press have only one thing in common, they are really "tailored" to the customer. A few days ago, kleinski blogged (in German) about his first book. He put together a book to prepare his journey, starting (or ending, he's not sure yet) in Iceland. As he puts it

"And there's nothing better than to collect the stops on the planned travel route and to take, instead of seven travel guides, just one book - admittedly, not a guide, but full of information."

Winter in our Northern Hemisphere is way too grim not to think about the next holidays. You might know exactly what your next destination will be, or not. It might be around the corner, or halfway across the world, one thing is sure, there's a very good chance that Wikipedia has an article about your planned (or unplanned) destination. And who better than Wikipedia knows how to capture the specificity of a very particular place? Wikipedia offers detailled and knowledgeable information on a place, a country, a monument and... well, also roundabouts! Collecting articles in Wikipedia makes a travel guide of another nature. Imagine going through the Parisian metro and taking a peek at the ghost metro stations. Imagine visiting Metropolis, Illinois, while reading up on Metropolis, the fictional city. And walking across the "Morne plaine" of Waterloo, with the ability to recreate every one of Napoleon's moves does make the trip more exciting.

So start today, collect your articles with the book creator, and make your holiday trip unforgettable, by making sure you don't miss out on anything there is to see. Collect articles about a country, a region, or even a single city and its monuments. Whether for a three weeks holiday of for a week-end, you'll find all the info you need (and more) on Wikipedia. Make a book, get it printed , read it in the metro, the plane or in the warmth of your bed. And while you're at it, when you're there for real, be sure to take pictures to post on Wikipedia, so that the next traveller gets an even better feel for the journey.

So much for the Holidays Book, it's one of many ideas that I'll share with you in the next few weeks. Stay tuned!

Photo: Waterloo, Belgium, Lions' Hillock © Jean-Pol GRANDMONT , licence CC-BY-SA - Source: Wikimedia Commons

Hello 2010, What's Cooking on the Wiki Book Front?

So here we are, about two weeks within 2010. The beginning of this year has been quiet, but nonetheless interesting. As we've finally settled down after holidays, family parties and much eating (well, at least for me, France is famous for that right?), it is time to look back on 2009 and more important, to look ahead into 2010. It's a new decade after all, what does it have in store for us?

2009 brought us quiet but steady growth. We've worked on the software all year round, while more and more people have been putting together and designing their custom wiki books. Here are some figures that describe the year 2009.

• we've made more than 2000 smaller and larger improvements to the open source code
• the average number of pages in an ordered wiki book was 372
• 73% of all orders originated from the German Wikipedia, 9% from the English Wikipedia
• we shipped to 53 different countries. Our books went as far as Australia, India, Brazil, Uruguay, Côte d'Ivoire or Japan

We're thrilled to see that so many people across the world are interested in making wiki books. Geographical diversity was not the only one. The topics of the books made were also extremely varied. They ranged from "The Philosophy of Science" to "London for a Day" to "Beware of the Cuco! - Origins of Urban Legends and Other Folklores", in other words, from academic to personal to esoteric.

But what you liked most in 2009 was definitely the introduction of color covers. As shown in our little mosaic, color covers make for really personal books.

That was for 2009, 2010 will bring its new load of great improvements and cool changes.

In the next three months, we hope to make the Book creator open to all visitors of the English Wikipedia (and not only to logged in users). This will also prompt a refactoring of the Community Book Catalog. We want to produce the tools to make it more attractive so that the books put together by the Wikipedia Community are more visible for visitors. We are also working on a new version of our website, which will introduce many new possibilities.

• You will be able to have a user account to store your custom books and follow up on your oders.
• We will propose affiliate programs, which will allow you to become a partner of PediaPress via your website or wiki.
• We will continue looking for local partners to ensure fast delivery in your country.
• And, last but not least, we are planning to introduce the option of printing color contents, as well as hardbacks.

Many improvements which will make the PediaPress experience even more enjoyable and complete. We're looking forward to this new year and hope you will join us in making PediaPress your service of choice!

Shipping your books ever faster in Germany

In our constant quest to offer a better service, we've been working hard in the past few months to extend our international presence and make things easier and faster for you. We have secured new partnerships with printers in Europe, which allow us to deliver your books in record time.

The first one of those partnerships to come into play is in Germany. As of yesterday, we're working with a local printer. This will allow us to offer you a Deutsche Post Shipping Service for a mere 0.85 €. Shipping times within Germany will be between between 1 and 3 business days. You also get an express option, which secures delivery within 1 to 2 business days.

It's holiday time, and it's time for you to get busy and make those books you've always wanted to offer your friends and family! In Germany, you now have until the 18th of December to prepare your custom books and make sure they get to their destination on time!

For other countries, please refer to our Shipping FAQ for more information on shipping prices and times.

(Image: © KMJ, License CC-BY-SA 3.0, Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Custom Covers For PediaPress Books, Finally!

Today is a great day. Today is the day when we say hello to custom covers for PediaPress books. Today is also a sad day, because we say goodbye to our old but beloved orange and blue covers. We've loved them, we've hated them, well, they have been part of our story, they have been the face of PediaPress for the past two years. We'll miss them, but we felt that we needed to give you the opportunity to make covers that really would adapt to the books you were making. After all, custom books should feature a custom cover, right?

What is a custom cover?

Well, it's very simple really, instead of having a set cover for your book, you have now the possibility to compose the cover that suits your book's content, your mood, or the occasion.

Once you've collected your book, on Wikipedia for example, and you've clicked the button "Order as a printed book", you'll be taken to the PediaPress Website and will land on the custom cover manager.

The first step is to choose the color of the background you want for your book. You can try out a few color schemes.

Once you've chosen your background color, you can add a picture to your cover. At this stage, you have the possibility of adding pictures present in the articles that compose your book. The pictures will display in a row under your cover, and you can scroll right and left to choose the picture you want. The cover manager only displays pictures that are of a high enough quality to look good on your cover (excluding very small pictures or pictures of low resolution). Of course, we want your book to look as good as possible.

And that's it, once you've decided that the cover and the pictures were the right one, all you have to do is order, and you will receive your book just as you've designed it. Take a look at the books we've already made!

Have fun exploring the possibilities of the new custom cover manager! And as always, don't hesitate to give us feedback on this new feature by clicking the feedback button on the right of our website or by commenting this blogpost!

One Day At The Frankfurt Book Fair

It is actually the second time that PediaPress is present at the Frankfurt Book Fair, we were there last year, and it's nice to be back.

As always, the Frankfurt Book Fair, the biggest of its kind in Europe, is impressive. Really. The sheer magnitude of it is something you have to see once in your life. Around 7000 exhibitors from 100 countries ^[1], scattered around 10 or so exhibition halls, it is huge. From Comics to Art books, through Education, and Gutenberg knows what other topics, the Frankfurt book fair is an event that gathers thousands people from around the world around one passion, books. Books in every form and shape, ebooks, paper books, panorama books, strange books, great books and of course, Wikipedia Books.

It is always interesting to see what attracts people to our booth. Some know about us and just come and visit, wanting to find out more about what we do. Others are drawn by the word wiki in our tagline "wikis in print" and make the direct connection with Wikipedia. Some again are just excited by amazing variety of titles on display (from New York City to Weimarer Republik and somewhere in the middle Body Modifications or The Solar System).

It is in any case always great to observe how people react to books made from Wikipedia articles. You have the cautious, who wonder if those books "can be quoted, because, after all, they're from Wikipedia, and Wikipedia is not an authoritative source". They represent the old line of caution between online and offline distribution, nothing new there, and some truth in it too. Others who just find this "so cool! I can really make any book I want, with all the articles I find interesting?" "Yes you can." They are the enthusiasts, discoverers and early adopters. Those then who think Wikipedia books should be in every single school on the planet. I like to call them idealists, with a bit of utopia on the side. Those finally who come up with cool ideas of new books to put together. They are the creative and fun. In short, from the cautious to the eager and fans, we get to see a lot of different and interesting people. Not enough Wikipedians though, we hope to see more in the days to come!

On the stand we can show you our new cover designer, which we'll make public in a few weeks and which will allow you to customize your book cover, and we do fun demonstrations of how the new version of the booktool works. We also have coupons to distribute, so you can get a discount on your next book. We're in Hall 4.2, stand G413. Come by and visit!

[1] Der Tagespiegel 13/10/2009

Create Books Easily: New Version of the Book Creator is live on Wikimedia Projects

Last week, the new version of the Book creator interface has been deployed within the Wikimedia projects. We are very excited about this new step, it's a bit like a new start for books on Wikimedia projects.

Bringing Wikimedia contents offline

The Book creator is now deployed on many Wikimedia projects, and we're still working at making it suitable for all languages and all wikis. On most wikis, it is available both to anonymous readers as well as to logged in users. You access the Book creator by clicking the link "Create a book" on the left sidebar. On the English Wikipedia, it is available to logged-in users only at this stage (unless you know the direct link to start the book creator ;-)). For those who don't know, the Book creator (technically: the Collection extension for Mediawiki) allows readers to very simply browse a collection of their favorite articles and bring it to print, be it in PDF, ODF or in a real printed book. A good way to bring Wikimedia contents offline. The new version of the Book Creator is much more practical. Let's face it, the previous version was a bit geeky in its implementation, not exacty a model of usability (scrolling down to add a page, anyone?) and also not very sexy (all text and no images). The new version implements several features in a much nicer and much more practical way.

Easy to see, easy to use

The Book creator is easy to reach: when you start it by clicking in the left sidebar, it is displayed as a box at the top of your articles. The box stays while you are browsing articles, allowing you to add pages easily. You can also display the state of your book at any time and add chapters, or reorganize articles.

Add pages quickly and easily

The Book creator now makes adding pages to your book very easy with a whole set of improvements.

• Once the Book creator is started, you just need to click the link "add an article" at the top of the article to well... "add an article" :)
• Add a whole category to a book in a breeze. Simply browse the category and the "add article" link will change into an "add category". Clicking it will add all the articles in that category (note: at this stage, the book creator will only accept a maximum of 200 articles from a given category).
• You can also add a page by simply hovering above an internal link, clicking on the link shown in the popup that appears. This speeds up the collection process by enabling you to add articles without having to open them.

The Creative Feature: Suggest pages

The Book creator now gives you ideas to make great books. The new version introduces a new feature, called "Suggest pages". When you have added at least one article in your book, clicking on the wizard wand in the Book creator box allows you to let the tool suggest articles to add to your book. The "suggest" features uses the links and the frequency of keywords associated with links in the article, and with some normalization and magic calculations, it will give you a list of articles which might be interesting to make your book more complete. Try it. Start a book with your favorite article, click the suggest article link, and let the tool take you in creative directions you might not have thought about!