"What? A custom book for less than $10???"

Feedback from the Frankfurt Book Fair 2008

As announced earlier, PediaPress exhibited at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2008. It was our first presentation at an international fair and we are very pleased with the results.

To decorate our gargantuan booth (see picture), we exhibited 26 books on various topics (from Artificial Intelligence to Zoroastrianism) generated from Wikipedia content.

There was significantly more interest in PediaPress than we expected, and so we gave quite a few live demos where we explained our concept and technology. We were especially happy to personally meet a lot of Wikipedians. In general, most people liked the idea of the PediaPress service and gave us favorable feedback. :-)

Presenting the service also lead to lots of input regarding usability improvements. And some of our visitors gratuitously volunteered and provided us with helpful tips. A big thank you to all of you!

Obviously, 500 years of letterpress printing have taught people that creating a book involves time and at least some talent or passion for writing. We almost always had to explain twice that PediaPress allows you to compile a book just like mixing a tape (or more contemporary: create a playlist on iTunes).

The days at the fair were also somewhat stressful, but this was well compensated by the overwhelmingly positive feedback we took back home every evening. Overall, the Frankfurt Book Fair was a great and very motivating experience for us. We'll be back in 2009!