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Wikitravel to publish hardcopy editions of its guides
I'm a big, oscillating fan of Wikitravel. For those of you not in the know, Wikitravel is the Wikipedia of guidebooks. In fact, I rarely travel with a real guidebook anymore these days. Usually my pack is stuffed with what I like to call a "Frankenbook": bits and pieces of various guidebook pages torn out and stapled together with online print-outs -- mostly made up of Wikitravel guides.My inkjet printer will be out at the bars tonight celebrating, because the Wikitravel team just announced that it has begun publishing hardcopy editions of various guides from the website. And best of all, it's printed on-demand, so you get the most recent update (within the month) when you order. They write,
"At Wikitravel Press, we select the best ones, give them to our carefully selected local editors to polish and fact-check, and then typeset them with our revolutionary one-click Yucca engine. This lets us update the guides from top to bottom every single month. When you order online, a fresh copy is printed just for you and shipped to your doorstop in less than a week."
How cool is that? For more information, go here.
[Via Boing Boing]
Filed under: Books
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Catherine Feb 20th 2008 1:50AM
The bummer is that the writers work for free. Not good for those of us in the guidebook-writing industry!
Jani Feb 20th 2008 4:33AM
Not so -- the editors, who more often than not are also the main writers, get paid for their work. And thanks to direct sales via the Internet, their royalties are rather more generous than what they would get from a traditional guidebook publisher (who by and large don't even pay royalties any more, just a lump sum).