Wikitravel Press announces line of printed Wikitravel guidebooks

Guides Printed on Demand Will Allow Travelers to Bring Wikitravel Anywhere

Taipei, August 3, 2007 The founders of Wikitravel (www.wikitravel.org), the Webby Award-winning online travel guide, today announced the launch of Wikitravel Press (www.wikitravelpress.com), a company for publishing Wikitravel content in book form.

Wikitravel uses the wiki-based collaborative editing technology made popular by Wikipedia. Wikitravel guides are built on the principle that travelers often get their best information from other travelers. The website offers over 30,000 travel guides in seventeen languages, with over 10,000 editorial contributions per week. Wikitravel won the Best Travel Website category in the 2007 Webby Awards.

Wikitravel Press builds upon this extraordinary community participation to create continually updated, reliable guidebooks, combined, abridged or changed by paid editors, published on demand and shipped anywhere in the world. Wikitravel Press will hire book editors to assemble relevant destination guides, abridge or expand them, and do final copy-editing and fact-checking.

“Making printed guidebooks has been one of the aims of Wikitravel since day one,” said Evan Prodromou, Wikitravel co-founder. “Guidebooks from Wikitravel Press will allow travelers to bring Wikitravel along anywhere.”

Wikitravel Press is owned and operated by Jani Patokallio, a long-time Wikitravel community leader and travel writer, and Evan Prodromou and Michele Ann Jenkins, the site founders. Books will be sold at competitive prices (typically US$10-20 plus shipping and other fees), initially through the Web and later through other channels. The books will use the same Creative Commons license as Wikitravel Web pages, so they can be copied and reused freely.

Wikitravel Press will ship its first guidebooks in Fall 2007. The initial titles will be in English, with other Wikitravel languages launched soon after. Wikitravel Press will also provide “ad hoc” books, so travellers can roll their own from their choice of destinations.

“Wikitravel Press will revolutionize the way people view guidebooks,” said Jani Patokallio, managing editor. “No longer will travellers be limited to hopelessly outdated editions mouldering on dusty bookshop shelves: with Wikitravel Press, what you see on your screen is what you will get in your book.”

PDF version, 150kiB

CONTACT: Jani Patokallio, +65-91859331, jani@wikitravelpress.com