Wikitravel Press Blog

The first day of the Frankfurt Book Fair 2008, and we’re starting off with a bang: Wikitravel Press is delighted to announce its upcoming line of Wikitravel Fresh guidebooks, built by readers from their choice of any of the tens of thousands of guides on Wikitravel.  For example, you could select “Frankfurt”, “Luxembourg” and “Helsinki”, and we’ll assemble and ship you a guide containing only those articles — cheaper, lighter and more environmentally friendly than buying three separate guides!

To make this happen, we’re teaming up with PediaPress, who have built the Collections extension for MediaWiki, which allows building your own article collections, and the PediaPress engine, for converting those collections into books.  Wikitravel Fresh books aren’t available just yet, but the technology is in place, we’re currently putting on the finishing touches and expect to have them up on Wikitravel in time for Christmas.

As for the Book Fair itself, let’s just say that it’s big — thousands of exhibitors scattered across over tens of floors in eight gigantic halls, all grouped by theme.  E-books and electronic distribution may be the buzzwords of the day (and indeed, Amazon’s Kindle presentation drew a standing-room-only crowd), but there’s still plenty of life left in the dead trees printing business as well.

Our neighbors in the Scientific Publishing section (where we’re co-exhibiting with PediaPress) are a pretty buttoned-down lot by day, but when the clock strikes five and alcohol can be served, the frenetic pace of business slows down and the bespectacled men in suits start the Buchmesse Waltz.  It goes like this: a large scientific publisher sets up a bar deep within their gigantic exhibition section and starts serving up free booze, the more moneyed ones even hiring comely staff in short skirts or bartenders in tuxedos to do the pouring.  Drawn like bees to honey, everybody nearby starts gravitating towards the bar…  and that’s when the publisher’s sales reps, lounging near the bar like lions at a watering hole, pounce on their prey.  The meek end up trapped, nodding with glass of wine in hand and glazed eyes as the agents hypnotize them with sales pitches, while the intrepid spot the opportunity and sneak off with a bottle of beer while the sales reps are distracted.  And so the cycle of publishing life continues…

Tags: announcement, book fair, buchmesse, frankfurt, guidebook, pediapress, travel, travel guides, wikitravel fresh

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 at 4:21 pm by jpatokal and is filed under Announcements. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.