14 DAY TRIAL // Those who say that Wikipedia isn't one of the most important web services nowadays should think twice. Because it surely is. But this is not enough and Wikimedia Foundation which owns Wikipedia is planning to do even more than that. According to several reports, Wikipedia will be released in printed version in Germany as soon as September and will be sold for 19.95 euros. Wikipedia receiving as much as $1.59 per copy, the San Francisco Chronicle informs.
The book, published in collaboration with Bertelsmann AG, will contain 992 pages and approximately 50,000 articles published on the website, the same source adds.
"This is groundbreaking. Getting a big publishing powerhouse like Bertelsmann behind this is a success in and of itself," Kul Wadhwa, head of business development for the Wikimedia Foundation, told the San Francisco Chronicle. "A yearbook really can be a documentation of the zeitgeist," Beate Varnhorn, head of publishing at Bertelsmann Encyclopedia Institute, told the Associated Press.
Moreover, it seems like the Wikimedia Foundation doesn't plan to stop here and prepares to boost Wikipedia's popularity into other sides of the market, others than the Internet. "We're doing a strategic analysis. There are possibly co-branding ideas, other ways to get our content out there. It could be with mobile operators, mobile platforms, other web sites. We obviously do not want to put ads on our site; at least for the time being, that's off the table," Kul Wadhwa added.
Although the book will be first available in German, since it is especially addressed to the German market, the Wikimedia Foundation may produce other versions of the book anytime soon, depending on the success of the encyclopedia in Germany. English will be probably the next version of the encyclopedia but, until now, there's no official confirmation.