PediaPress GmbH is a software development and

print-on-demand Print on demand (POD) is a printing technology and business process in which book copies (or other documents, packaging or materials) are not printed until the company receives an order, allowing prints of single or small quantities. While oth ...

company located in

Mainz Mainz () is the capital and largest city of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Mainz is on the left bank of the Rhine, opposite to the place that the Main (river), Main joins the Rhine. Downstream of the confluence, the Rhine flows to the north-we ...

, Germany. The company is a spin-off of Brainbot Technologies AG. It allows users to create customized books from wiki content using an automated

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

file builder and print-on-demand (PoD) technology. Users can add their own cover details and limited content, such as a foreword. PediaPress maintains that it is not a publisher and does not review the content of any printed books or other works offered through its tools, however it may remove content it deems to be illegal or inappropriate. PediaPress and the

Wikimedia Foundation The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., or Wikimedia for short and abbreviated as WMF, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California and registered as a charitable foundation under local laws. Best kno ...

became partners in December 2007, and a proportion of the sales income of each book is donated to the Foundation.

Origins

PediaPress was established to provide an online service that enabled Web users to create customized books from wiki content using direct

web-to-print Web-to-print, also known as Web2Print, remote publishing or print e-commerce is commercial printing using web sites. Companies and software solutions that deal in web-to-print use standard e-commerce and online services like hosting, website design ...

technology. Users were able to use the Wikipedia Book Creator tool to arrange the order of the articles and specify the cover details. The price of each unique book depended on the number of pages. Books were ready for shipment within a few working days. PediaPress and the

became partners in December 2007. PediaPress's software was initially integrated into

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...

, and made accessible in the navigation sidebar of every page via a "create a book" button. PediaPress had contracted with

Lightning Source Lightning Source is a printer and distributor of print-on-demand books. The company is a business unit of Ingram Content Group. Originally incorporated in 1996 as Lightning Print Inc., the company is headquartered in La Vergne, Tennessee. Its UK ...

, a subsidiary of

Ingram Industries Ingram Industries is a manufacturing company headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. The company consists of diversified businesses in marine transportation aggregate supply, book distribution, print on demand book manufacturing, management and di ...

, to print the books. PediaPress established a long-term partnership with the Wikimedia Foundation. A portion of the proceeds of each book was donated to the Wikimedia Foundation to support their mission. Initially, the ability to create books from the English version of Wikipedia was exclusive to signed in users, because of scalability issues. But later, anyone could create books from any of the millions of articles on Wikipedia in English alone.

References

External links

PediaPress website

PediaPress code repository
{{Use dmy dates, date=January 2020 Printing companies of Germany Digital press Companies based in Mainz Wikipedia

Origins

See also

References

External links