The German Wikipedia will take a walk from the onlien realm to the printer and appear as an ordinary encyclopedia.
The initiative came from media giant Bertelsmann and current plans say that the printed version of Wikipedia shall hit the shelves later this year.
Needless to say, the book won't includes all the entries in the German edition of the website. After all, the German Wikipedia has around 750,000 entries, a bit too much for any editor. While no actual figures have been made available regarding the actual numberof the entries that are to be included in the book, rumor has it that content itself will be significantly shortened as well.
The entries won't be printed in full; each topic is going to feature only a 15-line summary. (I supposed readers will also be provided a link to access the full entry /irony).
The good new is that Bertelsmann is give 1 Euro to Wikimedia Deutschland for each copy it sells. On the other hand, the group stated that the printed version is aimed at "new target groups, including young people". Completely incidentally, young people are no strangers to the internet. Also, they're not likely to spend their money on a stripped-down version of something they can very well read for free on the Web.
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