Wikibooks:Book donations

Donating Books

Many times in the past, people and organizations have offered to donate books to Wikibooks. Wikibooks will accept donations of books under certain conditions, and the copyright holder of the book must agree to follow Wikibooks copyright restrictions and policies. This page will discuss book donations, how a book is eligible to be donated, and what is the process to donate an eligible book.

Authors are responsible for ensuring that their books to be donated are acceptable under the Wikibooks inclusion criteria policy. Wikibooks is not a general purpose ebook host and books that do not conform to this policy, regardless of anything else written in this document, may be deleted from Wikibooks.

If you have a book that you wrote yourself, or that you own the copyright on, and understand what it means to release your work under a free license, you can skip to the donation checklist below.

Before you Donate: Copyright

All books on Wikibooks must be released under the GFDL. Books may optionally be cross-licensed under both the GFDL and a related license, such as CC-BY-SA. While possible, this arrangement is not common, and can be problematic. There are a few important points about copyrights that need to be mentioned first:

• Commercial Use: All Wikibooks books must be available for commercial use. Some licenses, such as CC-NC-SA prohibit this. Such licenses are not compatible with Wikibooks. If your book is currently released under a non-commercial license, you must relicense it before it can be donated to Wikibooks.
• Derivatives: Wikibooks requires that all books and book materials be released under a license that allows derivative works. This means that people, anybody at any time, can modify your book. People can edit, modify, expand, or contract your book, and that must be allowable under the license. Books which are currently released under a no-derivatives license must be relicensed to be released on Wikibooks.

GNU Free Documentation License

The complete version of the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) is available here: GFDL. All authors are encouraged to read this license before attempting to donate any materials to Wikibooks. Here are some key points:

• By uploading materials to Wikibooks, you are granting Wikibooks an irrevocable license to host your work, in addition to any derivatives of your work, so long as the work is copyrighted. Material on Wikibooks, once donated, may not be removed upon request of the author. As the copyright holder, you may choose to grant additional licenses to other users or other websites also.
• The GFDL is viral. That is, once the work has been released to Wikibooks, all future versions and derivatives of that work on Wikibooks will also be released under the GFDL. Notice that as the original author, you may release your work under an alternate licensing scheme in other places as well. As the copyright holder, you may grant a non-viral license for your work to another user or website.

Images and Files

Books and text must be released under the GFDL, or cross licensed with the GFDL and a suitable secondary license. However, images, media files, PDF files, or other files that accompany your book may be released under a variety of free licenses, and do not need to be GFDL. It is not uncommon for image files to be released under a Creative Commons (CC) license, or even released into the Public Domain (PD). For maximum compatibility, it is recommended that images be either GFDL or cross-licensed as GFDL and CC-BY-SA-2.5. For more information about media file uploads and licensing, see Wikibooks:Media.

Wikitext

Before a book can be uploaded to Wikibooks, it must be converted to Wikitext. Wikitext is a simplified markup language, similar to HTML. We use Wikitext because it is quick and easy to read, easy for people to edit and modify, and it is typically much smaller than equivalent HTML. If your book is available electronically in HTML or LaTeX source, there are converters available that can semi-automatically convert your book to Wikitext.

Wikibooks does accept PDF and LaTeX versions of a book to be uploaded, but those versions must be released in addition to a Wikitext version. That is, we do not host lone PDF files, we host "PDF versions" of the existing Wikitext books. The same rule applies to LaTeX or any other document file format.

Wikibooks or Wikisource?

Wikisource is another project, similar to Wikibooks, that contains original source books and documents. Typically, to be hosted at Wikisource, the book must have been previously published, and they must be GFDL or PD. Once a book on Wikisource has been uploaded and proofread, it is protected against future edits. This means that books on Wikisource cannot be changed.

If you meet all the following criteria, your book may be eligible to be uploaded at Wikisource:

• The book has been previously published, not self-published.
• The book is released into the public domain, or in some circumstances, has been released under the GFDL or another acceptable free license
• The value of the book as a historical reference would be diminished if the book were edited or modified, besides the addition of footnotes, or annotations.

Keep in mind that Wikisource is not a publishing house, and its purpose is to preserve old text in a machine-readable form, not to host, promote, or preserve new or unpublished books.

Wikibooks Policy

The goal of Wikibooks is to create new instructional materials, not just to accumulate existing materials. Wikibooks will not provide your donated book with special policies or special circumstances. This includes, but is not limited to, preventing certain people from editing your book, requiring people to ask your permission to edit your book, protecting your book from all editing to preserve it, watching your book more closely for spam or vandalism, advertising your book in a special or overbearing way, or giving the contributors to your book any special treatment. If your book is of high quality, it can be nominated to be Featured.

Your donated book must meet all of our content restrictions, or it will not be hosted here. These restrictions include, but are not limited to, Neutral point of view (NPOV) and No Original Research (NOR). Information taught in a book must also be verifiable, either academically (though the use of a citation) or experimentally (by the reader). If your book does not meet all our requirements, it might be suitable for hosting at Wikiversity, Wikisource, or Wikia.

Donation Checklist

Before you donate a book to Wikibooks, make sure that you can satisfy every point on this checklist. If you need help, or if you have questions about this, you can ask at the Reading Room.

If you do not own the copyright in the material or it has been previously published by you elsewhere you need to follow the instructions at Wikibooks:Requesting copyright permission first.

1. Ensure that the book meets Wikibooks inclusion criteria policy.
2. Ensure that the book satisfies all content requirements, including Neutral point of view and No original research.
3. Ensure that the book is either uncopyrighted, currently released under the GFDL, that you are the primary copyright holder, or that you have permission from the current copyright holders.
4. Ensure that you have received permission from all other potential copyright holders, including authors, editors, publishers, and illustrators. Some images or passages of text (such as quotes) can be uploaded as fair use, if express permission cannot be obtained.
5. License the book under the GFDL, or cross-license it under the GFDL and an acceptable secondary license (such as CC-BY-SA).
6. License all the images, media files, or other accompanying files under a suitable license.
7. Convert the text of the book to Wikitext.

Once all the above steps are satisfied, you may begin to upload your book to Wikibooks. Make sure that your new book follows our Naming Conventions. If you need help, ask at the Reading Room. Once you have uploaded your book, or if you need additional help, post a notice in the assistance reading room.