Development road

Yesterday the Paperight site went live. I could (and often do) say it’s just an alpha launch with a small, pilot-testing selection of titles, but that doesn’t do the moment justice. It’s very, very exciting to be up and running, even if there is loads still to do.

So here are some of the key developments and additions we have lined up for the medium and long term.

  • While the current site runs (probably for several months), and we learn from user behaviour, we’ll be building a much faster, lighter version from the ground up. Our users will be busy copy shops often in low-bandwidth areas, and every second will count. We want to make point-of-sale transactions absolutely painless.
  • Currently you can pay for documents by EFT or by using PayPal. We’ll add a prepaid account, which will make it easier for copy-shop staff to pay for rights instantly.
  • We’ll reduce the document-delivery time from 24 weekday hours to minutes or less, at any time, by automating more of the backend PDF processing.
  • We’ll add a lot more content. At the moment, we’re preparing every document manually. We’ll start fetching and preparing PDF content by API in bulk.
  • For rightsholders, we’ll add automated sales reporting, and allow territorial distribution restrictions.
In addition, we’ll be learning from our customers and reprioritising accordingly. If you’re a Paperight user, remember that every single suggestion you send us is valuable. Don’t hold back, send us your feedback or pop it in the comments below.