Category: About Paperight

Paperight’s not launched yet, but here’s a run down of how it will work.

First, what problem are we trying to solve? In most developing countries, book stores are rare, especially in rural areas. And computing and Internet access are still not accessible enough for most people, so ebooks aren’t going to solve this problem soon. But, there are tens of thousands of photocopiers in businesses and institutions in these places. We can solve this problem by letting them print books out, and pay the publishers a rights fee to do so. Publishers have been selling print-distribution rights to businesses abroad for ages – Paperight just makes that process really easy and quick.

So, Paperight turns any copy shop into a book shop. Anyone with a computer and a printer can register as a Paperight copy shop and purchase licences to print and sell books. Publishers can add books and reach markets that conventional book distribution can’t. The publisher picks the countries they want to distribute to, and can set rights fees that decrease over time as a copy shop buys further licences.

Of course, Paperight can also be used for more than just books. Paperight is for anything that can fit on A4 paper, including short stories, poems, flyers, notices, forms, booklets, plans, patterns, and newsletters.

• Paperight provides every document in A4-sized PDF, ready to print. Users choose whether they want one-up or two-up pages (to save printing costs) on a sheet.
• Paperight leaves 15% of every page for advertising. Copy shops can sell that ad space to local businesses.
• Every PDF includes a message and unique code that encourages anyone to tell us where they see Paperight books. Publishers can get direct feedback on where their books are being read. (We’re using trc.me for this.)

That’s the nutshell! We’ll post some visuals soon.