A new feature specifically tailored for rightsholders is now active on the Paperight website. Starting immediately, rightsholders will be able to set the regions in which their documents will be made available on the Paperight service.
Although we at Paperight usually don’t like the idea of making information and documents available or unavailable by region – mostly because people in many parts of the world already have too many things restricting their access to books – we accept that the practice of territory-specific distribution is part and parcel of the larger publishing industry, and we have to adapt to that in our own way.
On the flip side, however, we feel that this will help publishers, particularly from the Global North where book distribution is already healthy, feel more at ease with putting their documents on Paperight for distribution to new and emerging markets. By reducing rightsholder fears of cannibalisation of sales in markets in which they already operate, we hope that we can improve access to books in places in which those rightsholders usually don’t operate.
Outlets and users using IP addresses in countries in which certain documents aren’t available will still be able to search for, find and view those documents, but will be unable to download them.
If you come across a document that is unavailable in your region and you believe that a mistake has been made, or if you just want to find something about a particular book that isn’t available, simply contact us and we’ll look into it.