Tag Archives: content

Content

Frankfurt Book Fair 2012

October began with the revision of metadata, including adjustment of images on the site, and replacing the English language descriptions of Afrikaans exam packs with Afrikaans ones.

Later in October, I travelled to the 2012 Frankfurt Book Fair with the mandate of developing publisher relationships and sourcing content leads for Paperight.

I attended seminars, workshops, and panel discussions given by industry professionals and leaders, with a view to learning more about the inner workings of the publishing industry. I was also able to get a sense for where the industry is, and where it sees itself moving in the future – particularly with regards to developments in the digital sector.

The publishers with whom I met broadly fell into three categories:

  • Those who are already making their material available on Paperight (in order to build upon an existing working relationship).
  • Those who we have already contacted about Paperight, and who are keen, but who have not officially provided us with material or signed contracts (in order to ‘close the deal’, and foster trust).
  • Those who are hearing about Paperight for the first time (in order to build contacts and establish relationships with potential rightsholders).

I developed a number of connections and potential leads, and learnt a lot about pitching the Paperight concept to publishers, and fielding their questions about the service.

Things I learnt:

  • Having a stall ties you down as one team member has to constantly stay there. It also does not necessarily provide a strong ROI, as the people who we want to talk to are not usually going to be the ones walking up to stands.
  • Obviously, having more than one team member working the floor allows you to cover much much more ground – especially when these efforts are targeted and coordinated. Our friends in the Snapplify team were able to generate 5× the leads that I was.
  • It is important to have a ‘hit list’ of publishers/people that you want to target, so you know who your big fish are. I did this to some extent, but could have done it better. I think this task is simpler when you have a clear idea of what the fair looks like, and who will be there, as well as a focused strategy around the leads you want to generate and nurture. This is something that I will work on for next year/time.
  • Info sheets would be useful to leave with publishers who you are talking to for the first time. A number of people actually asked me if I had an info sheet for them, especially towards the end when everything is mixing together in your brain, or when the decision makers have left and the minions cannot convey the ideas properly.

Publisher registrations

  • Delshande Trading (11/10/2012)
  • Masoka Dube (30/10/2012)

(The image at the top of this post is by munckster on Flickr, licensed CC-BY-NC-SA)

Content, Tech

Removing ad space on Paperight documents

Our latest website update now allows the option for watermarking documents with ads or without ads. This was our crucial first step towards product improvement. We found over this first year that outlet owners and managers were not inclined to subsidize the cost of paper by selling advertising on their documents.  As a result, we decided to remove the ad space we’d left at the bottom of every page.

Because many of our PDFs have been laid up to account for the ad space, this meant that the watermarking functionality had to account for documents either with or without ad space.  It also meant that the 900+ documents that were on Paperight would eventually need to be reformatted to remove ad space. We’d have to lay up the documents from scratch, with the text now able to take up more of the page, which improved readability. 

By the end of September a total of 1081 titles were listed on Paperight, officially surpassing the amount of titles we had on Paperight 0.5.

We began by reformatting matric exams, our most popular set of products.  We uploaded more Paperight Editions, including Shakespeare titles, now using the new format. By the end of September a  total of 1081 titles were listed on Paperight, officially surpassing the amount of titles we had on Paperight 0.5.

We did our first round of Rightsholder statements for sales on the new site. These had to be created manually, and emailed to each publisher.

I also conducted the first real set of enmasse follow ups to publishers that I’d contacted and not heard back from. And the team was joined by Oscar, who started his internship at Paperight with metadata related tasks. His main focus is on reviewing existing metadata, and improving it where possible.

The Shuttleworth foundation approved a project pitch to send me to the Frankfurt Book Fair, so I began preparations. This included setting up of meetings, research, and pitching preparation.

Publisher registrations

  • T&P Books (1/9/2012)
  • Disruptive Publishing (5/9/2012)
  • GetSmarter (11/9/2012)
  • A.R.B (12/9/2012)
Content

The list of content on Paperight 1.0 is growing

We continued work on Paperight Editions through August, and uploaded the split exam packs. By the end of August we had 928 titles prepped and listed on Paperight.

By the end of August we had 928 titles prepped and listed on Paperight.

I trained Craig as another freelancer and briefed him and Caitlin on the e-classroom material, and coordinated their work on this new set of content.

We met with TSIBA about the possibility of setting up Paperight sales internships, an avenue we did not end up taking. And conducted edits and improvements to help site: stuff like adding screenshots to make it easier to understand. Arthur and I also worked on messaging for publishers, and brainstormed approaches.

Content, Tech

Setting up the help site and content leads list

We began the month with a quality control of the African Books Collective documents to double check them before uploading, archived the files, and uploaded them via CSV bulk upload. By the end of July we had 829 titles listed on Paperight.

By the end of July we had 829 titles listed on Paperight.

Ra’eesa (in the pic here) and Diann finished their time at Paperight by working on a list of content leads, and setting up the help site, respectively. I created a spreadsheet for Ra’eesa and began by sending her the emails and notes we had been keeping about potential content leads, and she spent time capturing all of these as part of maintaining an ongoing database (this is a task that Oscar would pick up later, when he joined us). Arthur set up the Paperight Help site, and Diann used the manual Nick and I wrote earlier in the year to create posts to assist outlets in using the Paperight service.

Having a help site was the preferable option as it allowed us to link to posts on specific issues in an email, rather than having to explain each time, or expect busy outlet managers to read through an entire manual to find the solution to the one problem they were having.

We’d learnt that outlets were not downloading and printing out the manual for reference, as we had expected them to. Instead, they would call or email us each time they had a query. Having a help site was the preferable option as it allowed us to link to posts on specific issues in an email, rather than having to explain each time, or expect busy outlet managers to read through an entire manual to find the solution to the one problem they were having. The help site itself had step-by-step instructions, and screenshots, on things like registering as a Paperight outlet, buying a license, or boosting your business with Paperight.

We also spent time prepping Communist University modules, OUP study guides, and Paperight Editions. Caitlin split some exam packs as per Silulo’s request. We tested the splitting of exam packs with seven subjects: Accounting, Life Sciences, Maths, Maths Lit, Physical Science, Business Studies, and History.

I wrote and submitted a research concept note for a joint EBW and Paperight project, but we were not selected for funding.

Publishers registered

  • Burnet Media (13/7/2012)
  • Kebooks (16/7/2012)
  • ZIM-BUKS (21/7/2012)
  • BookBox Inc (23/7/2012)
  • MSED (25/7/2012)
Content, Tech

Paperight 1.0 & our first large influx of content

May saw us moving into Paperight HQ, and going live with Paperight 1.0. The from-scratch site developed by RealmDigital included a simplified purchase process, account-top-up mechanism, outlet dashboard, and instant PDF delivery. This last meant that we no longer had to export and mail PDFs for each order as it came in, but the delivery function required that we prepare and upload documents in advance of sale. We could no longer list 1000 documents and process them only as orders came, we had to ensure that all the items listed on the site were processed in advanced.

We began by uploading the 88 documents that we had already processed (52 of which were the featured products on our poster). New uploading procedures (via CSV) resulted in some initial teething issues, and workflow re-design. We began maintaining an uploaded content list, in Dropbox, using file naming conventions for version control.

With the launch of the new site came other administrative updates. I re-registered all of the publishers/rightsholders. Arthur migrated the blog and wiki sites to new addresses, and we had to update all in-text links within the wiki. We began testing the new site’s functionality, and logging bugs to be fixed.

Nick and I wrote a full training manual for the site, which was uploaded, and sent to outlets. This manual would later form the basis of the Paperight help site.

Apart from the new site-related work, we continued processing matric exam packs, writing CSV for these, and uploading them to the site. By the end of May, we had officially uploaded all of the non-language exam packs. Caitlin started working with us on a freelance basis, and assisted this greatly.

The African Books Collective sent us 300 titles from their aggregated publishers. It was the single largest submission of content that we had received thus far – a very exciting step forward. We also flirted briefly with getting comics on to Paperight, in the hopes that high school students would be interested in this kind of content. We  got Project H (our first graphic novel), but other options fell through and we didn’t follow up on them actively as we had since moved on to other ideas.

Publishers registered

  • Marita Westenraad (7/5/2012)
  • Alta Schwenk (7/5/2012)
  • African Books Collective (7/5/2012)
  • Customcut signs (10/5/2012)
  • Communist University (10/5/2012)
  • Modjaji Books (11/5/2012)
  • Wonjoolaai Studios (15/5/2012)
  • Story Time (17/5/2012)
Content, Marketing

Marketing first steps

I started work at Paperight on 1 March 2012. I finished work at Paperight on 31 March 2014. A lot happened between those two dates.

In the beginning, I had only two other colleagues – Arthur and Tarryn – and we worked out of Arthur’s study in his home in Wynberg. There were many creature comforts – a kitchen full of coffee, a bowl full of avocados, and a box of free-range eggs weekly. I had signed on for a two month contract, thinking I would stay as an intern for a while and then go back to my rather miserable existence as a part-time blogger and a writer with no portfolio. (Luckily, Arthur decided to keep me on at the end of it.)

My first tasks at Paperight were quite simple: design covers, prepare documents when orders came through, and to write a weekly featured author post. During my time at Paperight, I designed roughly 900–1000 covers for Paperight editions of public domain books; most of these covers were designed during my first two months in the job. Tarryn had also initially delegated a small amount of content management to me, in the guise of master sheets and product uploads to the Paperight site, which at the time was a WordPress shell with what seemed like a hundred add-ons and extensions installed.

Over the first few weeks, however, my incompetence with regard to file and content management was made apparent. I was less than meticulous with file naming (to Tarryn’s significant chagrin), and even less so with keeping my version of the sprawling content spreadsheet up-to-date. I think that that had a lot to do with the fact that I was barely Excel-literate, and the thought of having to update the spreadsheet every time I designed a cover (all 900 times I did so) and every time I had to upload or change the details on a product page seemed like a particularly torturous circle of hell.

About Paperight, Content, Tech

Manual orders and the last days of Paperight 0.5

Everything Maths Grade 10I was on leave for much of April, but spent the majority of my time in the office creating packs of matric exams. We also uploaded Siyavula creative commons textbooks to the site, though this took some time as there were compatibility issues with their images in InDesign.

From November 2011 until April 2012, we had to fill orders that came in to Paperight manually. Throughout April, while the new and improved Paperight 1.0 was being developed, Nick and I continued to manually fill the orders that were coming in. This entailed prepping books, and then filling in licensing information and exporting PDFs with licensing information . We’d then email these directly to the outlet for printing out. April 2012 was the last month we had to fulfill orders manually, as Paperight 1 .0 was launched the following month, in May.

Publishers approached

  • Macmillan
  • Other Press
  • Peter Lang
  • Night Shade
  • Subterranean Press
  • Cover2Cover/Fundza
Content, Marketing

Matric exam panic in the attic

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skawara-matric-packs_20120817The first large project that I participated in at Paperight was the sourcing and collation of matric exam packs, under Tarryn’s guidance.

The plan was to bring together every matric exam paper, memo and addendum from 2008 to the present (then, 2012) into one, easy-to-access resource for matrics. This resource would make Paperight attractive to potential copyshop partnershops, and would give us a reason to approach schools. Seeing as the papers were in the public domain, our idea was to make them free to print, so anyone could make use of the service. This would also make Paperight extremely attractive to copy shops as they wouldn’t need to shell out any money for credits up-front, and could get familiar with the system over time.

government education websites and resources had (and probably still have) a lot of dead or wrong links, and nobody in the Department of Basic Education were able to supply us with the missing exams

Initially, Tarryn and I (and, previous to my arrival, our previous intern and my friend Michal Blaszczyk) trawled the internet – especially the websites of the different provincial Departments of Education – looking for all the papers we needed. In the end, however, we found we had over 100 documents outstanding between us. In essence, government education websites and resources had (and probably still have) a lot of dead or wrong links, and nobody in the Department of Basic Education were able to supply us with the missing exams.

In a fit of desperation a few weeks into the collation process – and while Tarryn and Arthur were both overseas and I was left to man the office alone – I drove to the Western Cape Department of Education at the Grand Parade, snuck into the building, and stalked the halls asking people if they might be able to give me all the past papers for all the subjects “for my little sister”. After being chased out of rooms and down depressingly-lit and security-barred corridors, I eventually managed to find a man who would take my flash stick through a security gate to his computer to give me the exams. Unfortunately, it turned out, even his selection of exams were incomplete and thus completely useless for us.

Some weeks later, after much swearing and complaining about the state of government websites and systems, we caved in and bought disks from EduMedia, the WC DoE’s multimedia arm, at their Mowbray offices. These too weren’t comprehensive, but they filled in enough gaps for us to be able to go ahead with our planned claim that we had the most comprehensive collection of past matric exam papers and memoranda available for free in South Africa – an extremely helpful PR hook.

About Paperight, Building business, Content

Collating matric exam packs and starting to measure metrics

Michal’s internship finished in March 2012, and Nick began an internship as his replacement.

Our first priority was preparing packs of past matric exam papers. We’d started to source these as part of our initial content list creation, and these were already listed on the site, but the packs themselves had not been prepared. We needed to have them ready in case any orders came in. The primary challenge was creating complete sets of exam papers. The DBE website and WCED didn’t have all of the papers, and their online resources were often buggy or incorrect. We started by creating a list of outstanding exam PDFs, which we then used to individually source as many missing papers as we could (we called and emailed, and bought CD compilations of exams to try to fill the gaps). At the same time we started prepping the packs for those subjects which we had complete sets for.

Nick and I attended some ‘Open Education’ workshops at UCT, in the hopes that this would generate some leads for more content. We found, however, that we already knew much of what the workshops covered (but it was edifying to know we were on the right track).

The aim was that interns or new staff members could jump right in on tasks with a little training, and begin to develop skills themselves. Over the years this has worked incredibly well for the content team. It means that when we do in-person training in those first weeks, it can be much more in-depth (and is thus more valuable) than if we were to do general introductory training sessions.

I began creating and improving upon a series of wiki posts to govern things like document creation and document uploading. The aim was that interns or new staff members could jump right in on tasks with a little training, and begin to develop skills themselves. Over the years this has worked incredibly well for the content team. It means that when we do in-person training in those first weeks, it can be much more in-depth (and is thus more valuable) than if we were to do general introductory training sessions. Ops style posts that give detailed explanations of how to do tasks means that new and old team members alike have something to come back to for reference, and ensures uniformity (which is important when it comes to file naming conventions for version control).

We also began to track metrics for the first time. Our initial focus was on measuring publisher registrations, outlet registrations, and top-ups (i.e. the purchasing of credits in advance). This process of tracking metrics was one that we improved upon over time. It’s interesting how much insight our focus on these three metrics gives to our business goals at the time. We were focused on creating an outlet base, and increasing our content bank, rather than on growing our customer base. And we were more focused on the potential for sales than on sales themselves. The failure here was in assuming that these three metrics were a proxy for other things. We assumed that a wide outlet base represented more potential customers, that increased publisher registrations meant more content (and that more content increased the likelihood of valuable content), that top-ups were a signifier of outlet buy-in, and would ‘naturally’ lead to sales. The reality was that we ended up measuring the potential for success, rather than measuring success itself. It was a lesson we would learn later on.

Publishers approached

  • WITS
  • Hamilton Wende

Publisher registrations

  • Cingela (13/3/2012)
Content

1000 products are listed on Paperight 0.5

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Arthur created a mock-up of the poster, and Michal and I assisted in proofreading and product selection, as well as providing pricing information and page extents. Once the poster was finalised, and we’d received the finished products, we were each tasked with selling the Paperight service to a nearby copyshop. Poster in hand, I signed up 3@1 Claremont – our very first registered outlet. By February 2012 we had also started advertising for a sales manager, who would take on the role of outlet sales and support.

By the end of February 2012, Michal and I reached our goal of having 1000 products listed on Paperight.com. We’d created a spreadsheet of metadata for 1001 content items, created individual product pages for each of these items, downloaded the epub/PDF files for every title (and renamed and archived these), and created Paperight Editions of the titles that were advertised on our poster so that we’d be ready to fill any orders that came in as a result of our poster advertising. We’d also designed and implemented the first phase taxonomy for the Paperight website, based on the selected categorization of products on Paperight.com, and created cover images for the titles we’d decided to promote.

The table below roughly illustrates the composition of the current Paperight products database, based on year of publication, as of February 2012.

In further trying to demonstrate to composition of the current Paperight product database, we have created three additional data visualisations. The first provides an overview of the number of books per genre, currently listed on the Paperight website. These genres are also represented as separate and searchable categories on Paperight.com. The second and third charts show the composition of sub-genres within two of the primary genres of ‘fiction’ and ‘non-fiction’.

Publishers approached

  • HMPG (Arthur emailed)

Publisher registrations

  • e-Classroom (16/2/2012)