Every three months, I sum up what I’ve been doing during my Shuttleworth Foundation Fellowship. At the time of writing this, I’m also reapplying for another year as a Fellow. In particular, I wanted to talk about lessons I’ve learned, what we’ve built over the last nine months, and where we’re headed. This post is the brief summary. In related posts I go into more detail about:

• lessons learned
• speaking events
• website development
• team and infrastructure
• partnerships
• a personal take.

After nine months, we’ve reached some big milestones for Paperight. Most importantly, the instant-delivery rights marketplace we set out to build is a reality, now that the Paperight 1.0 site is live. We have over 50 outlets registered – including copy shops, schools and NGOs – and have made our first revenue.

Innovative publishing companies have joined us, including Cover2Cover (youth fiction), Modjaji Books (acclaimed fiction and biography), the Health and Medical Publishing Group (publishers of the South African Medical Journal and a dozen others the and SA Medicines Formulary), and the African Books Collective, a renowned agency representing over 140 small and medium publishers from around Africa. (There are also several very small publishers signed up.) We are in advanced talks with several large educational and trade publishers in South Africa, too.

Promotional partnerships with Silulo Ulutho Technologies, a fast-growing chain of Internet-cafe-copy-shops, and copier-printer companies Canon and ITEC are kicking in now, too.

We’ve also made some shifts in our promotional strategy as we’ve learned through trial and error where time, energy and money are best spent.

So, listing the key milestones:

• We moved from a prototype to Paperight 1.0, the world’s first, open, instant-content-delivery POD rights marketplace.
• We registered over 50 outlets and made our first revenue.
• Several publishing companies joined us, including the African Books Collective, representing publishers from around Africa.
• Began our promotional partnership with Silulo Ulutho, a chain of copy shops in underprivileged areas.
• Finishing our explainer video, narrated by renowned author Sindiwe Magona.

Lessons learned:

• The human story is more powerful than the financial one (even when both are good).
• Spending lots of time chasing big publishers isn’t worth it. There are many smaller, more interesting fish.
• We needed to focus more on how we make it legal to print books.
• We’ve learned to blend patience and impatience in software development.
• Too much choice for our customers is paralysing. Simplify the offering.
• Making our own content is hard work, but very important.

Speaking event highlights:

• Presenting on digital publishing at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad
• Pecha Kucha at the launch of the International New Publishers Network in London
• Presenting at TED@Johannesburg in the worldwide TED Talent Search
• Getting invited to present at TEDxCapeTown.

Other highlights were hiring our outlet team, co-branding promotional material with ITEC Innovate, a forward-thinking local copier company, and spending time with Zakes Ncwanya, who is moving back to his rural hometown to set up an Internet Cafe and Paperight outlet. (This later became a story in the Mail & Guardian written by our communications manager.)

A personal note: The Fellowship is not just a great way to build and nurture valuable projects. It’s a personal- and professional-development drag race that produces tougher, smarter, more effective people. It’s also addictive.