Tag Archives: Paperight 0.5

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

Michal starts working at Paperight

Michal began working as an intern at Paperight in December 2011. He assisted in the development of the list of 1000 open and public domain titles. Together we researched product leads, sourced documents, compiled metadata, and the listed each product on Paperight 0.5.

Arthur set up the Paperight wiki, with both Michal and I as contributors. We began maintaining records of publisher registrations and ops.

With the view to creating Paperight Editions of the public domain titles on our list, I created a Paperight Edition novel template in InDesign.

paperight-edition-indd-template

One of the main challenges I began to experience was the lack of response from people who I contacted ‘cold’. It became evident that one of the most useful resources for eliciting a response, was a mutual connection (a role that Arthur often filled).

One of the main challenges I began to experience was the lack of response from people who I contacted ‘cold’. It became evident that one of the most useful resources for eliciting a response, was a mutual connection (a role that Arthur often filled).

Publishers approached

  • Shikaya (Arthur and I met with)

Publisher registrations

  • Peter Delmar (6/12/2011)
  • Anthony Hambly (31/12/2011)
Content

Project Dagobah & The Great Content Drive of 2011

I started at Paperight, as employee number one, on the 1st of November 2011. My mandate for the first four months on the Paperight Team was to get 1000 content items on to Paperight. The mission was code-named Project Dagobah, because who doesn’t love a little Star Wars?

International rights/sales managers needed more time to get familiar with the Paperight model, and we needed content as soon as possible. We decided that the most productive way forward would be to focus on public domain and open access material, and to grow our list of licensed content once we had an already established list.

I began by working with setwork lists, and approaching the rights departments of relevant publishing houses. It soon became apparent that this strategy was not going to work. International rights/sales managers needed more time to get familiar with the Paperight model, and we needed content as soon as possible.

We decided that the most productive way forward would be to focus on public domain and open access material, and to grow our list of licensed content once we had an already established list. To this end I began to draw up a list of 1000 open and public domain titles from www.gutenberg.org and www.internetarchive.org.

our-first-booksWhen I started, Arthur had already signed up a couple of publishers (our early champions). So, during this first month I also facilitated the receipt of files from EBW and The Professional and Higher Learning, and created individual posts for each of these to serve as product pages on the site. This first version of the site was hacked together in WordPress, and required manual order fulfillment via email. We called it version 0.5.

Part of my work at this stage was also learning how to approach publishers myself. I shadowed Arthur, and attended meetings with him.

Publishers approached

  • Siyavula (via email, with an intro from Arthur)
  • Faber (via email)
  • Heineman (via email)
  • Penguin SA (via email)
  • Harper Collins (via email)
  • Lexis Nexis (via email)
  • Jonathan Ball (via email)
  • Haynes (via email)
  • Juta (via email)
  • Pearson (via email)
  • WITS University Press (via email)
  • Future Managers (in person, with Arthur)

Publisher registrations (existing)

  • The Professional and Higher Partnership (10/10/2011)
  • Carolyn Jewel (6/10/2011)
  • Electric Book Works (6/10/2011)