Category Archives: Business

Paperight 1.0: The world’s first instant-delivery rights marketplace for copy shops

Posted on by
1

Paperight screenshot 20120510After years of planning and prototyping, and months of hard development work, the Paperight site I’ve always wanted is finally live – see http://paperight.com. There are still a ton of features and refinements in development, but we have here the world’s first instant-delivery print-rights marketplace for copy shops.

Previous versions of the site, from prototypes in 2009 to the beta we built last year, were missing key features that I believe are crucial to the ecosystem we’re trying to enable:

  • Documents have to be watermarked and delivered instantly, so that copy shops can print for customers while they wait.
  • Outlets have to be able to top up an account in advance.
  • Outlets have to be able to work in the currency of their choice, wherever they are in the world.
  • The site has to be lightning fast and easy to use.

We’ve achieved that now, and I’m really happy about it. Continue reading →

A Paperight Pechua Kucha

Posted on by
1

I’ve wanted to do a Pecha Kucha presentation ever since I heard someone say ‘pe-chak-cha’, and even more since Jon Slack and co. put on Canon Tales at the London Book Fair in 2009. So when he and Aaron O’Dowling-Keane gave me a speaking spot at the launch of the launch of the International New Publishing Network (@INPN_Innovate), I jumped. Continue reading →

Big-bookstore squabbles drive alternative distribution models

Posted on by
1

Dilbert.com 18 Sep 2010Last week, Amazon stopped selling ebooks by the Independent Publishers Group because the IPG wouldn’t agree to their terms – Amazon ebook terms are notoriously one-sided, which is natural for a company with market share easily over 60%. This week, Apple refused to carry Seth Godin’s Stop Stealing Dreams because it contained hyperlinks to books on Amazon. That’s natural for a company that needs a bite of Amazon’s market share.

The debate so far seems to revolve around the ethics of these decisions: Should bookstores with immense power be limiting access to books? That’s a tricky argument. I don’t think we’ll resolve it.

While it rages on, though, we have a chance to highlight alternative ways the ebook marketplace could work. Ways that don’t rely on massive centralization of the ebook marketplace around companies like Amazon, Apple, and Adobe. Specifically, we get to talk about DRM-free ebooks, the Open Publication Distribution System (OPDS), and retail innovation. Continue reading →