Response to Mondays Seminar (Paperight)

During Mondays seminar we were fortunate enough, to be part of a Skype conversation with Arthur Attwell. Arthur is currently undertaking a project in South Africa bringing rural areas the opportunity to print their own books via copy shops. This innovation in publishing removes the difficulty of distribution and the subsequent logistics of storage and transportation of full, physical books to districts that are hard to reach. By allowing customers to choose what books they want and what proportion of book they require, this print on demand (POD) format allows for a cheaper overall product as the cost of binding and production is done at a basic level therefore reduces the physical price. 

Currently Paperight has sold over 1000 books in POD format, the advantage of this process to publishers is that Paperight acts as a mediator for rights acquisition, by leasing the rights to copy the text to printers, the publisher gets a percentage (with the ability to set their own costs) of the overall cost of production, with Paperight acting as mediator to generate finances. The growth and potential of this POD style book distribution is massive, IF a variety of publishers become part of the project. During the conversation it was revealed that the job section of the national/ local paper is rented in a physical manner, if this could be become part of Paperights publishing materials it is easy too see that this endeavor is destined for success.

Despite the apparent, ease of success, I possess some concern. The steady growth of broadband capability within South Africa could lead to E-book/ tablet,  magazines/books being more popular than printing a physical product. This combined with the continued decrease in price of such luxury items as E-readers and tablets could make them more obtainable and therefore reduce the amount of sought after printed literature. However I believe Arthur is currently undertaking a subsequent project into mobile phones being utilised as books/ e-readers. In my opinion this would be a more viable option as mobile phone technology has fully integrated with current lifestyles and possess the opportunity to be used anywhere and used in a variety of ways from education, entertainment, personal development etc.