Paperight was an award-winning experiment in distributed print-on-demand. Our vision was 'Every book within walking distance of every home'. We set out to achieve this by turning ubiquitous photocopy shops into legal print-on-demand bookstores. Paperight ran for five years, worked with hundreds of shops, and listed thousands of books in its catalogue. Eventually, we couldn't make our approach self-sustaining, and decided to sunset our operations. We learned so much, and shared everything. We hope that others will make distributed print-on-demand a reality in other ways.
The inside story: plans and lessons learned.
The code: we built an open-source printing marketplace. If you’re a developer, build your own Paperight service.
The blog: our news from launch to closure.
The founder’s blog: Arthur Attwell on the Paperight journey.
The Shuttleworth Foundation on funding Paperight.
Find us at Electric Book Works, where Paperight began. We're still making books in new ways.