Paperight

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.

Looking for background?

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.

Looking for our team?

Find us at Electric Book Works, where Paperight began. We're still making books in new ways.