 Bookshops and libraries are vanishingly rare in South Africa and Where they do exist they're tiny and badly stocked We know people need books. So why do we have this problem? Well, the book business is expensive Experienced staff are expensive Publishers have to be stingy with credit terms So the margins are low and the risks are high in short it costs a fortune to set up a bookstore or a library a Few years ago the Center for the book distributed free children's books to over 7,000 rural homes But they had no existing way to get the books there in Some places volunteers had to use wheelbarrows to carry the books from the local post office to homes and schools If you live any distance from a wealthy city suburb books are simply not a part of your landscape The problem is even more severe when books can save lives This clinic in Tanzania orders its nursing course books from South Africa 5,000 kilometers away a Leading neonatologist there said recently that programs using these books can help save many of the 45,000 newborn lives Lost every year in Tanzania But I know that the cost of getting the books there is absurdly high By the time a book travels from the printer to a warehouse is shipped across countries Stored again displayed and purchased its cost has risen four times over One popular way to tackle the problem is To put books on mobile phones and this can work very well In fact, it's working particularly well for subsidized story books in some of Cape Town's poorest neighborhoods but books on mobile phones need electricity and airtime and data and You have to read them on a small screen that can't handle complex images. So they don't work for everything Yet despite these obstacles People read they find a way to go to school and study Where did I get their books? More than anything they photocopy Unlike book selling photocopying is profitable business With a fairly low startup cost as a result the photocopy printer may be the single most common distribution channel for publishing in the developing world Now normally this terrifies publishers Copy shops will laboriously scan and print the books their customers find and bring in and To meet that need they have to do it illegally What if instead we made it legal What if we allowed a copy shop to find and print from a whole library of books on a simple website and What if we made that website so fast and easy to use That it's more profitable for the copy shop and more cost effective for the customer To pay for that service than to keep copying old books the hard way Could publishers make money selling books through copy shops We're busy finding out Working with the shuttleworth foundation. We've started a company called paper, right and on our site for a small fee a copy shop can Print books for their customers as they walk in the door Instantly every copy shop is turned into an entire book store Even in the most remote places every school has access to new textbooks that can boost learning and literacy and help teachers teach Every hospital with a laser printer can train nurses and midwives with up-to-date information and Every child can walk to a general store and buy a 10 page comic and Immersed themselves in the magical world that most of us once took for granted The publishing industry has the means to put every book within walking distance of every home within five years Thank you