Students explored a number of online platforms throughout the duration of this module. The following are the platforms they used for their final projects.

Digital platforms

ISSUU is a free platform which supports online viewing and downloading for interactive PDFs. It is used internationally and works across various devices.

The Internet Archive is the largest archive of public domain resources online. The students used it to both source materials for their publications and to publish their works on there, making them available for free viewing and downloading in a variety of formats such as epub and torrent files, under a CC0 license.

Print-on-demand platforms

Blurb is a popular print-on-demand platform, facilitated by the flexibility of digital printing technologies. Blurb enables its users to upload PDF or ePub files and distribute these as one-off printed publications. The production process is based on a model of shared profit and is free of cost to the publisher. Blurb is available within a few countries only.

Lulu provides a similar service to Blurb with some variations in the options to customise the printed edition. Unlike Blurb, it is available in over 200 countries worldwide.

Newspaper Club provides print-on-demand services for newsprint publications in larger formats such as broadsheet and tabloid. Until March 2018 it also had a newsagent service, which operated similarly to the Blurb and Lulu online shops, but unfortunately it was closed. No similar service was found to replace it within the timeframe of our course.