YO' Books

 YO' Books put eBooks on low tech devices and distribute them in schools and  hard to reach areas. 

My name is Yohanis Riek, I’m the Co-Founder and CEO  at YO’ Books Limited, a South Sudan's leading independent bookstore committed to offering a quality selection of affordable new, bargain, and gently read books in print and digital format.

We work to provide and distribute varied books with interesting titles and other scholarly materials to encourage learning and promote a culture of reading as an alternative and accelerated form of education for thousands of people who still don’t have access to books and learning opportunities in South Sudan and across the Region.

And for South Sudanese Institutions that need to create and distribute eBooks, YO’ Books converts, stores and digitally distributes books via an existing e-books platform and low tech devices ensuring that both local and international content is easily available at local prices across South Sudan including hard to reach areas.

e-Books meet the challenge of creating and distributing printed books at scale in South Sudan. Using the Yo’ Books app and its book conversion and creation tech, institutions can quickly, easily and cost effectively deliver books to those that need them across the whole country.

 In South Sudan, nearly 4 million children of school age lack basic reading and writing skills coupled by lack of access to books.This creates a massive need for education at all levels and this come with an enormous demand for books and other reading/educational materials….

Given the difficulty of getting printed books into South Sudan, e-Books meet the challenge of creating and distributing printed books at scale in South Sudan. Using the Yo’ Books app integrated with Snapplify platform and its book conversion and creation tech, institutions can quickly, easily and cost effectively deliver books to those that need them across the whole country. Individuals who don't have access to internet are able to physically collect eBooks on USB drive at any of our outlets.

As many people and readers own basic smart phones in South Sudan, the eBooks we are distributing are mainly in pdf format and most of the basic smart and features phones are able to read these books. We also use our e-commerce site so that people who want to purchase eBooks directly from our e-shop portal can safely do so without having to come to our office and can easily download them. 

1) From the current 5500 eBooks, we aimed at storing 75000 eBooks titles on our sites and devices within 12 months of award.

2) We also aim at enabling access to our eBooks through expansion into other States in South Sudan so that more schools and readers can have access to books. 

3) Also, the 75000 titles will significantly increase our revenues on eBooks distribution from the current average of $640 a month to between $1500 - $3000 a month.

At YO’ Books Limited, we believe that books have power to change us - “for good”. We belief that South Sudan as a new Country need long term, sustainable good changes  and books have a role to play due to their good, supportive and positive influence. 

in the next 3 to 5 years, we  see the country moving towards technology and we envision that partners schools, institutions and individuals will be able to have digital libraries which would solve the books crisis the country education systems is facing. 

Customers will be able to access our eBooks through;

- Physically collecting eBooks from our bookstore outlets across the country for those with no access to internet. 

- People will be able to purchase and download eBooks from our e-eCommerce site  http://www.yobooks-ss.com/ which is integrated with Snapllify's API. Yo' Books partnered with Snaplify (https://www.snapplify.com/) to use their eBooks platform which is integrated with our e-commerce site.

- access eBooks from their school digital libraries which have been provided with e-readers pre-loaded with school specified contents which have challenges of getting printed books. 

We are currently serving 3 universities and 30 secondary schools (about 58,000 learners) in Juba, South Sudan. We have on average, 3 students/readers per day coming to collect eBooks in our bookstore outlets.

- In 12 months, we aim at reaching additional 200 schools in Juba City, this is about 280,000 learners where as in 3 years we target to reach 4000 schools, about 1.500 million learners/readers. 

Our team is currently composed of both management and technical members. From myself as a CEO, with overall responsibility for creating, planning, implementing, and integrating the strategic direction and programmes of YO’ Books with customers needs. 
We have a software engineer, acting as our Chief Technology Officer, Eng. Mading Roben who oversee development and integration of our tech products and platform with existing services and eBooks platform.

We also have a Sales & Marketing Manager, Ms. Monica Adut who help create, source and maintain relations with our clients - whether individuals, institutions and schools  

In addition to other support staff

Our revenue model include a variety of revenue streams:

• Selling of our physical products/assets –e.g. books, stationeries, electronics, CDs, etc charged at regular prices. 
• Third party payers –e.g we partners with UNICEF, MoE for schools books, supplies & educational materials distribution. they pay on behave of the readers. 
• Leveraging potential distribution channel –e.g. we currently partnered with agencies hosting large number of staffs in the Country such as UNMISS, UNDP, NCC, Freedom Hall, Hotels and have small outlets there. 
• Subscription for regular books clubs membership
• Lending/renting– e.g. books, etc to customers and neighbors.
• Education & training – e.g. through our professionally run short courses (LEAD) programme
• Consulting - focused on integrated library solutions designed to enhance library development & performance of partners institutions 
• Books events/launches e.g. book signing with local authors 

Through additional round of funding to grow our solution from Solve, we believe that we can reach hundred of thousands readers and learners currently with no access to books and learning materials in South Sudan. Being the only bookstore in the Country, we are always overwhelms with request for books which we can't meet due to limited books capacities and options at our disposal. Solve will provide strategic leverage for us, enabling a lot more readers to access books and provide different books availability options to the customers. 

1) Fully integrated our e-commerce site with Snapllify API

2) Obtaining eBooks from their authors and publishers. our previous experience means that we will continue to forge partnership with local and international authors and publishers to allow us obtain their ebooks and sell them on our site through a revenue sharing agreement.