Nick Mulgrew

Enter the Youngsters!

Till now, it’s been hard for teens to read in-depth about their favourite South African icons. From today, you can get the inside scoop yourself at hundreds of Paperight copy shops around the country. The Youngsters series are short books by celebs and leaders Danny K, Khaya Dlanga, Anele Mdoda, Zama Ndlovu and more.

These trend-setting authors offer fresh and sharp insights into the triumphs and travails of their lives, their professions and South Africa at large. From gender and race to hair and makeup; from radio and comedy to personal empowerment. Love and sex in the time of Facebook and Twitter. Racism and prejudice after apartheid. Being tongue-tied by South Africa’s many cultures. Each one shares the reality of being a youngster in South Africa. As Khaya Dlanga says of his book, “ I write like people talk. No fancy language; nor do I show how smart I am.”

“There’s this myth around that young people don’t read. That’s crazy. They just can’t find anything they want to read,” says Arthur Attwell, founder and CEO of Paperight. “This series is different, and it’s super exciting to be working with Picador to get it out there.”

You can buy any of seven Youngsters series books – including books by struggle royalty Shaka Sisulu, columnist Sipho Hlongwane and funny-man Nik Rabinowitz – from any Paperight outlet countrywide.

Click here to see all of the Youngsters series books available on Paperight, and follow this link to find your nearest print-on-demand bookstore.

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We’ve put together a The Youngsters poster for your outlet, too. Click here to check it out, or click here to request a custom poster from our design team.

Paperight Young Writers’ Anthology 2013 Winner no. 1: Jenna Solomon

The woman tried to defend him when the security guard scolded him for hassling the tourists. He protested but spoke softly – nobody heard. The woman did not understand a word and hurriedly left. No doubt her expectations of Africa had now been fulfilled. Joseph cursed. Turning, he smacked the security guard and the next thing he knew, he was making a run for it as he was chased down by a one-man horde.

This is Jenna Solomon, a Grade 10 pupil at the German International School in Cape Town, and the writer of the winning fiction from this year’s Paperight Young Writers’ Anthology. Her short story, “The Harbour Child”, was chosen as the best story out of over a hundred fiction submissions from high school writers across South Africa.

A tale of family, migration and the hardships of urban life, “The Harbour Child” impressed our fiction judge Professor Russell Kashula from Rhodes University’s School of Languages so much that he awarded it first place, earning Jenna a R1000 cash prize.

We went to DSK’s final school assembly for the term to congratulate Jenna and present her with a certificate and a copy of the Anthology. (Oh, and to speak to the school about Paperight and its awesome exam packs, among other things.)

Jenna was thrilled with the prize and the honour of being chosen as the best young fiction writer for our inaugural anthology. Her teachers and deputy principal, Mr Christoph Abt, were equally proud of her.

She said she got the idea for “The Harbour Child” from a photo her dad took of Cape Town’s harbour, and set about writing the story after seeing a call for submissions for the Anthology in her school library. (A special advance call for submissions for next year’s anthology is included in this year’s book, so get hold of it now if you want a head start on winning that R1000 prize next year!)

When we sat down to chat with her, we found out that she is looking forward to taking a gap year to travel once she finishes school, and then studying archaeology or journalism afterwards. Her favourite author is probably Eva Ibbotson, though her favourite book is Mary Renault’s Fire from Heaven. We hope that she’ll continue writing, whichever career path this talented youngster ends up taking.

So, congratulations Jenna! And congratulations to our other winners, who we’ll be profiling over the next little while.

And, of course, you should get your hands on the spellbinding Paperight Young Writers’ Anthology 2013 – which includes “The Harbour Child” and many other brilliant short stories in English, Afrikaans, Zulu, Xhosa and Sotho – at your local Paperight outlet. Check here to find your nearest outlet.

The Paperight Young Writers’ Anthology 2013 has arrived!

Today we have the honour of introducing the world to South Africa’s future poets, writers and illustrators with the release of the first ever Paperight Young Writers’ Anthology.

Compiled from the very best work from thousands of submissions from South African high school learners – in English, Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho and Afrikaans – the Anthology celebrates a new generation of South African writers and artists.

“The Paperight Young Writers’ Anthology was conceived as a way for us to help spark a culture of writing in our country, in the places where it must be allowed to grow – our schools,” said editor Sibabalwe Oscar Masinyana.

This is an outstanding achievement for the selected students who made it through a highly competitive shortlisting process that lasted over three months and involved thousands of entries in four categories – poetry, short stories, essays and illustrations. Together, the pieces represent a broad spectrum of South African experiences and concerns. In the run-up to Youth Day, we wanted to uncover and celebrate a new generation of South African writers and artists– we think the Paperight Young Writers’ Anthology 2013 is a great example of the high standard of writing and illustration emerging in our country that is too often overlooked.

We also took the opportunity to reward a winner in each of the four categories with a R1000 cash prize. The selection process was undertaken by a panel of esteemed judges and critics, including poet and academic Sarah Rowan, Dr. Hedley Twidle of the UCT Department of English Language and Literature, Professor Russell Kaschula of Rhodes University’s School of Languages, and art curator Gabi Ngcobo. The winners are:

Poetry: James Sulter (St John’s College, Johannesburg)
Short fiction: Jenna Solomon (German International School, Cape Town)
Essay: Triston Liebenberg (Bergvliet High School, Cape Town)
Illustration: Chad van Heerden (Eden College, Durban)

The Anthology will serve as an important introduction to the Paperight network to those who currently need it most, our country’s youth. “Many of the people using our network are high school students, buying matric study guides and past exam papers,” said Paperight founder and CEO Arthur Attwell. “The Anthology is a way for us to engage with these learners and find talented young writers among them. Now it’s blossomed into a rich piece of literature in its own right.”

The Young Writers’ Anthology is available right now! So get to your nearest Paperight outlet to see what the fuss is about. Follow us on Facebook to take part in the mounting excitement as we launch Anthology teasers and competitions.

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We’ve been kind enough to put together a Young Writers’ Anthology poster for you, too, whether you want to put them up in your school, or your outlet. Click here to check it out, or click here to get a custom poster done for your school or outlet from our design team.

And our first monthly sales winner is…

Dean Mostert of Minuteman Press Cape Town!

Congratulations to Dean on being the first to claim the R1000 prize for being the most successful Paperight seller for the month of May! By securing bulk orders of matric exam packs from local high schools, Dean is maximising Paperight’s ability to keep his shop’s printers working, even when foot traffic into the store is low. To read more about MMP’s bulk order strategies, check out this post on our blog.

Want to win R1000 too? Good news: we’re awarding prizes for the best Paperight sales people over the next five months. But to qualify for this competition, you need to remember the following criteria:

Free documents do not count towards your sales (e.g. Quirk Emarketing and College Campus guides)
You must include your customer’s first AND last names on every purchase
The competition is only for South African shops

Here are all the competition details in full. The race for June’s winner has already begun – good luck!

What makes a Paperight outlet a good bookstore?

Paperight now has over 160 active outlets throughout South Africa. Naturally, some of these outlets are more active than others, and some are better at selling Paperight products than others. This post is to show you what sort of thinking and marketing is going into some of the most successful Paperight outlets.

Marketing: where do we stand?

Curiously, most Paperight-registered outlets have not used any form of marketing to advertise their print-on demand book service, which is strange, seeing as advertising is (rather obviously) the most effective way to inform customers about your services.

Below is a list of the number of sheets of A4 paper printed by selected outlets when selling books via Paperight.

Urban Eastern Cape Outlet: 19822
Urban Western Cape Outlet: 14740
Rural Eastern Cape Outlet: 12422
Franchise store #1: 9529
Franchise store #2: 7998
Franchise store #3: 7424

All of these stores were selling respectable amounts of books with simple advertising, like posters. But the top three on that list got much bigger returns than franchise stores – which have much bigger advertising budgets and much more swish marketing potential – because of these simple things:

At the Rural Eastern Cape outlet, the owner, who runs the outlet out of his home, went to meet with teachers at schools and spoke with students in person. The Urban Western Cape Outlet’s improved sales came after a High School principal approached them after discovering them on Paperight’s outlet map and purchased past matric exam papers for their small matric class. (This initial order also led to a follow up order less than 2 months later.) The Urban Eastern Cape Outlet placed Paperight posters strategically at the entrances of nearby schools and within their outlets. They also trained the few staff they have to use the website efficiently in order to provide great customer service.

Tapping into new markets

When students came to the Urban Eastern Cape outlet to purchase past exam papers, they also discovered that that outlet offers IT training courses. Those students have since shown interest in partaking in the courses after completing high school. If this outlet didn’t advertise effectively, those students may never have gone to that outlet and may never have known that they offer IT courses.

The same is true for your outlet. Many outlets may feel that this is not their market – but we say that it can be. Why limit your slice of the pie? A high school student may come to your store for past exam papers today; next year they may return to buy their university setworks and textbooks from you; a few years later they may return to have their thesis printed; the year after that they may return to buy Write the Winning CV; when in business they may return to have their corporate printing and marketing materials printed.

We don’t see a student, we see an opportunity. Paperight is an opportunity to attract customers to your core business via a market which you otherwise may not have had access to: the bookstore market.

Traditional bookselling is starting to fail

Unfortunately for many, traditional bookstores are fast becoming unsustainable. More and more people in South Africa’s small book-buying public are switching to e-books, taking away a large slice of income from bookstores. E-books however, cannot overcome inaccessibility to books in developing nations of Africa, Asia and South America. Especially not in a world starved of electricity to feed its needs.

On the other hand, bookstores cannot continue to keep doing business as usual and still expect to keep their doors open. Bookstores stock their shelves with books hoping that customers would buy them but, if they don’t get sold, those books get pulped. We all would like to believe that they are given to the less fortunate to stock libraries in areas where books are scarce, but the reality is that in many cases they are simply pulped or recycled.

The print-on demand service which you provide, partnered with Paperight’s system of delivery, is the ideal solution to for the growing gap being left in the market. With print-on demand, there is no need for large amounts of books to gather dust on shelves. Books are only printed as customers need them, which also means less wastage and pollution. You are in the position to offer print-on demand books today without any changes to its existing business.

All that is left now is letting everyone know that you are part of the world’s largest network of print-on demand bookstores. So, get in touch with us if you need materials for your outlet, or how about you print out a Paperight catalogue, or check out our poster archive?

Our new help video: Getting started with Paperight

Need a little bit of help navigating the Paperight website? We’ve got something for you.

The new Paperight help video covers the entire Paperight registration process, how to top up an account with credits (including the 2 different payment options), the process of finding a document, buying the license and how to download. The option to change general account settings is shown, including how to add another user or multiple users to the account.

It’s the first in a series of simple help videos that should answer your basic queries and concerns about getting the Paperight website to work well and efficiently for you.

Want to suggest something for us to cover in our next video? Feel free to drop us a line at team@paperight.com.

So, how long have people been copying books in South Africa?

The answer might astonish you.

In his enlightening new book The Hidden History of South Africa’s Book and Reading Cultures, published by UKZN Press (and regrettably not yet available on Paperight), Archie L. Dick offers us this juicy tidbit of knowledge about how books were shared and circulated in the early days of the Cape colony:

“[…] copying and circulation culture was widespread at the Cape throughout the eighteenth century and well into the nineteenth century. Common readers and writers copied and distributed handwritten pietistic works, hymn books, school books, and children’s stories. Even after printing arrived, only one copy of an almanac was sold in each of the Cape’s districts, Lady Anne Barnard complained, because ‘all the inhabitants read or copied out of that one'”. p. 20

So, it seems the twin problems of agreeable circulation methods and of readers pirating texts – and denying publishers their profits – has existed since the advent of the Cape colony, and the city that Paperight happily calls home.

Why, then, has it taken us so long to figure out a permissive solution to the fair Cape’s (and, for that matter, South Africa’s) book circulation woes? It isn’t even a vaguely new problem!

College Campus distributes course material through Paperight

Independent South African tertiary institute College Campus has signed up with Paperight to distribute course material for over 100 courses and modules through Paperight’s print-on-demand network.

The deal allows over 150 Paperight outlets throughout South Africa to legally print out College Campus materials quickly, cheaply and legally for College Campus students, who primarily study at College Campus’ two locations in Gauteng.

In addition to their Bachelor’s degrees in IT, Business Administration and Commerce, College Campus – a division of the Independent Institute of Education, the largest private provider of higher education in South Africa – offers courses and certificates in sales and marketing, web development, database management, accounting, software programmes and dozens of other fields.

“This is a very exciting partnership for us,” says Arthur Attwell, CEO and founder of Paperight. “For students, Paperight can eliminate all the usual hassles of getting your course material, especially when you live far from campus. Students are sick of bookstores not stocking enough books, and waiting for materials to arrive in the post. College Campus is really making life easier for their students.”

“Our focus at College Campus is to ensure that our tech-savvy and connected students experience seamless education delivery,” says Genevieve Allen, MD of College Campus. “Although we fully support our students, the ethos we try to drive into them is deeper ownership and control of the learning experience which better equips students for the mobile and shifting world of work they will enter. Paperight’s innovative solution on material delivery makes them a perfect partner in this regard.”

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To find all College Campus materials available on Paperight, click here.

O’Reilly distributes with Paperight

O’Reilly Media, one of the world’s leading publishers of technology books, has signed with Paperight to increase access to their books in the developing world.

The deal allows over 150 Paperight outlets throughout South Africa – many in rural villages and poor townships where traditional bookstores do not exist – to legally print out O’Reilly books for their customers on demand. Depending on individual outlet printing prices, books are around 20 per cent less to print at a Paperight outlet. More importantly, customers save time and money by not travelling to distant bookstores, where books may or may not be in stock. Instead, any local copy shop can meet their needs.

The new distribution agreement comes shortly after Paperight was named ‘Most Entrepreneurial Startup’ at the O’Reilly Tools of Change Startup Showcase, held in February in New York City. Paperight also took first place, via popular vote, at the Digital Minds Conference Innovation Showcase this week at London Book Fair.

‘The irony of the digital revolution is that while democratising knowledge production, it has increased the gap between the Internet-haves and have-nots,’ says Arthur Attwell, founder and CEO of Paperight. ‘If you’re not online, you can’t learn about technology, and you can’t close that gap. O’Reilly books on Paperight can change that. Many of our printing outlets directly supply schools and computer training centres, and these books will give them a huge advantage.’

Some of the O’Reilly books that will soon be available on Paperight include Learning Web Design, Programming C# 5.0, and Learning Java. Titles from the Head First series will also be available, including titles focusing on PHP & MySQL, Python and Excel.

“Paperight was one of the most exciting new services featured in the TOC NY Startup Showcase,” says Joe Wikert, General Manager and Chair of Tools of Change (TOC). “They were selected ‘Most Entrepreneurial Startup’ because of the creative solution they’ve developed to convert copy shops into a new distribution channel.”

“We’re pleased that O’Reilly content is being distributed through Paperight and we encourage other publishers to sign up as well,” Wikert adds.

Paperight wins at London Book Fair

Paperight has won the Digital Minds Innovation Award at the London Book Fair – one of the world’s most prestigious publishing events.

The showcase was held Sunday night at the Digital Minds Conference, a precursor event to the London Book Fair, where dozens of illustrious speakers from around the publishing world speculate and postulate about evolution, innovation and disruption in the publishing industry. Keynote speakers included authors Neil Gaiman and Robert Levine, as well as Will Atkinson, Sales and Marketing Director at Faber & Faber.

Paperight beat out seven other shortlisted candidates after a short presentation in front of an audience of hundreds of the world’s publishing thought leaders, and won thanks to a popular vote.

Content manager Tarryn-Anne Anderson and content curator Oscar Masinyana show off our latest piece of silverware.

The win comes on the back of Paperight’s win at a similar innovation showcase at the O’Reilly Tools of Change conference in New York City in February, and a seed grant from the SAB Foundation as part of their Innovation Awards. Unlike Paperight’s win at the O’Reilly Tools of Change Startup Showcase, however, where Paperight was the only shortlisted innovation from outside Europe and North America, this time Paperight also beat stiff competition from the Middle East.

“We’re incredibly honoured to have this support from the world’s leading minds in digital publishing,” said Paperight founder and CEO Arthur Attwell. “It shows that as publishers we’re serious about solving the real problems of book distribution, getting the knowledge we create into the hands of people everywhere, no matter where they live or how much they earn.”

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