As this year’s World Design Capital, Cape Town has been painted yellow. Designers and creatives around the city have been showcasing their transformative design work. As a WDC-aligned project, we wanted to inspire talented young creators around the city to try their hand as book cover designers. We launched a Cover Art Competition, and were not disappointed. The winner’s covers will be used as the official cover art for the Paperight editions of classic literature books, with the designers’ names appearing on the imprint pages. These will be available for sale from over 200 Paperight registered copy shops across South Africa. 
Neill Kropman’s gorgeous water-themed cover set came in 1st Place. He hails from Red and Yellow School of Logic and Magic, and submitted three cover designs that work together as a conceptual triptych. According to Neill, his concept stemmed from the following: “Each story tells a tale of travelling via water. I chose to connect all three books by this idea. A river flows from the first book (Huckleberry Finn) through the series, into Heart of Darkness and finally resolving into Robinson Crusoe.” The runner-ups are: 2nd Place: Lucelle van der Linde (Stellenbosch University) for To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf 3rd Place: Ivan de Villiers (Stellenbosch University) for Walden by Henry David Thoreau Congratulations to you all! We will be in contact with you soon about your prizes. For more images, scroll down. 
Category: Competitions
The #textbookrevolution hits Stellenbosch!
Paperight has officially launched the #textbookrevolution and supporters are flying in thick and fast. We now have #textbookrevolution partner copy shops across 10 universities in South Africa – and this is only the beginning. Publishers, students and lecturers have also been coming on board, joining an initiative that intends to blow apart the existing monopolies that drive textbook prices sky high.
This week the Paperight team took the long drive out to Stellenbosch to chat to students face-to-face and hear their concerns. Sporting #textbookrevolution t-shirts, we hooked them with a batch of limited edition Paperight drinks coasters emblazoned with the tagline “Cheaper Textbooks. More Beer”. Then we got down to business. We asked them to sign a petition calling for publishers to give them a cheap and legal alternative to buy their set works. Students, many of whom were on bursaries, were enthusiastic with the prospect of saving cash for other important expenses. One student we spoke to said that she had a textbook that cost her R1300 and another lamented the fact that she had to buy 8 books for her final year of Law; none of them cost less than R900.
As we walked around town we had students coming up to us as their friends had told them what we’re up to and we heard snatches of enthusiastic conversations about “those textbook revolution guys”. The #textbookrevolution hashtag has propagated across Facebook and Twitter with energetic commentary. It seems a no-brainer that students would love the idea and now we are well on our way to gathering the testimonies, signatures and demand that will help us initiate a significant change on their behalf.
Do you love the #textbookrevolution? Then join us! It’s as easy as doing any of the following:
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Share the #textbookrevolution video (see www.textbookrevolution.co.za)
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Publish the #textbookrevolution manifesto in your varsity newspaper or speak about the it on your varsity radio.
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Ask your lecturers why your textbooks aren’t available on Paperight – they can influence the publishers.
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Sign the #textbookrevolution petition on the campaign website.
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Send us your logo to be added to our supporters’ bar on the campaign website.
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If you want a cool #textbookrevolution poster to stick up at your school, residence, outlet or anywhere, get in touch with us at team@paperight.com.
Designers: enter our cover art competition!
At Paperight, we have hundreds of great classic books that we have redesigned ourselves to put in our print-on-demand library. Now we’re offering designers an opportunity to get their artwork featured on our book covers for 33 classic books.
All of the best covers will be accepted for use through Paperight and the designer’s name will be included on the book’s imprint page. The best 3 designers will receive personalised Paperight copies of the books that they designed covers for!
Choose from the following books to design for:
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dracula, Frankenstein, Great Expectations, Hamlet, Heart of Darkness, Jane Eyre, Macbeth, Mansfield Park, Mhudi (Sol Plaatje), Middlemarch Vol. 1, Middlemarch Vol. 2, Middlemarch Vol. 3, Mrs Dalloway, Othello, Paradise Lost, Pride and Prejudice, Robinson Crusoe, Romeo & Juliet, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Canterbury Tales, The Great Gatsby, The Last of the Mohicans, The Republic, The Scarlet Letter, The Secret Agent, To the Lighthouse, Ulysses, Vanity Fair, Villette, Walden, Wuthering Heights
This competition falls under the awesome spirit of World Design Capital Cape Town 2014, the competition is open to all.
Other terms and conditions:
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Entries must be emailed to team@paperight.com, as a high res .jpeg or as a PDF.
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Cover designs must include the name of the book and the author’s name. The designer’s name must not appear in the design.
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Winning designers will be asked to sign a simple, non-exclusive license agreement to use their cover design indefinitely on Paperight books and marketing.
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Queries should be sent to team@paperight.com, or call 021 671 1278.
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Competition closes on the 25th of April 2014.
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The winning designers will be contacted by the 9th of May 2014.
And our August sales winner is…
Hennie van der Merwe from Minuteman Press Vanderbijlpark!
Congratulations to Hennie for being the most successful Paperight bookseller for the month of August! A fairly new addition to the Paperight family, Hennie’s win proves just how easy it is to be part of the list of champions and win a R1000 cash prize!
Want to win R1000 too? Good news: we still have 4 months of cash prizes to give out to the best-performing Paperight salespeople. To qualify for this competition, you need to make sure all of your staff are signed up as individual Paperight users on your outlet account (details here). You also need to remember a few really simple criteria:
- Free documents don’t 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 you make.
- The competition is only for South African shops.
Here are all the competition details in full. The race for September’s winner is already on!
And our July sales winner is…
Unice Davies, from Revprint Claremont in Cape Town!
Congratulations to Unice for winning the Paperight sales prize for being the most successful Paperight bookseller for the month of July! How did Unice do this? It’s very simple. She sold Paperight titles and stuck to the rules of our monthly competition. Enjoy the R1000, Unice!
(It also helps if you have posters and flyers advertising your outlet’s Paperight services in your shop and at places like schools and places of worship in your area. We can make those for you – so get in touch by clicking here!)
Want to win R1000 as well? We’re awarding cash prizes for the best Paperight salespeople for the next three months. For individual staff members to qualify, you need to make sure they are all signed up as individual Paperight users on your outlet account (details here). And, in case you forgot, you also just need to remember a few really simple criteria:
- Free documents don’t 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 you make
- The competition is only for South African shops
Here are all the competition details in full. The race for August’s winner has already begun – good luck!
Paperight Young Writers’ Anthology 2013 Winner no. 2: Triston Liebenberg
This past week we visited Bergvliet High School to meet our Paperight Young Writer’s Anthology 2013 essay winner, Triston Liebenberg!
Triston, who is 16, came first in the essay category for her piece titled “Reflections”, beating hundreds of submissions from all over South Africa. Her piece follows the ebb and flow of human life through a variety of developmental stages, underpinned by her insights about aspects in life that never really change. As Triston writes, “there is one thing about growing up: it’s never too late and it will never stop.”
According to Hedley Twidle, a lecturer in the department of English Language and Literature at UCT who judged the Anthology’s essay category, Triston’s essay is “a fast-moving meditation on ageing and the passing of time, and one that manages to cover a lot of ground in a very short space”. Triston was encouraged by her mom to enter the competition and was very surprised to hear she had won because she had never entered her work into a competition before. After this recent success, she has begun to consider pursuing writing as a career. She hopes to study English after school in order to become a journalist, or, in her own words, “write a book or two of my own.”
Congratulations once more to Triston for her excellent contribution to our anthology. Remember, the Young Writers’ Anthology is available right now at all Paperight outlets! (So why not also follow us on Facebook to follow the excitement and our upcoming Anthology competitions?)
(And if you want to find out more about our first winner, Jenna Solomon, head over a previous post on our blog here.)
And our June sales winner is…
Aletta de Witt, from Aloe X, Grahamstown!
Congratulations to Aletta for winning the Paperight sales prize for being the most successful Paperight bookseller for the month of June! Aletta and Aloe X are no doubt helped along with their marketing by customised materials made for them by our in-house design team. (We can make posters and flyers for your outlet too – so get in touch by clicking here!)
Aptly enough, we’ve covered Aloe X’s history with Paperight on our blog a few months ago. They use Paperight to offer Grahamstown’s burgeoning student population a legal alternative to photocopying books – something that is rife in every student town. Why not give it a read?
Want to win R1000 too? Good news: we’re awarding cash prizes for the best Paperight sales people over the next four months. To qualify for this competition, you need to make sure all of your staff are signed up as individual Paperight users on your outlet account (details here). You also just need to remember a few really simple criteria:
- Free documents don’t 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 you make
- The competition is only for South African shops
Here are all the competition details in full. The race for July’s winner has already begun – so get selling!
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!