By January we were nearing completion of the content list for the first 1000 titles. It included popular classic fiction, open access educational material and matric exam packs for 2008–2011. The majority of these works were sourced by combing through lists of “popular/top”, “most downloaded”, and “most purchased” lists on various websites which sell or offer free access to public domain works. Other resources used for sourcing product leads included public domain curation and review websites, as well as compiled lists of the “best books of all time”, setwork lists, and the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners’ list (links to each of these resources can be found on the Paperight Wiki).

We also started brainstorming ways to market these titles to outlets, and met to discuss values, pitches, and posters. These were important initial discussions where we began the process of creating the Paperight brand identity. We decided to design a poster that we could send to registered outlets, and take with us when pitching to new outlets and publishers to make the concept more solid. It included a set of featured products that we felt would sell well to matric students and first year university students. Each product was assigned a three letter tag so that they could be found easily.

In hindsight this was a lot of work for one poster to do. We printed out 1000 posters and distributed them, but never received and visible indication that they were increasing sales.

The poster was meant to function as both a catalog and an advertisement, and assist with product discoverability. In hindsight this was a lot of work for one poster to do. We printed out 1000 posters and distributed them, but never received and visible indication that they were increasing sales. More on the poster here.

Publishers approached

• Kotobarabia (introduced by Arthur)
• Publisher Registrations
• Just Done Productions (27/1/2012)