Editions for festivals, competitions and institutions

Give your people a year,
not a programme.

Your festival ends. Your competition hands out its certificates. Your students go home for the holidays. A Year with the Muses is a 400-page daily reader — 365 verified voices on the arts and the well-lived life — that you can give in your own colours, with your own photographs, your own letter, and each recipient's name on every page. It keeps working for the eleven months you are not in the room.

Ask for a sample edition See how it is paid for

Festival edition

Competition edition

What your people receive

The whole book. Nothing held back for a “full version”.

Every edition carries all 365 days, The Companion, the practices, the open doors and the twelve galleries. What changes is the outside — and the outside is yours.

Your identity

Your colours through the whole book, your name in the header of every page, your logo and cover image. A recipient sees you 400 times in a year.

Your letter

A word from your director or committee, opening the book — addressed to each recipient by name, and followed by a page listing what the year ahead will give them.

Your photographs

Twelve gallery openings through the year carry your images with your captions: venues, streets, the town, the stage, the studio.

Your sponsors

A full page for the principal partner in their own words, plus an acknowledgement on each of the twelve gallery openings — thirteen positions, none of them interrupting a reading day.

Three kinds of client

Different reasons, one machine

Arts festivals

The gift that lasts till next year

Your problem is not the eleven days. It is the eleven months. A programme is dead the morning after; this arrives in a reader's inbox and stays open on a table for a year, with your name in the running head.

Available in English and Afrikaans
Your town and venues open the twelve galleries
Sponsor-fundable, so it need not touch your own budget

Sample editions: National Arts Festival · Woordfees · KKNK

Competitions & eisteddfods

Something better than a certificate

A certificate is worth nothing the moment it is printed. This says the same thing — you stood up and performed — and then keeps a young person company through the year of practice that follows, with a page for a teacher's note.

Written for a young participant, not a corporate guest
Parents keep it; participants write in it
Recurring: a new edition each year, and they return

Age note: written for about sixteen and older. For mostly primary-school participants, talk to us first — see the note below.

Sample edition: a regional eisteddfod

Schools, studios & departments

Loyalty, motivation, belonging

Music and dance studios, drama schools, university arts departments. Your students chose an art and will be asked to justify it. Give them 365 people who made the same choice — and your name on the year they spend proving it was right.

Annual, so each intake receives its own
A retention tool that parents can see and hold
Works for a 40-student studio or a 400-student faculty

Sample edition: a drama and music department

How it gets paid for

Five models. Most clients combine two.

Copies are digital, so the marginal cost of one more is nothing. That means the money can come from wherever it sits most comfortably — and often it is not from you at all.

1. Sponsor-funded

A partner buys the edition for your audience. They get the opening sponsor page, twelve gallery acknowledgements, and their name travelling with a reader for twelve months. You budget nothing.

Best for: festivals with an existing partner programme.

2. You buy a block

You buy a set number of copies at a bulk rate and give them away — to your Friends, your patrons, your volunteers, your finalists. Redeemed by a code on our site, so you never handle a file.

Best for: membership bodies and Friends-of schemes.

3. First come, first served

The block is offered free to your audience until it runs out, then the page switches automatically to a discounted rate for latecomers. Urgency without disappointment.

Best for: festivals wanting reach and a mailing list.

4. Opt-in at registration

The participant or attendee adds the edition when they book or enter, at a set price, and you keep a share. Costs you nothing and earns you something.

Best for: competitions and eisteddfods with online entry.

5. They buy their own

Once the sponsored block is gone, your people can still buy the edition themselves at the standard rate, or order as a group — a book club, a class, a choir — at group rates.

Best for: everyone, as the tail after any of the above.

Prices, plainly

Bulk copies from R59 each; individual editions R249. One set-up fee per edition covers the design, your images and the language pass. Exact numbers come with your quote.

No printing, no shipping, no minimum you cannot meet.

From first email to delivered books

About three weeks, and roughly an hour of your time

You tell us who you are

The form below. We reply with a preview edition in your own colours — enough to see exactly how a page works — before you decide anything.

You upload your material

We send a private link — no login. Your logo, cover image, up to twelve gallery photographs with captions, and your letter. Every image is checked as it arrives, so you know immediately if one needs a better version. About fifteen minutes.

We prepare and you approve

We set the edition, run the language pass, and send you the complete proof to approve. Nothing is generated for your people until you say yes.

You send the names

A list of names and email addresses — or a redemption code your audience uses on our site, if you would rather not hold the list.

Everyone gets their own copy

Each recipient's edition is generated individually, with their name on the cover, in the dedication and in the footer of all 400 pages, and is emailed to them. You get a delivery report.

Start here

Ask for a sample edition

Tell us which kind of edition you are thinking about. We will send you a preview edition in your own colours — your cover, your letter, a gallery opening and sample days, set exactly as they will appear — together with a quote. No obligation, and we do not add you to anything.

Who this book is for — please read before you order

Written for readers of about sixteen and older. These are real writers, and many of them wrote about grief, doubt and mortality as honestly as they wrote about beauty — that is much of the book's worth, and the reason we say so plainly. Younger readers get a great deal from it alongside a parent or teacher, and The Companion at the back is there to help. If your participants are mostly primary-school age, tell us on the form and we will advise honestly before you commit.

Every quotation in every edition is verified word for word against its original public-domain source, and that source is printed on the page. The artworks that open the galleries come from the open-access collections of the world's museums. Editions are delivered as fillable PDFs — readable on any device, and printable if a recipient prefers paper.