'Reading for Pleasure' £500 cash prize competition

 The Jolabokaflod CIC team have launched the ‘Reading for Pleasure Prize’ Competition, which seeks compelling, disruptive and innovative ideas – in 500 words or less – from entrepreneurs, innovators and the general public; ideas that will encourage people in the UK and beyond to read for pleasure throughout the year. The competition seeks to address the current worldwide fact that leisure reading is not a high priority: for example, in the UK 36% of people do not read regularly (DCMS, 2015); and in the USA only 19% of people over 15 read for pleasure on any given day (‘American Time Use Survey’, US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2018).

Jolabokaflod CIC is a not-for-profit company that promotes the 75-year-old Icelandic ‘Christmas book flood’ tradition, which encourages people to buy books as presents for loved ones to start reading as soon as they receive them on Christmas Eve. The company adapts this literary concept for the digital age, to engage the book trade and the reading public in the UK and around the world.

12R Prizes is run by Twelve Ronnies to crowdsource solutions to complex issues. The ‘Reading for Pleasure Prize’ Competition, sponsored by Jolabokaflod CIC, addresses one such challenge: to champion reading as an attractive entertainment choice for everyone’s leisure time. The competition asks entrepreneurs, innovators and the general public to crowdsource compelling ideas that capture people’s imagination and fire their enthusiasm to read for pleasure.

The call for entries for the ‘Reading for Pleasure Prize’ Competition opens on 26 October 2019 (First Day of Winter in the Old Norse calendar; a public celebration in Iceland). A jury panel of global book-trade experts will select via a blind judging process a shortlist of up to six entries for the best ideas submitted to the competition by the deadline of midnight on 24 December 2019 (the culmination of Jólabókaflóðið in Iceland on Christmas Eve). The shortlist will be published on 1 January 2020 (New Year’s Day) and the winner announced on 6 January 2020 (Twelfth Night, the official end of the Christmas season).

The winner receives a cash prize of GBP £500 (equivalent to approx. USD $630). In addition, a crowdfunding campaign at CrowdPatch, to put the winning entry into action, will open on 7 January 2020 (the day after Epiphany) and close on 14 February 2020 (Valentine’s Day, International Book Giving Day, and the end of Jolabokaflod’s winter crowdfunding cycle).

The £500 prize was donated by Jolabokaflod CIC, whose founder – Christopher Norris – will join Twelve Ronnies’ co-founders Jake Shaw and Simon Krystman to present the cheque to the winner at a ceremony to be announced in the New Year when the winning entry is revealed.

The entry form can be found here.