Natasha Pumu stares at her phone as she scrolls down from one screen to the next. She’s reading the latest chapter from a book by one of her favourite authors on popular messaging service WhatsApp. “I can’t sleep without a daily dose of the books,” she tells the FM.
Pumu, 24, is one of the thousands of “Ama2k” — those born after 2000 (Gen Z) — who use WhatsApp to consume literary works in Zimbabwe.
It’s an easy access point for authors. In a country where the economy has tanked and high inflation has eroded purchasing power, the high cost of data forces many Zimbabweans to use WhatsApp as a social tool. That’s because access can be bought in cheaper bundled packages. There are about 2.05-million social media users aged 18 and above in Zimbabwe, representing about 22.8% of the adult population, according to DataReportal’s “Global Digital Insights” report.
For emerging authors, the messaging service is a boon; they leverage the app to charge users directly for services.
They do this through WhatsApp groups and channels. A channel allows users to receive messages from a specific sender, such as a business, an organisation or an individual, in a one-way communication format. WhatsApp channels are similar to SMS messaging channels but offer more features and flexibility for one-way communication.
Authors post free chapters of their books as text messages in their WhatsApp groups and channels. Once readers are hooked, authors charge them for the whole book, with subscribers gaining access via Boom, an application for writing, publishing and reading e-novels.
It’s a popular form of interaction. Take author Pamela N Ngirazi. She uses the app to distribute and market her books and engage with readers; she has 21,000 followers on her channel.
Teacher and author Adiel Zvenyika also recently set up a WhatsApp channel, and four major WhatsApp groups follow his writing. “I have more than 800 people in two of the groups,” he tells the FM.
Zvenyika releases stories in serialised form, delivering one chapter at a time. He gives readers access to his first few chapters, then promotes his work on social media platforms and urges readers to join his groups and channels.
“The first 10 chapters are free, then I put it on sale. I created a subgroup where paying customers go and pay anything from $1 to $2,” he says.
Payment is made via EcoCash, a mobile money transfer system, and other online payment platforms such as O’mari or Mukuru. If the title is popular, Zvenyika gets about $120.
How did he get into this? “I was passionate about writing and decided to venture into writing four years ago. I would write and convert the [books] into PDFs,” he says. Armed with manuscripts of novels he had written and tucked away safely, he decided to publish a year later.
Three years on, Zvenyika — who writes under the pen name Bighead — is a permanent fixture on the WhatsApp literary scene. “I don’t have a specific genre. Romance or fiction, I do all sorts of stories,” he says.
The first 10 chapters are free, then I put it on sale. I created a subgroup where paying customers go and pay anything from $1 to $2
— Adiel Zvenyika
Technology has disrupted traditional industries around the world, and publishing has not been spared. In a country like Zimbabwe, with its collapsing economy, this is particularly acute.
In the past few years the country’s publishing industry has undergone significant changes. The most talented writers still follow the traditional route, aiming for their work to be published internationally so that they receive higher advances, better royalties and superior promotion; international exposure also helps them build a global reputation. But more and more local writers are opting to self-publish — and WhatsApp is one way to do it.
Faith Chipangura, a Harare-based publisher, says the economic crisis in the country has played into the publishing industry. “I wouldn’t say traditional publishing has failed, because it’s working in other countries,” Chipangura tells the FM. “In Zimbabwe, however, it doesn’t work. Our publishing industry doesn’t allow it, due to the economic conditions.”
In her words, readers in the country tend to “choose between books and basic commodities”.
Given such a choice, it’s an easy pick.
This has dented the industry and caused traditional publishing to crumble. “There isn’t much investment flowing to support traditional publishing, and if there are no sales the traditional publisher bears the loss. That’s why it has failed,” she says.
But that has opened a gap in the market. So while savvy authors are using that disruption to explore new ways of monetising their work, readers also have the benefit of access to books at more affordable rates.
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