The Heron Group: Open Access Literature
1. Context
In December 2006, a group of magazine editors, publishers and writers met in Nairobi, Kenya, under the auspices of the Kwani Trust. The premise behind the meeting was threefold: (1) the assembled group constituted a unique community of contemporary writers and publishers from various parts of the world; (2) that this community could leverage its collective strengths to make the work of publishing easier, and the scope of reading wider; and (3) that archives, web-based open content licenses, community and commerce tools could greatly expand the universe of people aware of, subscribing to, reading, and writing for their magazines.
Among the magazines in attendance:
∑ Kwani? (Kenya: www.kwani.org)
∑ Farafina (Nigeria: www.farafina-online.com)
∑ Civil Lines (India)
∑ Sarai Reader (India: www.sarai.net)
∑ Chimurenga (South Africa: www.chimurenga.co.za)
∑ Sable (UK: www.sablelitmag.org)
∑ Transition (US: www.transitionmagazine.com)
∑ Tin House (US: www.tinhouse.com)
∑ Bidoun (Middle East: www.bidoun.com)
Additionally, Awaaz, Jahazi and Wajibu magazines from Kenya participated.
While far-flung, the group nonetheless shared a common grammar and a similar global outlook. Almost all of the magazines were of a literary or cultural bent; most were from the global south; and all of them were “little,” which is to say, independent, contemporary, and young. Reinforcing these ties, the writers and staffs already constituted a loose-knit community, already regularly contributing to one another’s publications as guest editors, advisors, and writers.
The problem is, in general, there is little or no awareness of say, Chimurenga in India, or Civil Lines in Nigeria. Each of these magazines has a base in their country of origin and, perhaps a very limited readerships the US or the UK – but little to no presence in other parts of the world.
Although all of the publications have some form of web-presence, none have fully searchable web archives to drive awareness of their publication or connect new readers to their rich legacies. Web-based subscription and back-issue sales practices are either non-existent or out-of-date, and no publisher was fully leveraging new media technologies to pursue novel relationships with their audiences.
In this context, the idea for a collective emerged.
2. The Collective
Given that background and range of challenges, the group assembled in Nairobi identified three steps that would significantly transform both their magazines as well as their work as publishers and editors:
∑ Build a functioning non-profit publishing collective to facilitate knowledge and resource sharing among members, expand their global subscription/back-issue fulfillment capabilities and pursue a collective web strategy.
∑ Build a centralized, web-accessible, “open content” archive housing the entirety of each collective member’s back issue catalogue.
∑ Build a vibrant, regularly updating social media platform with both “internal” and “public” faces, the internal, private face facilitating online content and information sharing between collective members, the public face allowing for deeper, daily online interaction between audience members and magazines that publish physical hard copies at best four to six times a year.
The beneficiaries of such a strategy are numerous, but for our purposes we can identify three core constituencies and stakeholders:
∑ Collective members: From knowledge sharing, to increased subscriptions, to increased connection with audience members, publishers benefit on a broad range of fronts
∑ The individual audiences: At the moment potential readers across the globe have few opportunities to subscribe to these magazines and have no chance of reading the wealth contained in the magazines’ back issues. Open content online archives and easy-to-use subscriptions engines will radically expand access to these magazines. In addition, effective social media and community tools will expand the audience’s access to each other, concretizing the audience communities that exist around each magazine.
By owning their own interactive fora, publications will be able to more efficiently identify and groom communities of writers, providing practical community to individuals who are often isolated for a broad range of social, geographic and political reasons.
