The rise of the WhatsApp novelists

Charles Dickens published most of his novels in monthly magazine instalments, but if he was around now he might do the same on WhatsApp.

The messaging app has "proven to be a boon" for authors in Zimbabwe as the country's traditional publishing industry "falters", said the Financial Mail. Aspiring writers are able to charge directly for their services by "leveraging" the app's popularity and turning it into "a go-to for avid readers".

Paying the rent

Kingston Dhewa is "one of the new crop" of authors in Zimbabwe selling novels to fans on WhatsApp, said Al Jazeera. The trend "really took off" during the Covid pandemic, when authors grew an audience with serialised stories, typically released "one chapter at a time".

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Dhewa initially joined a WhatsApp group for "budding writers" and felt he "could do a much better job" than the authors there, so he wrote a story and submitted it to the group. "People encouraged me to keep writing," he said. He charged readers $2 for his first finished book and "earned enough money to pay rent and buy food for his family". Since then he has written 43 novels, which were published through WhatsApp groups.

The first few chapters of a book are often shared for free to attract readers and build interest. "I now have four groups that follow my writing on WhatsApp," said Dhewa. The app has a limit of 1,024 members per group, so he has to create new groups as his popularity grows.

Another WhatsApp author, Pamela Ngirazi, has more than 21,000 followers on WhatsApp and prefers sharing her stories in a WhatsApp channel rather than a group. She shared chapters one to 20 of a recent romance novel to the channel for free and then charged for the remainder of the book.

Prestigious prizes

Harsh economic realities in Zimbabwe created the conditions for this new form of publishing. The "economy has tanked" and "high inflation has eroded purchasing power for the majority", while the high cost of data "forces many Zimbabweans to use WhatsApp as a social tool".

All the same, WhatsApp is not considered a "serious" threat to traditional publishing "because of the possibility of breaching industry standards", Philip Chidavaenzi, a Zimbabwean author and publisher, told Al Jazeera. Publishing is a "very sensitive area" requiring a "vigorous gate-keeping process to ensure quality control", whereas "anyone can publish anything on WhatsApp, good or bad". And "how much are you going to sell" through WhatsApp? Can you "sell enough to be able to purchase a house"?

Maybe not at this stage, but the platform can help win you a prestigious literary prize. Iranian Kurdish refugee Behrouz Boochani wrote his memoir "No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison" on WhatsApp as an asylum seeker in an Australian detention centre. The book won the 2019 Victorian Prize for Literature, said Time, and also "scooped up" the prize for non-fiction, netting him a total of A$125,000 (£65,000).

Meanwhile, Zimbabwe's Gen Z continue to snap up books through the messaging app. "I can't sleep without a daily dose," Natasha Pumu told the Financial Mail as she devoured the latest chapter from one of her favourite authors on WhatsApp.