Flaming Hydra launches Kickstarter campaign The Phoenix Project for libraries' right to own e-books

A three-part project

The online magazine Flaming Hydra has launched a Kickstarter campaign called The Phoenix Project under the banner of 'bringing back the human internet'. As TechCrunch reports, a pledge supports three initiatives at once: a one-time print magazine devoted to 'the values and fun of the early internet,' a new e-book service for libraries, and a subscription and archiving program for newsletters, also aimed at libraries. Editor-in-chief Maria Bustillos calls these directions 'essentially one thing,' united by the goal of 'defending the freedom of information' and fulfilling 'the promise of the early internet' — making information available to as many people as possible while keeping authors able to earn a living.

Why owning e-books became a problem

The project was prompted by a system in which libraries and schools do not buy digital books but merely license them from publishers — and can therefore lose access at any moment. In a 2020 article, Bustillos gave an example: a school paid $27 per student per year for access to 'The Diary of Anne Frank' instead of buying the book once. She also cited cases where purchased e-books were altered or deleted from readers' devices after the purchase. In her words, for a single book this may seem like a small thing, 'but if it's all the textbooks for everyone, if it's all the books,' the problem becomes serious. 'If you are at the mercy of someone who can turn off a book, you don't own it,' she told TechCrunch.

How the system will work

The Phoenix Project's solution is to give libraries the ability to truly buy and own e-books, then lend them to patrons through an open 'library in a box' system called Lenny for Libraries. The initial catalog consists of five new e-books by Flaming Hydra authors, including collections of The Awl's writing and essays by Tom Scocca and Bustillos herself. She is negotiating with library consortia and authors' organizations and speaks of a goal to 'change the conversation' around e-books and digital archiving: the project could become a model for similar initiatives.

A newsletter archive and standing up to AI clones

The second part of the project, Phoenix Foundry Archive, will give libraries access to paid newsletters: according to Bustillos, a significant share of the best journalism, criticism, and essays is now published there and is unavailable to either libraries or the Internet Archive. Newsletter authors (first on the Ghost platform, later on others as well) will be able to offer libraries subscriptions, similar to newspapers and magazines, and the system will automatically convert selected posts into EPUB for digital lending. The motivation is also tied to AI: Bustillos mentions Tal Levin's piece about the countless AI clones of his book on Amazon and says that an ecosystem where authors control distribution themselves is 'completely insulated from mechanistic interference.' Financial support for the project before Kickstarter came, among others, from Anand Raghunathan, Brewster Kahle, and Paul Ford; crowdfunding, according to Bustillos, protects both the project's sustainability and its editorial independence.

Timeline and scale

Flaming Hydra is raising $30,000 for The Phoenix Project; the Kickstarter campaign closes on November 27. For now, the project covers only five books and newsletters on a single platform, so it is too early to speak of broad impact — but the very model in which libraries own digital books rather than rent them differs from how the current library e-book market works.