BAVUAL The African Heritage Magazine

OVERVIEW

BAVUAL, The African Heritage Magazine, is a quarterly (4 issues per year) publication that is designed to explore the Afrocentric experience in world history, from the beginning of recorded time to the present. The magazine will publish features and regular departments on the key people, places and events that shaped black people and as a consequence, all peoples. It is not a black magazine produced solely by black people; it is for all people who are interested in understanding cause and effect in history from the perspective of a key race of people and produced by a multi-ethnic international staff. We are not advocates for a cause, a pedantic academic journal or a celebrity magazine; we are historic storytellers, placing the reader back in time and explaining how the present world came about as a result. Through its pages you will come away learning more than you did before about black history and primed to learn more.

"Bavual" is a male baby name with roots in Swahili that means "power, strength, or force." The name is quite popular among the Swahili-speaking people of East and Southern Africa, including Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. "Adisa" is Yoruba for "one who is clear, or lucid." 

Bavual Adisa is a fictional person. He is 25 years old (born June 19th - Juneteenth - 1996), a native Tanzanian, but his residence is the world. He is from any country you wish him to be. His lineage dates back 680 centuries. He is the name of the magazine and the personification of its spirit and purpose: to document the African experience from the beginning of recorded history to today.

PHYSICAL LOOK
 
The magazine's size is 8.5 x 10.378, comprising 64 pages plus 4 covers, and printed on high-quality glossy paper with heavier glossy covers. Editorial content will take up 56 pages while advertising content will occupy 12 pages. Printed in the U.S.A.

CIRCULATION

BAVUAL will be available by subscription and single copy sales. An annual subscription (6 issues) is $29.99, a 50% discount from the magazine's cover price of $59.99. The price for a single copy is $14.99. BAVUAL will be available for free (the premiere issue) and purchase in the U.S. at newsstands, including bookstores and supermarkets, and online at sites including Amazon.com and Readly.com. The initial circulation base is 50,000, half of which is expected to be paid subscriptions. Distributed by U.S. companies.

ADVERTISING

Full page and classified advertising is available in each issue. For more information on target audience and rates, visit our website, Bavual.com, or email us at [email protected].

 STAFF

EDITORIAL

EARL A. BIRKETT, Editor

RICK D. BOWERS (former Managing Editor, Amplitude Magazine), Associate Editor

TAIWO O. EHINENI, Ph.D., Preceptor, African and African American Studies, Harvard University, Editorial Advisor

MYESHIA C. BABERS, Ph.D., Lecturer, Africana Studies Program, Texas A&M University; Adjunct Lecturer, Africana Studies, California State University, Editorial Advisor

STEPHEN G. HALL, Ph.D., Founder and Editor-in-Chief, HistorianSpeaks.org

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Bernice Groves, Kristen Jones, Lizzie Musa, Kermit Ray Thomas Jr., Steve Woodhouse

JUNE PADGETT, Art Director

DEBASISH SARMA, Associate Art Director for Illustrations

BUSINESS

EARL A. BIRKETT, Publisher

Positions of Circulation and Media Manager and Advertising Sales Representative as yet unfilled

 OWNERSHIP

BAVUAL is published by Vantage Point Planet LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of BIRKETT COMMUNICATIONS, INC., an African-American owned media corporation. It's Founder, sole Stockholder and President is EARL A. BIRKETT.

2022 ISSUE SCHEDULE (SUBJECT TO CHANGE)

PREVIEW ISSUE         Fall 2021 (on sale 9/21)

VOLUME ONE

PREMIERE ISSUE     Winter 2022 (on sale 12/21)

ISSUE TWO               Spring 2022 (on sale 3/22)

ISSUE THREE           Summer 2022 (on sale 6/22)

ISSUE FOUR            Fall 2022 (on sale 9/22)

PURPOSE OF FINANCING
 
Funds raised from crowdfunding will be used as seed capital for development and operating expenses prior to publication launch and for the first few months after launch.

Any magazine publishing venture is risky, due to the nature of the business, the relatively high production cost, competition from the Web and shortened reader attention in the Twitter Age. Even so, we believe that BAVUAL is a magazine for this particular moment in history, when knowledge to counteract misinformation and preconceptions is the best antidote to change. We have assembled the staff and organized operations to take maximum advantage of this need while at the same time keeping operating costs low enough to weather the critical first 1-2 years of existence.