Surviving the pandemic: indie publishers, informal networks, and cultural resilience in Yogyakarta (2020–2022)

This article examines how independent publishers in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, adapted to the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic between 2020 and 2022. Drawing upon thirteen interviews, fieldwork, documentary sources, and social network analysis, the study explores how publishers, booksellers, literary communities, printers, and distributors sustained publishing activities amid economic uncertainty and social restriction. The findings show that survival was driven by informal trust networks, interpersonal negotiation, gotong royong (collective mutual assistance), and community-based collaboration. This study demonstrates that resilience in small-scale Global South publishing ecosystems emerged through socially embedded relationships and adaptive informal economies rather than formal institutional intervention. The article argues that Yogyakarta’s publishing resilience reflects a distinctive mode of cultural survival shaped by community bonds, flexible labour, and long-standing traditions of collective cultural production.