The numbers don’t lie. The publishing industry has a diversity problem.
According to a 2020 report from The National Endowment for the Arts, nearly a quarter of consistent adult readers in this country are people of color. But, the results of a Diversity Baseline Survey published by Lee and Low Books in the same year found that over three-quarters of the publishing industry is white.
The industry made an effort to self-correct in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. A 2022 piece in The New York Times Magazine reported an uptick in hiring of nonwhite employees and a “scramble” to scoop up manuscripts from diverse writers. And the viral hashtag #PublishingPaidMe, which encouraged authors of all races to share their advances, uncovered racial inequity in author pay. But, many Black writers still have trouble breaking through, and an evolving publishing industry that’s more focused than ever on a book’s commercial success has only made things worse.
“We have some of the best Black and Brown writers ever in romance writing right now, and the fact that they are not at the top of every list and they are not on the tip of everybody’s tongue is an outrage,” romance author Kennedy Ryan told Publisher’s Weekly. “What makes me hopeful is that even amid all of that, we have so many Black and Brown readers raising their voices. I have to believe that quality is going to be recognized.”
Ryan made history in 2019 as the first Black author to win the RITA Award for Best Contemporary Romance: Long for her self-published novel “Long Shot.” But while she celebrated winning one of the most important awards in the genre, Ryan also called out the need for more diversity in the industry.
“For me to stand here in this moment, it’s so much bigger than me,” she said in her acceptance speech. “I think everybody knows that it’s so much bigger than my book. It’s so much bigger than my night. It’s 37 years waiting for someone who looked like me to stand here. It is spectacularly overdue.”
Content creators like Dawnshaeé Reid, who has over 24,000 followers on TikTok, have become important resources to help elevate works by Black authors.
But romance author and literary agent Taj McCoy told Publisher’s Weekly that the platform tends to show favor to creators promoting content by white authors.
“The algorithms don’t work for us the same way,” she said. “This big focus on BookTok and what can go viral makes me a little worried in terms of Black authors and authors of color being given space and being recognized.”
But while the The African-American Book Buyers Study found that Black people spent an estimated $356 million on books in 2000, a number that grew from $310 million in 1999, it might be time for the industry to take notice.