Why We’re Rooting for Everybody Black… Especially Women

When it comes to the dynamics of Black people and traditional publishing, the story is the same tired one that has been told since the dawn of time: the big five publishers believe that books that centralize Black protagonists don’t sell well (Baker).

This idea is giving weird racist energy since there’s such a great deal of Blackness on this planet—from African Americans, Afro Latinxs, and Caribbean Islanders to Africans, Afro Europeans, and Afro Asians. In fact, authors such as Toni Morrison, Tomi Adeyemi, Beverly Jenkins, Rita Dove, Edwidge Danticat, Candice Carty-Williams, and Maya Angelou have proven several times over that this narrative of Black books being unsellable is a big, fat, undeniable lie.

For centuries, traditional publishers have upheld the ideals of White Supremacy by actively denying manuscripts from Blacks and other marginalized ethnic groups for trivial reasons. Some of the reasoning for this includes neither knowing how to find Black authors’ target audiences nor knowing how to market the book properly (Ho), and not being able to recruit submissions from Black writers… because apparently, the only way to find us is through contests and courses (Shutti).

Let’s be real; if publishers really wanted these authors, they’d do whatever they could in their power to make shit shake. This includes hiring more literary agents that look like the authors they supposedly to want to attract, as well as editors and designers who understand the multitudinous nuances of Blackness (Romero & Figueroa). If we want to get to the meat and potatoes of it all, they’d also pay Black authors comparatively to their White ones (So & Wezereck), stop paying White authors to tell the stories of and for the people they refuse to let advocate for themselves — I don’t want to mention American Dirt or In Full Color, but… well… (Lane; Josephs)

“There’s a correlation between the number of people of color who work in publishing and the number of books that are published by authors of color,” said Tracy Sherrod, the editorial director of Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins that is focused on Black literature. (So & Wezerek)

Most importantly, they would stop coming up with bogus excuses. I know someone is reading this thinking, “If you don’t want to publish books by Black people, just say that!”

The wild part about it is that they do say it, very loudly and clearly with their actions.

Since our introduction to Whiteness, we have been on the short end of the stick; we’ve consistently been forced to pull ourselves up from our bootstraps despite the fact that we never had boots. Now, we’re out here two-stepping. We’re rooting for everyone Black because we’re literally in the midst of a new era. Black people are knocking things over and flipping these White publishers’ tables just to walk away and build our own (So & Wezereck). From Sovereign Noir to our sister companies Spoken Black Girl and On Writer’s Block, we’re out here doing what needs to be done. I’m absolutely here for it!

Because of the way that intersectionality works with Black women, we’re rooting for this particular demographic a little bit harder to ensure that their voices—our voices—are amplified and underscored. Our crew is a gang of diverse Black women who want to serve and share high-quality stories. Tell your mama and homegirls that we want them to write their truths so that we can publish them. We got space at our table, and there’s plenty of room for us.

Further reading:

Alter, Rebecca. “Why Is Everyone Arguing About the Novel American Dirt?” Vulture. Vulture, February 7, 2020. https://www.vulture.com/article/american-dirt-book-controversy-explained.html.

Baker, Jennifer. “The Major Built-In Bias of the Publishing World.” Medium. ZORA, January 8, 2020. https://zora.medium.com/the-major-built-in-bias-of-the-publishing-world-fa714f3ce9ec.

Ho, Jean. “Diversity in Book Publishing Isn't Just about Writers - Marketing Matters, Too.” NPR. NPR, August 9, 2016. https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2016/08/09/483875698/diversity-in-book-publishing-isnt-just-about-writers-marketing-matters-too.

Josephs, Brian. “Rachel Dolezal's Book in Full Color Presents No Good Reason for Her Assumed Blackness.” SPIN. Next Management Partners, March 29, 2017. https://www.spin.com/2017/03/rachel-dolezal-memoir/.

Lane, Darian. “Op-Ed: The Problem with White Writers Writing Black Stories.” EBONY. EBONY, September 29, 2021. https://www.ebony.com/entertainment/op-ed-the-problem-with-white-writers-writing-black-stories/.

Romero, Shelly, and Adriana M. Martínez Figueroa. “'The Unbearable Whiteness of Publishing' Revisited.” Publishers Weekly. Publishers Weekly, January 29, 2021. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/85450-the-unbearable-whiteness-of-publishing-revisited.html.

Shutti, Grace. “'I Stuck My Foot in the Door': What It Is like to Be Black in UK Publishing.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, July 3, 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jul/03/i-stuck-my-foot-in-the-door-what-it-is-like-to-be-black-in-uk-publishing.

So, Richard Jean, and Gus Wezerek. “Just How White Is the Book Industry?” The New York Times. The New York Times, December 11, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/11/opinion/culture/diversity-publishing-industry.html.