The Racial Divide in Publishing

Blanche Richardson organizes books at Marcus Books, an independent Black bookstore in Oakland, June 5, 2020 [Reuters/Nathan Frandino]

By Jennifer Wilson

This summer, book authors took to Twitter using the hashtag #publishingpaidme to expose racial inequality in how the industry compensates writers. Now, a new study has revealed how deep the problems in publishing really go.

The #publishingpaidme protest was part of a broader national conversation about racism sparked by the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Many were aghast when the writer Jesmyn Ward, who is Black, tweeted that she only received $25,000 for her National Book Award winning novel Salvage the Bones (2011) and struggled to get $100,000 for her second novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017), which also won the National Book Award. Chip Cheek, a white male author, tweeted in response that he had received $800,000 for his debut novel Cape May(2019).

Ward’s revelation left many stunned because she is one of the most visible prize-winning authors writing in the United States today. But according to the authors of a new study, underpaying prominent writers of color is only the tip of the iceberg. In fact, the industry has used the elevation of these writers to cover up a deeper problem.

Writing for The New York Times, professors Richard Jean So and Gus Wezerek explained that, based on their research, “Literary prizes may also make publishing appear more diverse than it actually is.” They cite the fact that “over the past decade, more than half of the 10 most recent books that were awarded the National Book Award for fiction were written by people of color.” That is in sharp contrast with the actual number of minority writers getting published. Just 11% of books published in 2018 were by writers of color.

So and Wezerek spoke with Marie Dutton Brown, one of the few African American literary agents working in the industry, about why, despite these figures, there continues to be a widespread public perception that writers of color are in demand. Brown says the real figures are “obscured by a small number of high-profile nonfiction books written by athletes, celebrities and politicians of color.” This “gives the appearance,” Browns says, “that there are a lot of Black books published.” Conversely, “mid-list” or lower-profile authors are predominately white.

In their findings, So and Wezerk found that, between 1950 and now, just 5% of published works of fiction were written by writers of color, and what scant opportunities exist can often be traced to individual editors (like Toni Morrison during her tenure as an editor at Random House). For many readers though, the main takeaway from the study was just how wide the chasm is between perceptions of progress and reality, a lesson that has resonance across industries. As Mara Smith, an editor at the magazine Bookforum tweeted, the article captured “the difference between the appearance of diversity and actual diversity.”

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