Racial diversity within publishing: Is this industry still predominantly white? by Iola King-Alleyne

When I read a book, I almost never consider the author’s race, let alone how difficult it was for them to get their book published. As racial representation, along with representation of members of the LGTBQ+ community, has slowly been improving in the entertainment industry, you would assume that it would also be improving in the world of books...right? A few years ago, the publishing industry received a lot of criticism due to its lack of diversity, displayed through a number of things: at World Book Night in 2015, not one of the 15 nominated books was written by an author of colour; in Autumn 2016, World Book Day released a reading list, complete with all white authors; a study by Independent publishing company ‘OWN IT!’ in 2016 showed that throughout that whole year, only one black British male had been published, and it was by them. Another huge scandal came in February 2017 when there was talk of boycotting the famous Carnegie Medal due to an extreme lack of diverse authors nominated.

Of course, you could use the argument, ‘but what if the books just weren’t good enough?’, to try to excuse the blatant display of white privilege within publishing. But, as Sunny Singh (one of the authors leading the boycott) said, “that argument is consistently repeated… are they really saying that in a year that had such extraordinary books from writers of colour?”. It is next to impossible that for so many consecutive years, there really weren’t books written by authors of colour good enough to be nominated for awards. While every industry was making an active effort to promote racial equality, nothing had seemed to be changing in publishing.

An Independent children’s book publishing company called ‘Lee & Low Books’ released a 2019 update on its baseline diversity survey, which it had last done in 2015. Frustratingly, it showed no real progress as 76% of responders considered themselves white compared to 79% in 2015. Considering the growth of the company in those four years, there is basically no difference. But, ‘Lee & Low’ recognised this as a big issue which they are now trying to fix. Currently, their annual ‘New Voices Award’ and ‘New Visions Award’ competitions are open, with the reward of $2000 and a first-time publishing contract with them. The difference between this year and every previous year is that, finally, they are making an effort to look for more diverse authors. On the website, they write “Are you an author of colour or Native author hoping to break in to the publishing industry for the first time?”, with the goal that non-white people will apply knowing that they actually have a fair chance at winning for the first time.

Hopefully, this signifies the beginning of a trend in the publishing world that makes an effort to include more diverse authors. For now, we have yet to see if more authors of other ethnicities are nominated for any book awards this year. Also, if any of you are interested in creative writing for children or young adults, ‘Lee & Low’ s competition is open until the 31st of August.