Publishing has ignored and pigeonholed black authors for too long | Magdalene Abraha | Books | The Guardian

Amid all the fury, corporations have been quick to express solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, and publishers have been among them. As readers around the world have flocked to buy more anti-racist books by black authors, each day editors, agents and authors have taken to social media to call for more action. Mainstream publishers have made donations to Black Lives Matter causes, while the #InclusiveIndies fundraiser has raised more than £150,000. Over the weekend, authors also shared how much they were paid to write their books via the hashtag #publishingpaidme, which, among other things, exposed racial disparities in the advances paid by the big publishers. Agents and editors have been more vocal in asking black authors to submit their work in the future.
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But if we are going to inspect the industry's support of Black Lives Matter, we must honestly assess its existing support for black voices. Year in, year out, the numbers have shown all the ways publishing has failed to reflect society.