Publishing's DE&I Problem(s)

Or: the newsletter in which Nisha gets pissed, gets sassy, and shares a ton of links.

INTRODUCTION

I recently saw an article by another frustrated mediocre white woman author complaining that she couldn’t get published because publishing was focused on books by marginalized authors.

What a ridiculous hot take, when:

1. Straight white men can start a Booktok account and amass enough followers in a month to get a book deal

2. Book banning is rampant and impacts marginalized communities the most

3. Publishing is reacting to a right wing government and setting up imprints to support conservative hot takes

4. Publishing is STILL predominately white despite periodic pushes to change

5. And authors such as myself and others like Susan Lee are gaslit into believing WE are the problem and not publishing.

I’ve worked in DE&I for over a decade now as a practitioner and an executive. I’m here to tell you that the hardest part of my job is not to actually help industries diversify, but to convince people that there isn’t a single source for the problem and the entire system needs to change.

What I mean to say is: we’re all the problem.

PART ONE

Let me explain: Racism, Homophobia and Abelism is systemic. In other words, the way we do things, the way we publish books and buy books and talk about books and even read books, was DESIGNED to exclude certain populations.

Don’t believe me? We had Anti-Literacy Laws for a reason. It was illegal to teach Black people to read or write around the 1740s to the early 1800s. Access to books was limited in schools, in libraries, and in so many other spaces to prevent black communities from becoming educated. (hint hint: book banning today does what now? Right). These anti-literacy laws shaped the way early publishing established routes of sale. This means where, how, and what was being sold.

If you want to know more about anti-literacy laws, bt-dubs, you should check out Dangerous Learning by Derek Black.

Another example is the audiobook. Audiobooks are sold and produced in a way that can sometimes be cost prohibitive to limit reading and opportunity to those who have visual impairments. If your argument is ‘oh Nisha, it’s so expensive to produce, that’s why audiobooks are pricey.’ My response is access is not a byproduct like so many people believe. It is intentional in the way the system was designed.

There are so many other examples, from the way books are edited, to the way they are printed, to author contracts and the book buying process. We can see it in advances as well (#PublishingPaidMe) We often only judge the marketing end of things as racist, or prejudice or homophobic and ableist, but the entire pipeline is shaped so that books are available to those who can afford it with cis het white men as an ‘ideal’ reader [term used loosely].

PART TWO

Now that we understand the problem is systemic, it’s important to keep in mind that multiple sources are perpetuating the problem. I’ve talked about this before on my TikTok. The publishing DEI problem is like a hydra. There are multiple heads to reckon with.

If we just look at the traditional publishing model, we have some variation of the following in most/many houses:

1. The executives at the top driving strategic vision.

2. The finance teams that are running numbers to make offers to authors and price books based on ‘industry data’.

3. The editorial teams that are subjectively selecting material based on their singular experience and intuition.

4. The marketing and publicity teams that are working with finance to allocate monetary support to select authors and determining how to position certain books.

5. The sales team which will often have a hand in which books are lead titles and which books should be pushed the most to book boxes, book clubs, and retail giants per season.

6. The retail giants, libraries and school districts who determine which books will appear on the shelves and how many books they’ll buy of a particular title.

7. The book clubs and book boxes which will select one to two books a month based on marketability, high concept, and data generated from their audience.

8. The “lists” like Indie Next, or Library Journal, or Publisher’s Weekly, or Amazon Editors Pick which highlight certain books as ‘buzzworthy’.

9. The influencers and readers who are often the most transparent about whether or not they like a book because there are marginalized communities represented in the novels they read.

10. Social media, which has algorithms that suppress videos that mention race, ethnicity, disability, queer representation, or videos that show book covers with black and brown bodies.

These entities shouldn’t be viewed individually, but as part of a whole.

Want an example of how this is all connected?

Social media buzz for a particular book can create a data point, which then triggers the finance teams to mark that book as a successful sale. This triggers the marketing team, which then influences editorial to look for more books like the ones that are touted on social media. And the cycle continues.

PART THREE

As much as this sounds like a defeatist position, we don’t have a singular solution to the problem. We have to dismantle publishing at multiple different parts to create equitable systems in order for us to thrive.

Let’s look at traditional publishing again. There are 2 types of diversity programs: internal and external. Internal is the work done within the industry to change said industry to produce better outcomes. External is often associated with marketing PR and publicity. It’s commercials, print advertising, and crisis management. Often times, external is managed by corporate social responsibility teams, but not always. This depends on the size of the industry/organization.

The external diversity is self explanatory in a lot of ways when it comes to needing change, so I want to talk about the internal a bit. The internal impacts the first five levers listed above.

Most of the large trad publishers are owned by these giant conglomerates or private equity firms. These corporations aren’t really ‘book people.’ Most of them don’t believe in the sanctity of the story like you and I do. They are capitalists. Their goal is to make money. They believe in the finance guy over our editorial baddie who is doing her best to diversify the imprint.

Those in power will do whatever they can to retain their power, and if that means that they’re still making money at the cost of marginalized stories, then they’ll continue the status quo with no remorse.

A solution you may see (in trad publishing) is the appointment of a DE&I professional at the top. For some reason, publishing thinks that all their problems will go away with a diversity professional hire.

That’s like putting a Paw Patrol bandaid over a hole in the Hoover Dam.

Trust me, I am a DEI professional and I’ve been in executive positions before where large holding empires think my presence alone is enough. I hate to tell you this, but that job is all smoke and mirrors. It’s about appearance.

DEI professionals take those jobs like they’re entering a Kobiashi Maru. It’s a no-win situation, but we do it because we believe in the importance of DEI, and we’ll burn out with honor. Not to say some DEI professionals aren’t successful. But oftentimes, those success stories include large teams, and a direct line to the CEO of the org. That is usually not the case.

Another solution that used to be a way to tackle publishing’s diversity problem was calculating diversity data. i.e., what percentage of the publishing workforce represents each marginalized community. The purpose of this was to create targeted hiring goals or publishing goals. However, with increased legal scrutiny thanks to political pressure, most companies have done away with calculating representation data to avoid pesky law suits. It’s also expensive to manage, and there is a HUGE margin of error.

I have mixed feelings about this. I think in a way, it’s a good thing we no longer utilize representation data because so many organizations were using the data as a diversity ‘check the box’ tool. As in: ‘we have x percent of this minority population so we don’t have to do anything else to attract talent there’. Or, my personal favorite, ‘our quarterly goals say we should reach X percentage of Y marginalized group, what are we doing to achieve this so I can get my bonus?’

On the other hand, just because we aren’t calculating representation data, doesn’t mean that we no longer have a problem with the way publishing hires predominately white employees who make decisions based on their own lived experiences that could impact the way marginalized authors are acquired or their books are sold. It’s fine if we remove this as a method of tracking diversity within organizations, but we need to replace it with something that’s more effective.

Spoiler: the DEI community of practitioners has not presented a solution to do this yet that has been accepted across industries. This means we currently have a gap in DEI programs.

A third solution that became quite popular about five years ago was creating empathy within non-diverse employee communities so that they make smarter decisions about diversity. This is better known as unconscious bias.

Unconscious bias or Implicit bias taught everyone that we were born and raised with ‘biases’ that our lived experiences shape on a daily basis.

Cliff notes version: don’t feel bad that you’re racist. You were raised in white suburbia and taught to be that way.

My role as a DEI professional in the unconscious bias hey-day was to dismantle those biases. However, dismantling biases is hard work. It’s asking people from non-marginalized populations to change their habits and beliefs. It is telling them they have privilege, and even if they don’t feel like they are lucky or wealthy or have more opportunity…they do. And they should use that opportunity to help others.

Dismantling unconscious bias does not align with the short term goals of capitalism. It means that we had to spend money to make money, and the money overlords don’t like the percentage of risk that decision produces.

I’ve spoken quite a bit about internal diversity efforts in trad publishing, and neglected indie publishing which is a HUGE part of the industry (especially in romance). However, I don’t have a lot of expertise and things to say when it comes to this specific part of DEI and publishing.

I do have anecdotal evidence such as marginalized authors having their books suppressed, their accounts removed because they simply are writing about marginalized communities, and the hate they receive from conservative readership. We can all see how rare it is for a BIPOC author to achieve astronomical success in indie publishing compared to white authors. But indie publishing comes with a whole slew of other problems that people who are much smarter than I can speak to.

PART FOUR

Here is the takeaway I wish for you all to store in your pocket and chew on at a later time and date:

There is no perfect, easy solution to this mess as long as the people with money and in power do not support and promote and make decisions that intentionally amplify diversity, equity and inclusive practices and change the systems they are currently profiting from. The best we can do until someone comes up with a perfect solution is support those who are trying to disrupt the industry in intentional ways.

Some suggestions:

1. Buy books by marginalized authors from Bookshop.org or wherever indie authors have chosen to sell their products. (You can talk about marginalized authors on the internet, but you need to financially support them to really make a difference)

2. Support book conventions that intentionally amplify marginalized authors. I’m talking Steamy Lit Con Black Romance Book Fest and Queers and Quills as an example for the romance genre.

3. Speaking of Steamy Lit, buy books from bookstores that are owned and operated by marginalized people! There is data that shows marginalized communities funnel money into marginalized communities at a 1:16 rate (This data is from a Billion Dollar Roundtable internal memo that I feel zero remorse sharing since I left the supplier diversity industry years ago)

4. If you work in publishing, push back. Talk to your union reps. Talk to your superiors. Bring diversity up in town halls. Push back on marketing and PR teams. Challenge sales teams. Keep talking about it!

5. And if you are online, make sure you’re sharing, promoting and reading new to you marginalized authors. We love our tried and true favorites, but lets also invest in debuts, and in authors who are mid-list. There was a huge push to do this when Booktok was in its infancy, but I’m seeing it less and less (even from the creators I follow).

6. If you are an author, join AuthorsAgainstBookBans. If you are a parent, teacher, concerned citizen, tap into your local school district discussions and fight book banning at a local level.

7. If you are an author who is not marginalized, PLEASE support fellow marginalized authors, especially if they write in your genre. “If you like my work, you should also ready XYZ.” It’s so easy to do this! Please see Ali Hazelwood’s Instagram as an example of an ally.

8. If you are an influencer and you are attending some of these influencer brand trips: hold publishers accountable! Ask them for their list of upcoming releases by marginalized authors (and don’t be afraid to say something in front of a crowd). If you have a direct contact at a publisher and regularly receive PR packages, ask marketing/PR teams what their plans are to do the same for their marginalized author releases.

Consider this a starter list! It is not prescriptive in any way, but ideas and recommendations that you may be able to adopt.

CONCLUSION

I wrote this newsletter as a general overview of how to lend your support that deserves more time and space for multiple nuanced discussions that I don’t have the brain space or the heart to do right now. I feel like something should be said about AI destroying art like publishing finance bros, and Daddy Bezos hurting BIPOC the most. But again, limited time and space.

However, I hope this sparks conversation within your circles. I’d love if you were all sliding into your group chats, and evaluating the way you navigate the book industry. What do you do because it’s easy or convenient that is actually hurting marginalized authors? What can you do to be a better literary citizen instead?

I know this is a deviation from my normal content, but publishing has been making me feel a certain way over the last few weeks, and I couldn’t stay quiet.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

xoxo, Nisha

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