Photo by Michael Newton on Unsplash
“I’m not racist in my reading. I don’t even look at the author when I buy books (at the bookstore) / (online).”
Doesn’t matter, the system is racist. Even if you are not racist, the existing system is based on problematic structures.
Did you know that black romance is in a separate section from “contemporary romance” in most book stores? I find it in a completely different section, if the population is large enough near the bookstore to “justify” having a “black reader” section.
Did you know that the books facing cover out are best sellers, or paid to be facing out by the publisher to the bookstore owner since it costs more money to be in that position, and the publishers only pay for books they think will be best sellers? The outward facing books are more likely to picked them up, and therefore becoming the expected best seller.
And publishers, and bookstores, base the predicted best sellers, even in the fantasy and sci-fi on historic sales – so if history of the genre is white male, guess what is cover side up for eye catching – making it a best seller, and making the next books also be white male – the SYSTEM is set up this way.
“But I get my books for the library.”
I went looking in the library for a person-of-color in the science fiction / fantasy audio section for a long drive. I found three books total: two black and one Hebrew out of four double-sided shelving units of audio books. Why? Because libraries buy what is asked for by their patrons, and their patrons ask for best sellers that have buzz- and, well, best sellers are best sellers because … see above SYSTEM that keeps history in place.
The system needs changing even if you don’t, and to do that, well, you need to change how you interact with the system.
You will need to ACTIVELY work on choosing books that are BIPoC (Black, Indigenous/Immigrant, People of Color). Same with Queer. Same with Women. Look again at that picture I have for this Editing Rant. How many are male and how many are female? Are any of them BIPoC or Queer?
I did a full youtube series on how the publishing industry is systemically limiting new authors based on the historical structure.