The Race Card

This week's Bloomsbury "Whitewash" controversy got a lot of people talking about a particularly deplorable--but often ignored--practice. In the midst of these conversations it seems a perfect time to bring up a question that surfaces on its own from time to time anyway. Does race matter in publishing?

Admittedly, it's a broad, possibly unanswerable question that opens the door for a lot of rhetoric. Even if you boil it down to specific genres (fantasy, sci-fi), covers (as was the case this week), or the race of a story's protagonist (James Patterson's Alex Cross or Dan Brown's Robert Langdon) there will likely be no common ground found. So, for the sake of this posting, I'll keep it broad, and whatever happens happens.

I've asked the question myself to more than a few industry professionals over the last 10 years, and the answer I hear over and over again is, "No, race does not matter. Excellent writing is key." Let's start there.

Is excellent writing key? Yes, I would agree. But, what qualifies as excellent?

I think it's fair to say that if you're reading this post, and you regularly read novels/short stories/poetry/whatever, you've run across something that is wildly popular yet fails to strike a chord with you. Some people despise Stephenie Meyer's work, some think J.K. Rowling is overrated, some say Stephen King is not a good writer (really, check their Amazon reviews). There are people who think today's most popular authors are NOT excellent. In the cases of the three mentioned, such claims of non-excellence hold little weight since they're all mega-bestsellers. But, let's look at it another way...

There was a point where they hadn't sold anything. A time when they were holding down day jobs (yes, Stephenie Meyer was a housewife, and Jo Rowling benefited from public assistance for a brief, but if you don't think raising a kid is a day-and-night job, go tell that to somebody's mother and I'll help you hold the bag of frozen peas to your black eye afterward). They played the slush pile, and waited for the mythical "big break". Deservedly, that break came when someone (not just anyone...more in a minute) saw excellence in them. Obviously, that someone was not mistaken in plucking either of those three from the scrum (a Janet Reid word) of bestseller wannabes. The someone I'm speaking of roughly translates to gatekeeper, for the sake of this post we'll say gatekeeper means agent, editor, publisher, or whoever has the ability to let a writer inside the wall.

One can argue that a gatekeeper's choice is based solely on dollars and cents. While excellent writing is key, everyone has to pay their light bill. Agents get paid a percentage of what their clients make, so they must choose clients who have the potential to make money. Publisher's put up the money to produce a book, and get their money back when the book sells. It's important that the book buying public accepts a book for it to be successful.

So, that being said, let me ask a couple of questions:

1) If race doesn't matter, and excellent writing is key, why did Bloomsbury produce two covers in the last year that misled potential book buyers about the skin color of the book's main character instead of trusting the 'excellent writing' of their authors to sell the book?

Possible Answer (i.e. answer I'll likely hear, but probably won't believe): L.R., someone in that company is woefully ignorant and they don't represent publishing as a whole.

2) If excellent writing is the key, are there really so few ethnic writers with any marketable skill for the gatekeepers to pluck from the masses then push to the public?

Possible Answer 1:  L. R.,  you're just being obtuse. What about bestsellers like Amy Tan, Walter Mosley, Khaled Hosseini and...um...well, okay, there's like 100,000 books in my local Borders and those are the only names that spring to mind, but whatever. There's that whole African-American Interests section that I never see anyone in, but from a distance I've noticed a lot of books. A lot.

Possible Answer 2:  L.R., Wait a second, you're a writer who doesn't have a book deal. And you're black. This whole post is just your bitter rant, isn't it? I see through you like glass, buddy.

3) Does the economy play a factor in all of this, regardless of race?

Real Answer: Yes. I don't mean this post to suggest being a Caucasian author makes things easy, or that help and support is (or should be) readily available for any writer because of their race. I just simply want to point out how unpopular questions of race matters really are, and how many choose to ignore that publishing is far from 'post-racial' (I'll save that term for another post), evident by the events of this week.

I leave you with that, and a few names. These people write some great books, but get little of the attention they deserve. Check them out sometime if you can:

Tananarive Due
Steven Barnes
Brandon Massey
Terence Taylor
(and many others...I'll make an effort to list more in each post).

Bloomsbury whitewashes cover (then they don't) ...

This week, publisher Bloomsbury resurrected the controversy over their practice of placing Caucasian models on the covers of books where the main character is clearly a person of color with their release of Magic Under Glass by Jaclyn Dolamore, a Young Adult novel. A furor erupted online with readers and authors alike voicing their disappointment in the publisher. Today, Bloomsbury stated on their website, “Bloomsbury is ceasing to supply copies of the US edition of Magic Under Glass. The jacket design has caused offense and we apologize for our mistake. Copies of the book with a new jacket design will be available shortly.”


Now, while I appreciate the publisher correcting its 'mistake', I think it bears examining why the 'mistake' was made in the first place. As Justine Larbalestier pointed out when she went through a similar ordeal over the cover of her YA novel Liar less than a year ago, there's a long held belief that covers featuring models of color hurt book sales. That particular tenet, as I understand, hasn't been backed up with any quantifiable data (after all, I'm sure there are numerous examples of books featuring Caucasian models selling poorly, and I'm willing to bet those numbers eclipse the poor sales of books/covers featuring people of color since Caucasian authors who write about Caucasian characters are published in exponentially greater numbers than their multi-ethnic counterparts), yet we see this 'mistake' being made over and over again.


And that's incredibly discouraging for those of us who would love to see books/covers that represent broader diversity along side the books/covers we're used to seeing in our bookstores and libraries (evident by this moving open letter by Ari Valderama of Reading in Color). And I do mean along side, not relegated to some separate-but-equal 'African/Asian/Latino/etc-interests' section (don't get me started on how much difficulty I have finding books I'd like to read in the section that was supposedly built to cater to my ethnic tastes...).


With the election of the first black president, it's been said we're living in a 'post-racial' America. I beg to differ. If you disagree, I say pick up a book some time.

Ending radio silence

It's been awhile. A long while. A six months and ten days while. To my single follower, I apologize.

First off...Haiti. Wow!! If you have a heart to, help these people. You already know about all the organizations that are taking donations (Red Cross, Doctors w/o Borders, etc.) so please skip a dinner out, or a movie, or hold off on the new shoes, and send that money to the people suffering down there. God bless them.

Now, to explain my absence, I give you two words: Grad School.

I've returned to school to obtain a Master's Degree in English (WARNING: the next condescending ***hole inquisitive person who asks, "well, what do you plan to do with that?" is going to get a Call of Duty Tactical Nuke aimed at their house). I have my reasons for pursuing that particular degree...'nuff said.

My first semester (despite a few hiccups) turned out well. I'm currently sporting a fresh 4.0 GPA on my transcript and loving it. More exciting than that, I finished writing a new novel. And even more exciting than that, several agents have expressed interest in the manuscript and requested to see more. How did I do this while studying, being an attentive husband, and holding down a day job? Let's just say when I finally got some time off around Christmas, I took a 3-week nap.

Fingers crossed on the agent thing. Representation is a big step towards the ultimate goal of a book deal, but there are no guarantees at any point in this process. Having agents request your full manuscript is encouraging, but the potential for a "no" forever looms.

If this thing goes my way, I'll post my agent-getting query letter for all to see (tell your writer friends). And if it doesn't go well, I'll talk about that, too. Because that's what you all pay lurk to see.

I promise more frequent posts, by the way. I've got a pretty good handle on this life-balance thing now, so I can work some blogging in without issue.

Soon, people (I mean it this time).