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).