On June 6, 2020, YA author L.L. McKinney started the hashtag #PublishingPaidMe, calling for authors to transparently share the advances they received for their books. Earlier in the year there had been a lot of talk about publishers seemingly paying white authors more for their stories than they do authors of color. McKinney was hoping to highlight the pay inequality between Black and non-Black writers. The hashtag quickly trended on Twitter, with authors sharing their advances, which is the amount of money they receive for their books before any royalties start coming in. Renowned authors like Jesmyn Ward and N.K. Jemisin shared that they were underpaid for some of their more popular work and had to “wrestle” for decent advances. Meanwhile, nonblack authors reported receiving significantly larger advances for books that were not as popular. 

The campaign revealed that the publishing industry’s systemic biases spread all the way down to the numbers. Furthermore, it showed how much the industry underappreciated black authors and their stories. In the following days, the hashtag became a movement beyond social media. Around 1,300 publishing workers signed up to participate in a ‘day of action,’ in which those in media and publishing would spend the day working on books by black authors, phone banking, or donating their day’s pay. However, not much more has been done in the past few years to eradicate the disparities within the industry.