A LACK OF DIVERSITY
The publishing industry has historically been a predominantly white industry, and there are very few opportunities for upward mobility for minority publishing staff.
According to the Lee & Low survey, the most recent results embedded below, as of 2023 the industry overall is:
- 72.5% white
- 71.3% cisgender women
- 68.7% straight
- 83.5% non-disabled
And it’s not just publishing staff, it’s authors, too.
According to this article, 89% of bestsellers in 2018 were written by white authors, with the remaining 11% being written by people of color, and that’s without breaking down the statistics by ethnic group.
Such a lack of diversity across the board skews the representation within the literature that passes through the publishing houses.
WHY DOES THIS MATTER
Such a skew limits the readers’ ability to view the world through different perspectives. Through an increased exposure to diverse experiences via literature, there is an increase in understanding and empathy towards other people, even if they don’t come from the same community.
If a certain demographic’s stories are being told at a much higher amount than all the others, it puts that particular demographic on a pedestal that could give readers, especially young readers, the impression that their own experiences and background shouldn’t be valued as much.
For the sake of both equity, the publishing industry needs to pick up the pace in hiring a diverse staff. With diverse staff spread across the different departments and allowed a seat at the executive table, more books by authors who are disabled, LGBTQ+, and/or people of color will be given the opportunity to publish and have their books marketed as much as their white, hetero, non-disabled counterparts. Publishing staff hold the keys to the gate for most authors, so it’s crucial that these guardians, as a group, possess an understanding and enthusiasm for the stories coming their way and not group them into a monolith heavily influenced by stereotypes.
On the topic of reform, several individual stories illuminate how a single editor’s career can pioneer progress towards a more diverse literary ecosystem. What’s more, the trials and tribulations of their careers can reveal both progress and the lack thereof in the industry at large. Below are looks into the careers of three different, courageous women who championed diversity and inclusion in their respective publishing houses: Toni Morrison, Krishan Trotman, and Lisa Lucas.
On the topic of reform, several individual stories illuminate how a single editor’s career can pioneer progress towards a more diverse literary ecosystem. What’s more, the trials and tribulations of their careers can reveal both progress and the lack thereof in the industry at large. Below are looks into the careers of three different, courageous women who championed diversity and inclusion in their respective publishing houses: Toni Morrison, Krishan Trotman, and Lisa Lucas.
Toni Morrison
Best known for her dazzling career as an author, Toni Morrison’s contributions to the literary landscape as an editor are often underrepresented. In the late 60s, when Morrison became an editor for fiction at Random House, roughly 95 percent of the fiction published by big commercial houses was by white authors. She diligently and unrelentingly pushed to acquire black authors. Due to Morrison, Random House published nonfiction works by Black Panther Huey Newton, Angela Davis, Muhammad Ali, as well as fiction and poetry by Henry Dumas, Toni Cade Bambara, Lucille Clifton, Leon Forrest, and Gayle Jones. During this time, she moved consistently between editing, writing, and teaching. She spoke transparently and bluntly about the racial status quo of the publishing industry, championing the need to diversify authorial and editorial voices.
She resigned from Random House in 1983, supposedly because the books she edited were not earning enough money. Two years before, she delivered the keynote address at the American Writers Congress, including the following lines, “Editors are now judged by the profitability of what they acquire rather than by what they acquire, or the way they acquire it.” Morrison’s legacy, her pioneering prioritization of uplifting black voices, remains as resonant as it did forty years ago.
Photo from Bettman / Getty
Krishan Trotman
Krishan Trotman is an author and also the founder and publisher of Legacy Lit, an imprint of Hachette Book Group. She is one of the few working African American publishing executives and has committed fifteen years to publishing books about and by multicultural voices and social justice. Legacy Lit is an imprint dedicated to uplifting voices from underrepresented, under-served, and overlooked communities. She launched this imprint in 2020, four years after she joined Hachette Books. Her authors have gone on to win awards and become New York Times bestsellers; titles include congressman John Lewis’ Across That Bridge; journalist Stephanie Land’s Maid; MSNBC political analyst Malcolm Nance’s The Plot to Destroy Democracy; and New York Times columnist Lindy West’s The Witches Are Coming and Shit Actually.
Lisa Lucas
Lisa Lucas became the first black person to run Pantheon and Schocken in the house’s eighty-year history in 202. There was immense pressure on her to head a major publishing division, during a time when ongoing nationwide protests pressured corporations to recruit more people of color.
In May 2024, however, only four years since Lucas had been brought on, she was fired. Although she has not spoken much about her departure from Pantheon, she said in a TIMES interview, “A bunch of people of color come in because something interesting happens, and then the marketplace or political landscape changes, and a lot of us are gone.” This happened despite Lucas’s talent for taste-making, for sniffing out a manuscript that could touch and inspire underrepresented readerships. For many, her story is a signifier of the publishing industry’s failure to address racial imbalances and create meaningful, long-lasting changes.