Thread by @RichardJeanSo

I wrote about the publishing industry's post #BLM diversity push - the largest transformation of its kind in US history - and their current attempts to dismantle it, for quite dubious reasons w/ @dan_sinykin at @TheAtlantic. A thread to summarize the article's main arguments >>>

US fiction publishing 1950-2018 was 95% white authors. We did some research and found - quite astonishingly - that number drops to 75% white authors within only 4 years post BLM. This is the largest race-based transformation of the book industry in history. It is unprecedented.

The bad news: over the past year, based on a series of firings of prominent Black/POC editors, it's clear that publishers want to end this trend. In terms of promoting fairness & equity, they have done something historically unprecedented & profound and decided it's not for them.

Why? The facile and oft-cited argument is that book sales of Black and POC authors have not sold as well as hoped. Defenders of this argument will say "publishing isn't a charity, it's a business." Here is why this argument is fallacious and is in fact bad business practice >>>

Publishers have not done the adequate market research & audience outreach to help these books succeed. They have set them up to fail. Check out this quote from Regina Brooks. If you don't thoughtfully promote your books and try to reach an audience, you will not sell books.

More so, fiction publishing still largely imagines its main & target audience as white women age 35-60. That's just a small part of the overall reading market & audience, however. Imagine if Netflix only made shows for white women 35-60. Not a great business model!

The most infuriating part of all this is this is a never-ending cycle: it happened in the 1980s, again in the early 2000s, and now again in 2020-2023. Every time publishers fail and try again in 20 years. Our suggestion: figure it out this time, rather than wait again to fail.

Thanks to @galbeckerman & the amazing editorial team at @TheAtlantic for giving us this opportunity + doing an amazing job with this piece. Thank you for giving us the chance to tell what we think is an important story.

@galbeckerman @TheAtlantic And thanks to my old friend and long time collaborator, @dan_sinykin for inviting me into this project. It's been a highlight of my career working on this material with you for the past decade, and it shows that good research can emerge from deep friendships.

@galbeckerman @TheAtlantic @dan_sinykin I forgot the link to the actual article!!!! Sorry!!!! theatlantic.com/books/archive/…