In 2004, In Full Colour reported on the state of diversity in the publishing industry and put pressure on publishers to take cultural diversity more seriously. Instead of making progress, a new report just launched by Spread the Word, and edited by Danuta Kean, shows very little has changed.
According to Writing the Future: Black and Asian Writers and Publishers in the UK Market Place, the publishing industry’s poor commitment to diversity, has led to a lack of senior Black Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) professionals and an over-reliance on unpaid internships, all of which is putting it at risk of becoming culturally irrelevant.
A snapshot survey of publishers and literary agents indicates that 74 per cent of those employed by large publishing houses, and an alarming 97 per cent of agents, believe that the industry is only “a little diverse” or “not diverse at all”. A sign that professional efforts focused at entry level are failing to permeate through to the wider trade.
Out of 203 UK-based published novelists polled, 30 per cent came from a BAME background. Only 47 per cent said their début was agented compared to 64 per cent of the White novelists. Once into their publishing career, 53 per cent of BAME authors remained without an agent against 37 per cent of White authors.
The report also found that 42 per cent of respondents from a BAME background wrote literary fiction, making it the biggest genre for BAME writers in the poll, while one of the biggest selling genres – crime – accounted for a lowly four per cent of BAME novelists’ output. The dominance of literary fiction as the ‘best chance of publication’ for a BAME author was criticised by a number of respondents who admitted they were now looking overseas to be published.
Joy Francis speaks to the report’s editor Danuta Kean, who also wrote In Full Colour, about the findings, while Spread the Word’s director Sue Lawther, and the publication’s deputy editor Mel Larsen write about the impact they want the report to have and whether they believe the publishing industry will ever be ready to be more diverse.
Danuta Kean
Virtually 11 years on from In Full Colour, which you wrote, here we are again, with Writing the Future, looking at whether publishers have made progress on diversity. How did you feel about revisiting this issue?
I was initially excited about revisiting the issues covered by In Full Colour by expanding the focus to include novelists. I thought we would see some progress from 2004. Back then we had a flurry of activity, interest, concern and shock about the nature of diversity in publishing. There was also a sense among those few people from BAME backgrounds in the industry that they were marginalised and, in some cases, victims of racism. So I was shocked to find that thing have not changed and, in some ways, have gone backwards.
How so?
One of things that came from the In Full Colour report was the importance of cultural awareness training for senior management in publishing houses. This appears to have fallen by the wayside in the last five years. Part of this is because of the digital revolution, leading publishing houses to pour their resources into dealing with that trend. Another factor is the recession. As a result, we have seen publishing houses conglomerate, such as Little, Brown Book Group, Orion Publishing Group, Hodder & Stoughton, Headline Publishing Group, with Random House and Penguin merging. Now, we have a few publishing houses with a large chunk of the market. Also we have seen unpaid internships, which were on the rise ten years ago, become the primary route into the Industry. This system completely militates against diverse recruitment as it means that you have to be economically stable or economically empowered by your parents or have alternative sources of income to be able to work unpaid in London. People who take on these internships are people who are already part of the network through their social groups, families or university. You can see this trend across the board in politics, advertising and PR. There is a real dominance of white, middle class, public school educated, Russell Group graduates.
In Writing the Future, 30 per cent of the 203 writers you spoke to were from BAME backgrounds. You’ve said publically that there is a sense of fatigue among them and that many are looking overseas to be published. Do they have good reason to feel uninspired?
This is the third time we have looked at diversity in publishing. It isn’t just novelists who feel fatigued, but also the workers who feel it’s a case of deja vu. We have recruitment initiatives with structured internships through Creative Access, along with a few paid internships in publishing houses that reach out to non-Russell Group graduates. There are also some publishers looking for good quality literature from writers from a more diverse background. Despite these positive steps, the biggest selling books are genre fiction but we have seen a reverse in the number of BAME writers in this field. Yet this is where the money is and where you are more likely to get a publishing deal and where you are more likely to earn enough to sustain your career.
The report also reveals that literary editors, along with those who work in the larger publishing houses, don’t believe the industry is diverse. Why is this open secret being allowed to continue unchallenged?
What publishers and literary agents kept saying to me is that when they recruit, they have 100 to 500 people applying for one post. With so many people applying, they can find good quality graduates immediately, which means there is less pressure to look at who they are recruiting. They don’t spend a lot of money on advertising as they usually post the adverts on their websites. At the same time you have publishers and literary agents saying they would love to have a more representative workforce and publishing list, but they don’t see manuscripts coming through from BAME novelists. What my colleague Mel Larsen found when speaking with universities is that their creative writing courses are a main route to an agent or publishing deal. BAME writers are under-represented on these MA courses, which can cost £13,000. On one well known creative writing degree, all of the tutors are white men, which isn’t the most welcoming atmosphere for a BAME writer. There is a disconnect between intention and experience, so we need to have some initiatives that connects BAME writers with the industry. Organisations like Spread the Word, Wasafiri, The Asian Writer and Apples and Snakes should be used as a bridge to publishers and agents. We also need to get more BAME people into positions of power in editorial, publicity and marketing, to help move the industry away from the literary stereotypes of colonial and post-colonial fiction, which many BAME writers felt they were expected to write about, rather than anything more universal.
What needs to happen now?
The industry really needs to take a long hard look at itself and ask why there have been such low levels of recruitment and retention from people of BAME and socially diverse backgrounds. I personally believe unpaid internships should be banned. I’m not talking about two weeks work experience, but working unpaid while doing a job for six months. It works against securing a more diverse talented workforce and makes the industry look cheap. If publishers are serious about diversity, they need to do an internal cultural bias audit where they take cohorts of staff, recruited in the same year, and look at how they fared across a number of key areas: promotion, pay, career advancement, appraisals and staff retention. If there is no difference between white and minority ethnic staff within each year, then there is no problem. But if there is, something is going wrong and the company needs to look at its management culture and root out the problem. We also need to talk to literary festivals about how diverse and representative their line-ups are. They seem to be reaching a very white, upper middle class audience when they need to reach a wider audience. I’m not talking about just getting BAME writers on the programme to talk about diversity, but to discuss the influence of Jane Austen or to talk on panels where they are alongside other writers in their genre who are white, and for them to recognised beyond race and ethnicity. That means public funding to any of these organisations need to include some sort of monitoring of diversity as very few keep statistics.
To download a free copy of the report, click here
Mel Larsen
Working on this report was both inspiring and disappointing. Inspiring because it gave me the opportunity to discover a host of excellent Black and Asian writers I hadn’t heard of. I now have a long ‘must read’ book list. Disappointing because I hadn’t heard of most them before and since I am an avid reader I had to question why.
Surely in this day and age things have moved on, I assumed when we started the work. Many years ago I conducted diversity-based research in other cultural genres such as theatre and visual art and I was honestly surprised to see many of the same old issues arising today in publishing.
I believe in working towards something positive no matter how hard the starting point may seem. I would like to see more promotion and visibility of published BAME authors, both recent and from the past, so these gems don’t get lost and instead are celebrated and cherished by readers of all backgrounds.
I’d also like to hear more mainstream publishers getting excited about the opportunity presented by our home grown BAME writers, not just here but to the world. The UK is home to some of the most diverse cities on earth at one of the most transformational and exciting times in human consciousness and communication. We are host to so many unique experiences, connections and stories; it would be a waste for these riches to go un-noticed.
Sue Lawther
In 2005, Spread the Word was part of the commissioning group for Free Verse, a report on diversity in poetry publishing, which resulted in The Complete Works – a project that has changed the careers of 20 Black and Asian poets and made a significant difference to the poetry landscape in the UK.
Because we support writers of all forms, it was a natural step for us to look at fiction as well, particularly because publishing is going through such a dramatic period of change. Our impression was that, after a flurry of Black and Asian writers being published about 10 years ago, they seem to have all but disappeared. And in the context of digital platforms, self publishing and global access to readers online, we wondered what the new business opportunities would be for a more diverse publishing industry. By commissioning this research we could check out our assumptions and get to the facts.
As Mel Larsen and Danuta Kean reported back to us with their findings, it was disappointing to realise that things were as bad, or possibly even worse, than we imagined. It was incredibly difficult at times for them to gain access to honest conversations with people from within the industry. Many people didn’t want to talk on the record which immediately tells you that something might be wrong.
There have been various initiatives over the years to try and address this very peculiar situation – especially given the London-centric nature of the publishing industry. Despite hard work, good intentions and a ‘signing up’ to the principles of diversity, it seems that an old mono-culture still prevails.
So it’s very clear that we need to do something different. We all know it’s insanity to keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. Let’s not become poster boys for Einstein’s definition.
Looking ahead, let’s make sure that we focus on doing things differently in the future. Let’s avoid finger pointing and instead make invitations, build partnerships, share knowledge and ask each other how, who and when?
Picture credit for Mel Larsen: Susanne Hakuba