Who Are The Gate Keepers in Black Publishing?

Well! This is apropos given my last post regarding the state of black literature. Who, exactly, is controlling the industry when it comes to black books? Black Issues Book Review addresses the matter in its latest issue.

1992 was a year of demarcation in the book industry – it marked the beginning of an era when the industry finally took notice of African Americans as a viable book market. There was good reason why 1992 came to hold this distinction. While there had been occasional bestsellers by black authors since the publication of Richard Wright’s Native Son in 1940, this was a year when no less than five works by black woman authors were on the best-seller lists at nearly the same time: Jazz by Toni Morrison, Waiting to Exhale by Terry McMillan, The Color Purple (10th Anniversary Edition) by Alice Walker, Brothers and Sisters by Bebe Moore Campbell, and Playing in the Dark, also by Toni Morrison.

Although widely read by non-black audiences, the 1992 bestsellers were written by black authors primarily for a black audience. Not surprisingly, African Americans flocked in unprecedented numbers to bookstores to buy them - demonstrating beyond any doubt that blacks were an untapped and underserved book market.

In the 15 years since 1992, a significant question remains unanswered: Is the representation of African Americans at the highest levels of the book publishing industry commensurate with their spending on books? In this edition of BIBR, we seek the answer to this question, as it is indicative of the degree to which we are in charge of our own cultural destiny. Writers write, but decision makers in the book industries control access to publication and distribution – they are, in other words, the gatekeepers of black literary culture.

Our research into the power wielded by blacks in publishing has uncovered both good news and bad. It has also led to the compilation of a list of the most influential African Americans in book publishing today.

This is only a portion of the article. It seems you have to subscribe to the hard copy of the magazine to read the full content. I do subscribe,and have for years, so will be checking my mailbox for its arrival.