When people say "traditional publishing," they mean five corporations: Penguin Random House, Macmillan, HarperCollins, Hachette, and Simon and Schuster.
They do not control most of what America reads. They control the infrastructure beneath it. The distribution. The shelf space. The advance that signals to every reviewer whether a book matters.
The numbers were already there. Someone just counted them.
In December 2020, Richard Jean So and Gus Wezerek published a count in The New York Times. Of 7,124 books from the major houses where the author's race could be identified:
95%
Written by white authors
Across all major house titles counted
89%
White-authored in 2018
The most recent year measured
What 89% means
2018 was not a starting point. It was the destination after decades of incremental "progress." That number was the industry presenting its best case.
The other 11 percent was divided among every other race, nationality, and background in American letters.
They posted black squares. Then they posted job listings.
After George Floyd was killed, the same five companies issued statements about racial justice. Two hires made headlines:
1
Lisa Lucas
Named publisher of Pantheon Books, becoming the first Black woman to hold that position. The trade press treated the appointment as evidence of structural change.
2
Dana Canedy
Took over Simon and Schuster's flagship imprint. Another historic appointment. Another round of coverage about a reckoning in publishing.
By 2023, the headlines had moved on. So had the people they were about.
Lisa Lucas was laid off in a restructuring. Three years after the headlines that hired her, she was gone. The position that symbolized the reckoning was eliminated.
Meanwhile, #PublishingPaidMe showed the floor in plain numbers. Roxane Gay and Jesmyn Ward, both decorated and bestselling, posted advances that a white debut author could expect to match.
It does not slam. It just never fully opens again.
Every step is defensible on a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet was built by the people who set the first advance. That is not a pipeline problem. That is the pipeline working as designed.
Stop waiting at a door they own. Build another one.
If you write
Learn the independent route before you spend three years in a query trench. Breaking Ranks Books, out of Tampa is one model. Set your own terms. Keep the reader. Keep the revenue.
If you read
Where you spend twenty dollars is a vote. Buy the Black author. Buy in June, and buy again in November. Consistency is what the industry said it wanted and never delivered.
The thesis
We can build another pipeline the same way they dismantled the last one. One book. One reader. One dollar at a time.
Read the full piece at big-sarge.blog
Wayne Ince, writing as Big Sarge · Breaking Ranks Books