From Publishers Weekly:
In 2016, we had been open for one intense and educational year as the only romance-focused bookstore in the country. After one year of building a community of romance-loving customers, it became abundantly clear to us that readers were looking for more racial diversity in their romance novels. But when we told publishers this, they were quick to tell us two things: “diverse” books didn’t sell well, and, at the same time, the problem wasn’t as big as we were making it out to be and they were “going to do better.”
At the time, there was already so much fantastic advocacy work being done by authors and readers of color to show publishers the market they were ignoring, and we wanted to find a way to contribute something new to the conversation. We had a hunch that hard data would prove that even as publishers promised over and over again that they were “working on it,” the numbers would not reflect that. We pledged to count the numbers of romance novels published by major publishers in the U.S. each year, and then count the number that were written by people of color. The “Ripped Bodice State of Racial Diversity in Romance” report was born.
2020 was the fifth year we collected this data, giving us an opportunity to carefully examine the authors publishers have signed and published over the past five years. We encourage you to view the full report (as well as those covering the previous four years) at therippedbodicela.com. Looking at the data, we see bright spots, but the overall trend is one of sluggish and inconsistent commitment by publishers to publishing more romance books by authors of color.
Kensington has consistently published the most books by authors of color over the past five years. In an interview with PW last year, commenting on the release of our fourth annual survey, Kensington assistant editor Norma Perez-Hernandez said that “the current numbers show we still have a long way to go.” It is noteworthy to us that the publisher with the strongest track record of publishing romances by diverse authors is able to publicly recognize the work they still have to do, while the vast majority of publishers—who publish a fraction of the number of works by people of color compared to Kensington—are so assiduously absent from this conversation.
On June 1, 2020, seven days after the death of George Floyd , HarperCollins tweeted: “We stand with all of our colleagues, authors, readers, and partners who experience racism and oppression. Black Stories Matter, Black Lives Matter.” Across five imprints, HarperCollins released more than 1,000 romance titles in 2020, and 8% of those books were written by authors of color. This year was the first time HarperCollins even acknowledged our requests to participate in the report, but the new v-p for diversity, equity and inclusion declined to participate on behalf of the company, so we once again collected the data by going through the company’s catalogs.
In 2020, only Carina, Forever Romance, Kensington, and St. Martin’s had at least 15% of their romance titles written by people of color. Berkley Books, the romance imprint of Penguin Random House, had a steady increase in racial diversity over four years, only to see a decrease in 2020. Christian romance publisher Bethany House hasn’t published a single romance written by a person of color in the past five years. Montlake Romance, which is owned by Amazon Publishing, is the only other publisher where the percentage of authors of color of its romances has been 5% or less every single year we have conducted the report.
Link to the rest at Publishers Weekly
Suppose Ken Bancroft is a character in an American novel, set in the US? Suppose the cover just shows the White House with the Roman numeral XI. Ken is a US Marine on loan to the CIA. How does one make him a black character? What are the approved techniques?
Is Perry Mason white or black?
Scruffy divorced alcoholic.
Paul Drake is black.
Della Street is gay.
The latest version covered their tracks.
Good writing, good acting, a bit overlong, still watchable.
Perry Mason is steel- (or at least iron-) grey and confined to a wheelchair.
Oops, that’s the actor.
There’s a hysterically funny (and simultaneously cringeworthy) story Nichelle Nichols told about a new lighting guy on Star Trek (original TV series) yelling at his subordinates due to insufficient lighting “She’s black! She’s still black!” (in slang, “underlit”) and Nichols answering “I sure am, sugar!” It’s both immediately funny and cringeworthy… and extra cringeworthy in context, because it would have been right around the time they were shooting “The Gamesters of Triskelion” — celebrated for including the first interracial kiss on network TV.
By chance are you referring to “Ironsides”? I really thought Perry Mason’s nickname was Ironsides until my mother laughed at my confusion when I saw an re-run of “Ironsides” from the 70s, and I asked her how Perry Mason got in a wheelchair.
Yes. And I wasn’t watching reruns of Ironsides. (Well, I guess technically I was, I was watching the 4pm reshowings of last year’s episodes. On a black-and-white TV.)
To a lot of people Raymond Burr is the only Perry Mason. It didn’t help Monte Markam at all. The new version is retro enough, going back to the character’s early days in the 30’s, that it seems to be finding acceptance.
It explains how he went from PTSD WW1 soldier to PI to lawyer which makes it fresh albeit gritty as heck.
Defintely not the 50’s Mason but actually closer to the books. He was no angel there.
You make a character black, white, Lakota, etc. by describing them to the reader, and / or flat out telling the reader. This way the reader knows, which apparently James Patterson failed to do for readers of the Alex Cross series. There’s no rocket science to this in general, unless you have a specific scenario where you want a character of a particular heritage in a setting where their heritage makes zero sense: a Pictish warrior in “Romance of the Three Kingdoms,” let’s say. But if your story takes place on some other planet, nevermind.
How did Earle Stanley Gardner describe Perry Mason? That’s what he looks like. Back in the day publishers might deliberately mis-portray a character on the cover, but I don’t know if that ever happened to ESG and his Perry Mason character. Sometimes a writer might prefer the live-action versions of their characters; I gather Ian Fleming decided James Bond should be a Scottish bloke after Connery portrayed him. What did ESG say about Raymond Burr’s portrayal?
What if tbe author purposefully avoids the ethnicity game? And just doesn’t care how readers visualize the character?
Maybe Cross wasn’t actually black in the early books. Maybe he was japanese, chinese, eurasian, or blue/purple?
https://www.archives.com/genealogy/family-heritage-blue-people.html#:~:text=Not%20myth%20or%20legend%3B%20The%20Blue%20People%20of,young%20hematologist%20took%20notice%20and%20found%20a%20solution.
I can see doing a full description if it matters to the story but if it serves no story purpose, why bother? Mind you, I’m a believer in KISS storytelling, but most of the best SF has generally avoided the ethnicity games of recent years. Like, what is the ethnicity of Lije Bailey? Hari Seldon? Merle Corey? Does it matter? It’s like infodumps on backstory, history, or science. Overcomplicating things can get in the way of narrative flow, methinks…
R Daneel Olivaw?
R. Giskard Reventlov?
Well, that would be a different situation altogether. If the writer doesn’t care what the reader pictures, then the character is whatever the reader imagines.
But the question was, how to make a character an ethnicity: You describe them as such. There’s nothing else special to do, most times.
In SF, I usually assume an Honorverse scenario, where the name “Allison Benton-Ramirez y Chou Harrington” conveys worldbuilding and character description all at once. All bets are off in SF.
If the story features blue people, I just want to know if the author wants me to picture “Blue Man Group” blue, or just “strangled” blue? I always pictured the regul people in the Faded Sun trilogy as “Blue Man Group” blue, but now I don’t remember why.
If the writer doesn’t care what the reader pictures, then the character is whatever the reader imagines.
This is a great opportunity. We can take the exact same book, and sell it as “White Version,” and “Black Version.”
Imagine that. That’s all it takes for a huge leap forward in publishing diversity.
B&N had the right idea with the covers but, typically chose the wrong books. 😉
Well, if you want to convey ethnicity it depends on whether you want to sledgehammer it or be subtle about it. Subtle can be with stereotypical ethnic names. (Websites like the Onomastikon are useful there.) A Daymion vs a Damien, a Tatsu vs a Terry, a Sharissa vs a Clarissa, maybe a casual bit about hair color. Unobtrussive.
Sledgehammer is what Weber’s been using in his recent Honorverse books, where each character comes with a nametag stating their eye and hair color and melanin content. And then, presumably for fun, he makes a point that one of his recurring characters, Admiral Truman, practices her own form of “affirmative action” by always surrounding herself with blond blue eyed crew. Thing is, there is no story reason for either practice.
But then, he is obssessed with infodumps.
Books are still fun, just bloated.
As for the Trek Andorians and Orions, the show used thick makeup that made them look plastic. A proper look probably would’ve been translucent or, like Vulcans, lightly tinted. Depends on where the color comes from; skin or blood flow.
How did Earle Stanley Gardner describe Perry Mason? That’s what he looks like.
So, is Perry white or black?
What did the book say when you read it?
HA!
The style of this NYTimes review captures the flavor that is missing in the article above.
I’m So Sorry! Romance Novels, Bad Behavior and Forgiveness
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/10/books/review/new-romance-novels-kate-clayborn.html
What’s fun is I was watching a lecture by Stephen King and the story example about an “Airport Ladies’ room” and his being unable to take the story further is what gave me a story that I need to write. I sat down and tried to look at the dozens of different stories that flow from his starting point, and found a RomCom!
This is the part near the beginning where he mentions the Airport Ladies’ room. Just so you know, he cusses on occasion.
Stephen King, His Books, and Their Origins at Lisner Audiotorium
https://youtu.be/gNvw0BcO_FM?t=680
The whole lecture is filled with examples of his process.
Sounds like a good one.
And it addresses my point about conflicting values, both between the characters and between the character and the readers. Forgiveness or acceptance is optional.
Reminds me of Poul Anderson’s TAU ZERO where the two main protagonists are deeply in love but their value systems, re:sex and monogamy, keep them apart and send them to others. To add to the mess tgry’re trapped aboard a runaway starship. Stopping means everybody dies.
One of his best, one of *the* best of the era.
People in real life are complicated.
The best fiction reflects this.
Sounds like a good one.
And it addresses my point about conflicting values, both between the characters and between the character and the readers. Forgiveness or acceptance is optional.
Reminds me of Poul Anderson’s TAU ZERO where the two main protagonists are deeply in love but their value systems, re:sex and monogamy, keep them apart and send them to others. To add to the mess, they’re trapped aboard a runaway starship. Stopping, even slowing down, means everybody dies.
One of his best, one of *the* best of the era.
People in real life are complicated.
The best fiction reflects this.
Uh, I hate to say this, but they clearly don’t understand why people buy Romance.
– The books are all about personal fantasy, not artificial “diversity”.
Love Between the Covers – Official Trailer 2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evjxp0CHnNU
And then there is Erotica:
Naughty Books (2020) | Official Trailer HD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGQiOlyEDRk
The word “diversity” seems only to be used around “Black Lives Matter”. Nobody mentions the massive following of the Telenovela on Spanish TV, or now, nobody wants to mention Asians, or the random attacks against all the different Asians here in America since the pandemic.
Everybody forgets the big splash before the pandemic from this film.
CRAZY RICH ASIANS | Official Trailer | 2018 [HD]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14ZHRBfpeNg
Movies like that were the “future” of Hollywood.
So much for “diversity”.
Asians aren’t the right kind of diversity.
Much less asain americans.
Felix and others’ points about the difficulty (actually impossibility) of identifying the “diversity” of those submitting to publishers are definitely valid, but I also have doubts about the OP’s authors ability to appropriately identify published authors. This is Romance after all, where names and biographies are frequently works of fiction and male authors regularly undergo a sex change prior to publication. Anecdotally, there are even black authors passing for white so that they are allowed to write Regencies instead of the black characters that are the only thing that the publishers want them to produce.
The question though is why the OP wants to measure the authors’ ethnicity? They say that “it became abundantly clear to us that readers were looking for more racial diversity in their romance novels” but does this refer to the authors or to the stories and characters? I cannot but suspect that the readers preferences are for characters they can identify with (though to pick up on M C A Hogarth’s point, readers who aren’t total bigots will be able to identify with a diverse cast, even if they do not look like the reader).
On the last point…
It’s not that cut and dried binary.
Appealing across ethnicities is no different that appealing within a single one; you’re never going to succeed with everyone because people have different tastes, different interests, and different *moods*. No secret, right? As the song says, you can’t please everyone.
Most people are capable of enjoying a story about different cultures and lifestyles but not everybody, not always, and not to the same extent. Identification and immersion are personal and it is a gradient dependent on taste, background, and familiarity. And bigotry isn’t the only reason people might not enjoy a story about different characters. Value systems, to name just one. Underlying assumptions. Or maybe the story just isn’t to their taste.
Dunno about the UK, but in US television lots of folks who voted for Obama and don’t have a racist bone in their body see nothing to attract them to any of the “minority” shows or channels. Or, historically, at tbe same time THE COSBY SHOW ruled TV other black cast shows had to get by with a fraction of the audience.
A racist wouldn’t care that the show was family friendly, amusing, and about an upper middle class family that just happened to be black. A racist would only see melanin and Cosby’s intent to show a black world separate from the stereotypes would be lost on them. But vast segments of the population had no trouble accepting that reality.
Simply put, the whole “people like them” thing is oversold for political reasons. Not everything is racial. Sure, a story tbat reflects reality is a good tbing but if it doesn’t, it doesn’t necessarily say anything about the author, much less the reader that might or not enjoy it.
(You ever run into THE CALIPHATE? It’s free in the BAEN FREE LIBRARY. Widely vilified. Mostly by folks tbat never read it through or refuse to “get” it. A spy technothriller in a very very dark dystopia. Also a cautionary tale, probably too close for comfort for some.)
This continuing fixation on people’s skin color and race is grotesque.
It serves a purpose: a handy dandy insult that is perfect for divide and conquer politics and camouflaging pork for “friends of the party”. 90% today.
There’s this:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/asian-americans-emerging-as-a-strong-voice-against-critical-race-theory-opinion/ar-BB1epdv1
What I wonder is what percentage of submitted agented manuscripts are *identifiably* from diversity authors. Without knowing that any claims of race-based bias will be unprovable.
Other issues exist, on both sides, but focusing on output numbers is meaningless without knowing the distribution of dreamers on the input side of the, ahem, black box that is tradpub.
Same question. I always understood that photos never come into play until after the contract is signed, and the publisher is putting a photo on a book jacket. Now I’m wondering if the agents are required to submit an author’s headshot, as if writers were models or actors? I wouldn’t have thought that was legal, but I have no other idea how publishers know what the authors in the submission pile look like.
Back in the 90s, black romance authors like Terry McMillan had to self-publish the hard way because the publishing companies were steadfast in ignoring the market (they were on record about this). Sooooo many interviews where the authors discussed these policies, and how they were treated by the New York publishers.
Now KDP offers an “easy button,” so to me there’s no mystery about the “missing authors”: the pool of authors going tradpub is smaller in general. The pool of authors who want to jump through hoops to prove their own existence is smaller still.
Well, there is this:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/black-names-a-resume-burden/
Useful for near present character building, I suppose.
Anyway, I suspect most of that filtering happens at the agent level or even before then.
So it *is* a thing which is why I would like to see actual numbers before I can attribute it to acquisition managers or agents.
Nobody actively filters out diversity applicants from Physics departments and other STEM professions but the numbers are extremely low because of “self filtering”. Looking at the end numbers is meaningless by itself.
Oh yes, I’m aware of the names thing. However, the authors I was thinking of tended to have names like BeBe [Moore Campbell], Eric [Jerome Dickey], and Valerie [Wilson Wesley], so their names weren’t a factor. They would be “hidden” by that measurement. Plus, someone could have a misleadingly ethnic surname because of a spouse, like my cousin Gloria. Her husband looks like a knock-off of Dennis Quaid, but he has an odd surname that he thinks might be Dutch or something.
That’s why I went with pictures to cover the bases … assuming that someone doesn’t just use friend’s picture, or the models you see in photo frames (like that “Friends” episode with Phoebe’s aunt). Perhaps a “23 and Me” report or some such is next on the horizon. “It’s the only way to be sure!”
But more seriously, what I understood to be the tip-off back in the day was the race of the characters, and what they were doing: protesting social issues, or just living their lives? If the latter, publishers resisted because they couldn’t grasp the concept.
Anyway, I agree one can’t look at the end numbers. I just don’t see a legal, reliable way for publishers to get the input numbers.
Not legal or even illegal.
Not with modern videocom filters and high quality realtime deepfakes. Even insisting on personal meetings can be gamed.
Which is good; either the story meets muster or it doesn’t. Who wrote it shouldn’t factor in. Which is the reality of the Indie world.
Traditional Publishers do have weird ideas about what names are supposed to say (hence all the gender-swapped pen names, both ways) but it doesn’t necessarily say much about them as people or what biases they might have, other than a crying need to learn about the world outside their cozy bubble.
It could be worse. It could be relics of nineteenth-century British academic imperialism; I use my initials because that was required in my academic field as a junior author for the first few pieces (not all that long ago, either; ok, not all that long ago in geological time, and longer ago than some readers here have been alive, but it was after the fall of Saigon). So regardless of gender or ethnicity my authorial identity, starting in that field, has been linked to my initials and not my name.
Which led to immense amusement during marketing calls by cosmetic companies in the 1980s and 1990s assuming that, because the phone book had my initials only, I was therefore female. (Any use of cosmetics would have violated AFR 35–10 anyway.) But I have a sick and twisted sense of humor.
Conversely, there’s the story Ursula Le Guin told of her one appearance in Playboy, when the editor “suggested” using her initials because the readers weren’t prepared for a science fiction story by a woman…
Finally, in a snarky aside to Jamie: One wonders what the publishers in the bad old days might have made of authors who wrote stories about anthropomorphic animals, before the hoi polloi in Manhattan had heard of furries…
Maybe the editor thought the Playboy readers would expect a photospread? 😉
As for fuzzies, I only learned of that subculture through CSI. Somewhat educational as long as you didn’t expect the science to be 100.00% accurate. Ditto for HOUSE, but House is funnier.
I had some fun picturing the answer to your question 🙂
As usual, PW is just a little late to the party. This has been an overt concern in the romance writers’ community since 2008, and was bubbling up beneath long before that. And it’s not like “representation issues” haven’t ripped that community apart, a little over a year ago, either.
We pledged to count the numbers of romance novels published by major publishers in the U.S. each year, and then count the number that were written by people of color.
Who cares? What were the sales? If there is a great demand for a specific type of good, and if suppliers are not meeting the demand, then we should see the sales for the existing specific goods skyrocket. Did that happen?
If demand is exceeding supply at prevailing prices, are prices rising for these goods? Are the average sales for the specific good higher than for similar goods that lack the specific characteristic?
Are publishers sitting on unfilled orders from retailers trying to please clamoring consumers?
If we don’t see these things, we have reason to question if the claimed demand is real.