What you said about not knowing if books with people of colour on the cover would sell or not is so true. How would they know if they are rarely on the cover?

The literary marginalization that is taking place largely affects those of us in the middle-much like the economy today. There are many of us who have/had careers courtesy of Terry McMillan. We came along right after the success of Waiting to Exhale and found a warm welcome for a career we had longed for but so often found beyond our reach. Terry proved, what we had always known, that black folks read, and would buy books featuring characters they personally identify with. Not that black readers would stop reading the non-black authors they’d always read and enjoyed, we would just enjoy a wider choice. But somehow that wider choice was not necessarily practiced, (or expected by the publishing community) from the other side. A recent blog listed the 100 best “Chicklit” books–the only book by a black author was Waiting to Exhale–like there haven’t been any more black chicklit authors since 1992!?

Not to take anything away from The Help or The Secret Life of Bees, but books on similar topics have been written by black writers but have not received the marketing push that these books have. We black writers don’t even get our books marketed in African countries, while The Help is a bestseller there and has received an award in South Africa.

Members of our ‘class’ include among others, the award winning Tina McElroy Ansa and Bernice McFadden. Last year, author Carleen Brice,started “December is National Buy a Book by a Black Author and Give it to Someone Not Black Month.” She also created a blog called Welcomewhitefolks.com.

For the past 20 years, Donna Grant, my writing partner, and I have been writing novels, 7 in total. No Pulitzer or Nobel winners, but well crafted stories that have enlightened and entertained tens of thousands of readers. Our first “big book” Tryin’ to Sleep in the Bed You Made was published in 1997, has never been out of print, is in its fifth edition and sold well over 750,000 copies, without any major advertising or endorsements. And yet we, along with many of our “classmates” find our careers in jeopardy- not because we write bad books, but because we all fall in the the publisher created genre, African American Fiction. We write women’s fiction with predominantly black characters–stories of struggle and triumph, loss, coping, love, and life, learning. But we are labeled, handicapped, before we’re out of the gate. Those who are expecting urban/street lit are disappointed, and those (white folks) who might enjoy our work because the theme might be relevant to their life (like What Doesn’t Kill You, our last book about a woman who loses her job after 25 yrs and has to reinvent herself), don’t ever see it because it’s in “that” section. We have actually had white readers write to us and say they enjoyed our book(s) but hesitated to pick it up because it might not be OK for them since it’s Af Am! Really!! We wrote a blog (twomindsfull(dot)blogspot(dot)com-Nov 20) about this subject a few years ago and repost it every year–because, sadly, it’s still relevant.

I’m glad you wrote this article to gin up a better conversation than the one that came out of the first effort to call attention to these practices–all of which was something of which I have been unaware. Thank you for opening my eyes. I’d have to say that when making a book selection the two things I don’t pay attention to, EVER, are the publisher or the author’s photo. I judge my reading material by the content alone. And I’ll bet that’s true of most readers.