Feature Ethnic diversit


and we need agents to diversify and broaden their client lists. Acceptance and good inten- tions are great, but sadly they’re not enough. The short story prize proved that there are hundreds of writers of colour out there with brilliant, powerful and true stories to tell. Stories that are funny, stories that broke our hearts, stories that remind us that there is so much more out there than we see when we’re in our industry or social bubbles. And we all need to encourage and seek out these writers so that we can finally present to all BAME and white communities what they could be reading. We, as BAME marketers,


editors, publicists and agents, work hard. We work hard on books that don’t cater to us and whose authors don’t have us in mind, and we don’t mind at all because we love books, and we love stories. But we need to see ourselves in these stories too. ×


Margaret Busby Allison & Busby Co-founder


F


IFTY YEARS AGO this year, Trini- dadian John La Rose launched New Beacon Books, the UK’s first black publishing house—although he preferred to call it a “publish- ing maisonete”. Its inaugural title was his own poetry collection Foundations. He joined a trajec-


tory of black publishing stretching back to the 18th century, with the likes of Olaudah Equiano (who in 1789 published The Interest- ing Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano) and Robert Wedderburn (who produced an anti-slavery paper in 1817). My début with Allison & Busby came in 1967, when I was tagged with the label: “The UK’s youngest and first black woman publisher.” I was a student barely out of my teens when the idea of book publishing lured/ saved me from a career in law. A chance encounter at a part with another bookish undergraduate, and a publishing venture was conceived. Clive Allison and I had only ideals and enthusiasm to compensate for all we lacked in experience, money, knowl- edge of print runs, or distribution. We were commited to making poetry accessible and affordable. We produced 15,000 paperback copies of our first three titles, initially selling them on the streets and knocking on doors. To survive, we had to find paid employment and confine A&B activit to the evenings and at weekends.


Clive worked at Panther Books and Macmillan. As well as presenting a programme called “Break for Women” at the


www.thebookseller.com She commissioned


various black writers while being ever mindful that if any one of them was less than successful, the presumption might be that ‘black books don’t sell’


BBC World Service for Africa, I got a job at The Cresset Press as an editorial assistant- cum-anything-else-that-needed-doing. Then A&B was offered a manuscript much-rejected on both sides of the Atlantic: The Spook who Sat by the Door by Sam Green- lee. Backing our faith in this first novel, Clive and I leſt our jobs. In 1969, by sheer persistence, flouting the conventions and following our instincts, we made Spook... a success, persuading the Observer to print extracts and selling translation and other subsidiary rights.


of their content but because they emanated from a company with a racially mixed work- force. Since those anachronistic days, the world—and A&B’s make-up—has changed. I leſt the company aſter 20 years as its edito- rial director.


In “Black Books”, an article I wrote for the New Statesman in April 1984, I wrote:


Is it enough to respond to a demand for books reflecting the presence of “ethnic minorities” while perpetuating a system which does not actively encourage their involvement at all levels? The realit is that the appearance and circulation of books supposedly produced with these communities in mind is usually dependent on what the dominant white (male) communit, which controls schools, libraries, bookshops and publishing houses, will permit.


The A&B list was certainly diverse, includ- ing writers from the Caribbean, Africa, East- ern and Western Europe, the Americas and Japan. I wish I could say that as co-founder of the imprint, my race and gender were not an issue. However, from the get-go a common assumption made by many—from window cleaner to bank manager—was that Clive was my boss, or that my involvement with the company was atributable to a relationship other than a strictly business one (we were married to other people, not each other). At the London Book Fair this year, I spoke


to someone who worked in a South Afri- can library 40 years ago. They told me that A&B books were banned there, not because


Over the decades I have been involved with various initiatives, including GAP (Greater Access to Publishing), a group that in the early 1980s campaigned to diversify the industry. I recall comparing notes with Toni Morrison, for many years a senior editor at Random House in New York. She commis- sioned various black writers while being ever mindful that if any one of them was less than successful, the presumption might be that “black books don’t sell”. The entry of “diverse” talent into the mainstream industry has been an uphill task. Among the individual, stand-out black women who have put their heads above the parapet are [critic, broadcaster and editor] Ellah Allfrey, the late Alison Morrison [who worked for Penguin, Egmont and Walker] and [literary agent] Elise Dillsworth. But there have always been BAME-headed publishers rocking the status quo with vari- ous degrees of success. With a view to shar- ing experiences and maximising mutual strengths, Verna Wilkins (Tamarind Books’ founder) posited an initiative called IBP (Independent Black Publishers), of which I was patron. Its members boasted some


the statistics Population breakdown by ethnicity, based on official statistics


According to the latest census for England and Wales, which was conducted in 2011,


85% 15%


40% of the population identifies as non-white. 13


of the population identifies as white, with the remaining


identifying as non-white: that includes black, Asian and mixed heritage, among others. In London, according to the census,


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