THIS WEEK
The Lead Story A 15-point plan
Stop being ‘nice’, start doing good: 15 steps to doing better
Having collected views from Black people across the publishing industry for the past year, the Black Agents and Editors’ Group has outlined 15 steps for how those in the trade can do better
Marianne Tatepo Guest editor
W
e pride ourselves on our beloved industry of creative, bespectacled, cardigan-wearing, nicest-in-the-biz book-pushers. Niceness, it is oſten implied, supersedes bias; a smile on the lips holding more weight than the words that come out of them. It comes as no surprise then that for many publishers—individuals and compa- nies— “doing the work” ended where it all began, with a social media post. But what does the fact that 2020 was oſten the first time Black people could disclose what they endured for decades reveal about publishing? What does it mean when, histori- cally, white colleagues have been privately invited to get a foot in the door while our entry and continued success is predicated upon sticking in a pinky with the reasonable expec- tation of that same door geting slammed? These questions are ultimately at the centre
of every industry conversation around diver- sit, inclusion and the lack thereof. Like white colleagues, we have a personal drive and professional commitment to create and sell books to as many people as possible. We love books. We spent penniless years at universi- ties, bookshops or offices, we have pitched myriad novels and ideas, emboldened by the sincere belief in books as education, books as escapism, books as therapy—oſten even above all else, including our sanit. Our origin stories resemble one another’s:
aptly gregarious, but invariably steadfast in our belief in “reading time” as a sanctum of sorts, an unbreakable chasm between flow state and stimulation. Yet somehow, in majorit-white boardrooms and meetings, this inalienable fact oſten gets swept aside. Having collected opinions from Black people across the publishing industry over the past year, we created a publishing manifesto: 15 steps to doing beter. Here, we dig into three key points. We are oſten asked by white colleagues, whom we have the same day jobs as, to take on the additional labour of fixing the racial biases we endure; a Sisyphean (t)ask. We hope the below can
10 9th April 2021
Illustration: Leah Jacobs-Gordon
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