THIS WEEK


The Black Issue 2023 The Lead Story: Black author bestseller data


Publishers’ development of Black writers questioned as data shows bestseller wane


In exclusive research undertaken by The Bookseller, data shows the number of bestselling books by Black authors has fallen after encouraging signs in the wake of Black Lives Matter


Melina Spanoudi & Kiera O’Brien


L


eading figures in the trade have questioned the industry’s commitment to publishing commercially successful Black writing aſter it emerged there has been a downturn in the number of bestselling Black- authored books published in 2022, as measured by Nielsen BookScan. The research, undertaken by The Bookseller, suggests that the wave of diverse publishing that followed the killing of George Floyd in summer 2020 has failed to result in the promised broadening of publishing’s output. According to the data, Michelle Obama emerged as the bestselling Black author of 2022, with £1.37m earned across 102,162 books sold last year. The former First Lady’s The Light We Carry (Viking) brought in £1.2m alone, with her 2018 memoir Becoming (Penguin) bringing in a further £170,000 across four editions, including Becoming: A Guided Journal (Clarkson Poter/ Viking) and the young adult edition (Puffin). The research looked at the top 1,000 highest-earning authors of last year, who coll- ectively earned a combined £747m from 97.1 million books sold. The Bookseller has identi- fied 25 Black authors among those 1,000, earning a total of £10.2m combined. This was not only a drop compared to 2021’s author count (32) and total value, but also of percent- age share, with Black authors earning a comb- ined 1.4% of the total—down from 2021’s 1.8%. Reflecting on this outcome, Square Peg publishing director and founder of the Black Agents and Editors’ Group Marianne Tatepo explained that aſter she curated and edited


06 26th May 2023


MICHELLE OBAMA WAS THE BESTSELLING BLACK AUTHOR OF LAST YEAR


Black Author chart (2022) Author


1 Michelle Obama 2 Marcus Rashford* 3 Malorie Blackman 4 Bernardine Evaristo 5 David Goggins


6 Rachel Renee Russell 7 Caleb Azumah Nelson


9 Steven Bartlett 10 Brit Bennett


13 Juliet Uzor


TCM Volume TCM Value 102,162 £1,375,374 205,205 £1,037,843 84,391 74,588 34,413 94,396 60,209


8 Chimamanda N Adichie 48,240 30,036 64,632 34,836


11 Malcolm Gladwell


12 Candice Carty-Williams 34,391 18,514 34,299 23,812 27,932 29,030 16,372 27,277 28,840 24,624 36,335 23,460 26,767 18,244


14 James Baldwin 15 Alex Scott


16 Percival Everett 17 Lenny Henry 18 Viola Davis 19 Toni Morrison


20 Colson Whitehead 21 Jay Blades


22 Benjamin Zephaniah 23 David Olusoga 24 Tracy Deonn 25 Micah Richards


£619,143 £573,059 £555,062 £535,461 £486,093 £383,153 £345,829 £335,864 £326,852 £323,163 £311,827 £290,399 £292,903 £267,403 £253,885 £252,249 £245,567 £242,459 £241,233 £241,212 £235,799 £233,185 £220,514


Date Range 2nd January to 31st December 2022. *Includes co-authors


the April 2021 publication of The Bookseller’s inaugural Black Issue, she had been told that the “15 Steps to Doing Beter” one-pager was prompting acquisition conversations. “If that’s true, why does the bestseller chart look so much more staid than in 2020?” she asked. Author and satirist Nels Abbey, who co-founded the Black Writers’ Guild, commented: “The Black Writers’ Guild was founded in part because we knew this was going to happen, we knew there was going to be a Black Lives Mater-era surge, and our fear was that it was not going to be sustainable. Or, it could be sustainable, but the odds were that it was not going to be sustained, so that puts culpabilit somewhere.”


Talking makes history


In the summer of 2020, following the murder of George Floyd, sales of Black- authored titles and anti-racism books soared up the charts. The Bookseller had reported that in June of that year, Reni Eddo-Lodge’s Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, published in paperback two years previously, became the first book by a Black British author to top the Official UK Top 50 in the Nielsen BookScan era.


© Miller Mobley


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