27th June 2025


1 Feature


State of play: can stalled momentum in Black publishing be undone?


If gatekeeping and a concentration of power remain critical barriers in publishing, progress for Black writers will always be temporary


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n 2020 – amid a glut of black Instagram squares, urgent tweets and bold diversity declarations – publishing promised change. Five years on, the industry is seem- ingly teetering between stasis and regres-


sion. Behind the public messaging, many publishing insiders describe a quieter, more insidious reversal: funding has dried up, initia- tives have folded and editorial interest has waned. Instead, the landscape of Black publishing appears marked by stalled momentum, systemic fatigue and profound frustration. Despite the declarations made in the wake of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, the numbers tell a sobering story: industry-wide representation of ethnic minorities dropped (from 17% to 15%) in 2024, according to the Publishers Association, Black staff numbers


remain stubbornly low at 3%, and mission-led ventures such as the Good Literary Agency, Unbound and Pop Up/Pathways Into Children’s Publishing have shuttered. And as mainstream publishers double down on commercial predict- ability and political agendas shift, there is also a growing sense that DEI is being quietly pushed off the agenda. “The progress is temporary,” says Jasmine Richards, author and founder of Storymix. “It feels like we are in a cycle of attention and then attrition. A movement sparks interest, but then the spotlight fades and so does the interest and investment.” Abiola Bello ( 2), author, editor and co-founder of Hashtag Press, agrees: “When BLM happened, publishing went into a frenzy of trying to ‘help’ and signed lots of authors, but there doesn’t seem to have been a plan on how to help after,” she says. “I know a lot of authors who feel like once their debut didn’t blow up, the energy went down significantly.” Author and journalist Kuba Shand-Baptiste


says the support from industry figures was “self- congratulatory and shallow”. “Those of us who broke through barriers were considered excep- tions, not a tiny sample of a very clear abundance of untapped or unrecognised talent,” she says. “Almost a decade later, it’s not at all surprising that interest has dwindled so much.” Selina Brown, founder of the Black British Book Festival (BBBF) ( 1), describes the progress


Black Publishing Focus


Feature


BBBF


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