Top Black Authors 2023 Author
1 2 3
Steven Bartlett Zadie Smith
David Goggins
4 Marcus Rashford* 5 Chris Kamara 6
8 9
Rachel Renee Russell
7 Malorie Blackman Michelle Obama Bell Hooks
10 11
Caleb Azumah Nelson Benjamin Zephaniah
12 C Ngozi Adichie 13 14
15 James Baldwin Joseph Coelho Lemn Sissay
16 17
18 Percival Everett Colson Whitehead Ian Wright
19 20
22
21 Malcolm Gladwell Tracy Deonn
23 Mo Gawdat *With co-author Alex Falase-Koya Date source Nielsen BookScan. Data range 52 weeks ending 30th December
Bernardine Evaristo Johannes Radebe
Total Value £2,033,027 £797,321 £747,300 £681,940 £636,902 £612,407 £427,372 £410,525 £396,636 £357,525 £348,738 £332,715 £322,614 £321,820 £309,001 £307,478 £306,742 £281,582 £260,782 £255,410 £243,586 £242,913 £230,327
Volume 171,291 57,775 42,432 152,659 52,661 94,591 54,332 31,462 36,074 31,642 47,400 41,143 37,142 26,211 34,796 39,640 27,236 29,428 23,960 19,358 25,208 40,111 23,362
Mainstreet Trading Company has seen strong sales for titles by Caleb Azuma Nelson, Oyinkan Braithwaite, Paterson Jospeh and Andrea Elliot. De la Hey said that these titles have been “championed” by the booksellers, which has contributed to their success with the shop’s customers.
A lagging sector The children’s book sector “seems to be lagging behind” in some aspects when it comes to promoting titles by Black authors, according to Kelly-Jade Nicholls, the founder of the Woke Babies subscription service, and the Melanin Dreams bookshops in Norwood, south-east London. “For adult books, I’ve seen more substantial marketing budgets and partnerships with awesome PR companies such as Dark Mater, which really know how to push diverse authors into the spotlight,” she said, arguing that children’s publishing has not kept up with the pace of change. Nicholls, who is also the illustrator of the
book My Favourite Bible Stories, writen by Sarah Fletcher (William Collins), told The Bookseller: “One major issue is that publishers oſten leave the promotion up to the authors themselves, which is a huge task and oſten
not their area of expertise. It would be so helpful if publishers took simple steps like creating a list of bookshops that specialise in diverse authors and consistently sending them advanced copies… There’s a huge audience out there hungry for diverse stories, and with the right promotion, these books could really thrive.”
Publishers have designed various initiatives to develop and promote Black writers, and to help their books find their readers. Penguin Random House’s WriteNow programme, for example, aims to “find and nurture unpublished writers from communities under-represented on the nation’s bookshelves”. Of the writers who have participated, 42.5% have been from Black, Asian or minorit ethnic backgrounds, according to a PRH spokesperson. Moreover, PRH and other publishers participating in the Lit in Colour programme are also looking to address the diversit of writers in school curriculums—256 schools have taken part in the Lit in Colour Pioneers Pilot Programme, which incentivises secondary schools to switch the text they were teaching at GCSE or A Level to a book by a writer of colour, reaching over 26,000 students.
PRH, Pan Macmillan and Hachete UK also partner with the Black British Book Festival, which was founded by author and event producer Selina Brown, and designed to spotlight new Black British authors writing across a range of genres. PRH has offered emerging writers information about the industry at its “Geting Published” stall, and Pan Macmillan has also participated, completing its first Writers on the Rise initiative and equipping 30 Black British writers with the tools to navigate the publishing world and build resilient careers. Publishers are also focused on improving representation within publishing itself, to get closer to the goal of publishing a more diverse range of authors and books. Various initiatives have been launched with this aim recently, including HarperCollins’ Ethnicit Development Circle, which offers mentorship for “every ethnic minorit employee” internally, and runs alongside the publisher’s senior sponsorship programme for “ethnic minorit leaders”. Meanwhile, its “Marketing Fund” gives the team the marketing budget to explore how to reach diverse audiences for books. Moreover, PRH hosts a six-month positive action traineeship open to Black, Asian or minorit ethnic candidates, as well as those who are from lower socio-economic backgrounds. It has also established a mentorship partnership with Creative Access for its employees, in one of multiple initiatives aimed at increasing representation within its teams. Meanwhile, Hachete UK has collected data on Black consumers’ reading habits, and is using this information to build more representative working practices across various departments. “We use the data to inform how we create, promote, and sell Black writers’ and illustrators’ work,” said Kim Kidd, Hachete UK’s diversit and inclusion manager. At Dialogue and Renegade, managing
director Sharmaine Lovegrove and publisher Christina Demosthenous have been working “to forge stronger links with writers from the Caribbean”, atending Jamaica’s Calabash festival, and working with the Universit of West Indies and PREE magazine. “At Dialogue our mission is to amplify writers from a range of communities to readers across societ,” said Lovegrove, who is also the patron of Hachete UK’s Changing the Story programme. “Black writers are at the core of that, but our intentional actions mean that as a company we are not foregrounding the race, ethnicit or other protected characteristics of our authors, instead flagging that they have writen brilliant narratives that must be read.”
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