Large and in charge: people who are making it and making a difference in the book industry.
Black Issues Book Review › Vol. 8 Nbr. 1, January 2006
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Books - Cover Story
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Large and in charge: people who are making it and making a difference in the book industry.
"THE PROBLEM OF THE 20TH CENTURY IS THE PROBLEM OF THE COLOR LINE," said W.E.B. Du Bois in The Souls of Black Folk, published in 1903. In that too-recently-ended era of legal segregation, the powerless condition of black people could be recognized as a "problem."
In today's parlance where the desire for diversity has all but replaced the imperative for affirmative action, and it sounds almost inappropriate to ask if blacks wield power in the book industry commensurate with the $326 million that blacks spent on books in 2003 (the most recent study), according to Target Market News, which tracks spending by African Americans. But BIBR asked the questions: In the 15 years since blacks became recognized as a bankable book market, have African American individuals made commensurate strides in book industries, and are we in charge of our own cultural destiny? We chose to ask these questions now because 15 years is a generation for the industry, and most would identify 1992 as the demarcation of when the book industry saw black readers as book buyers. That was the season that, as Toni Morrison recalled in a 1994 interview with The New York Times Book Review, "there were four books by black women on the best-seller lists--at the same time. Terry McMillan's, Alice Walker's and two of mine." She also noted that Brothers and Sisters (G.P. Putnam, 1994) by Bebe Moore Campbell was a Book of the Month Club main...See the full content of this document
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