OPINION | More black fiction writers need to be published in South Africa - Publishing diverse voices could prove to be a source of domestic and global success for local publishers
South Africa’s main fiction publishers need to actively work towards bringing more diverse representation into their lists. The cumulative publishing outputs of the country’s five main fiction publishers over the four years from 2018 to 2021 has mainly benefited white authors in a country where the majority of the population is black.
That is how, despite the representative lists published by Jacana Media, Pan Macmillan, and Blackbird Books, white fiction authors made up 58% of all fiction outputs from 2018 to 2021, while black authors made up 31%, and people of colour authors made up 11%. Conventionally, these investments are dependent on the approval of executives. While editorial employees, such as commissioning and acquisitions editors, are responsible for creating and managing a company’s publishing lists, these lists need the approval of executives. By 2016, the last year during which Pasa collected data on the number and race of executives, only about 36% of all industry executives were black.
Although these companies may argue that they are merely responding to economic realities, the possible income availed through the ownership of an intellectual property product like a book is a potential tool with which the economic imbalances of our country could be rectified.
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