Why is the Bookish World RACIST?

[00:00:00]The publishing industry is racist.

[00:00:04]Booktube, the space you are watching right now, racist. Your local library racist. The bookish realm in general, book libraries, publishing are one of the spaces in our society actively trying to be inclusive. So why would I say they are racist? Well, that's because for all of the effort that these places put into being inclusive statistically, objectively, they're racially biased. And there are reasons for that. Reasons that aren't inherently racists, but which do nonetheless create a very real racial bias. These are places that often intend to be racially inclusive. They set into action policies, procedures to be racially inclusive. Yet the outcome is often very racially biased. And today's video is about why there is such a big gap between the intention and the outcome.

[00:01:11]Before I go into details, I want to do a very small pivot. I'm going to discuss racial bias rather than racism as a whole. Racial bias is certainly a type of racism, but it definitely isn't all types of racism. Yeah, I'm being a bit of a clickbait YouTuber. Sue me. Book publishing libraries. All these places are similar, but all of them are racially biased for slightly different reasons. So, let's break them up and go through them one at a time. Starting with BookTube, the platform you're probably watching this on right now. And let's start with some stats.

[00:01:49]Approximately one in three people who speak English as their first language is also a person of color. If there was no racial bias going on, we would expect to watch one in three videos where the creator was also a person of color. So I searched book on YouTube and I counted how many creators of color I had and how many videos I could find. So YouTube stopped showing me videos after 47 long form results. And of those 47 results, only seven were creators of color. That is just under 15%.

[00:02:30]Less than half the number we would have expected.

[00:02:35]That's very clearly racially biased. But why is it? You don't have to watch a lot of book before you come across somebody complaining about the algorithm. If you're watching this video because it appeared in your home screen, well, that's the algorithm. And if you're not watching this video in your home screen because it's full of Hank Green, even though you only watched one of his videos 5 years ago, that's the algorithm informing you that everybody loves Hank Green. And what on earth is wrong with you? I mean, can we all just acknowledge he's a little bit too upbeat? We live in a world where the common person has to pick between having a roof over their head and eating a sandwich. where the only country doing anything about the growing rise of fascism is for some weird reason the UK. But even then, it's because a man wearing a bid on his head is running against the leader of their fascist party. And voters are generally much more interested in taking the piss than they are in ending fascism. And if that's not enough, fossil fuel companies are literally turning our habitable planet into hell. And Hank Green has the audacity to be happy. At least his brother looks at the camera and you know he's appropriately dead behind the eye before he mutters tuberculosis. Now, all silliness aside, because people watch a lot of Hank Green, his videos appear more often when you're browsing. YouTube looks at return viewers, click-through rates, and watch time. Then they determine that Hank's videos make more ad revenue. Sorry, I mean have higher viewer satisfaction. Now, that is not an inherently racist system. YouTube applies the same algorithm to white people, black people, brown people, Asian people, Hispanic people, green people, and Hank Green. Now, I'm not saying you personally are racist, but some people out there watching YouTube are racist, and they're more likely to watch white creators. And hence, the presence of those viewers will reduce the click-through rate, watch time, and return viewers of creators of color, which in turn means the algorithm interprets their content as slightly worse and is less likely to promote it.

[00:04:52]There is another factor here that makes matters a little bit more extreme.

[00:04:57]People of color usually have their own culture, their own slang, their own styles of communication. It is human nature to seek out people with our own culture who speak the language the way we speak it. Watching creators who radiate their own culture can create this sort of jewelism. On one hand, they have this popularity within their own culture, but on the other hand, they do create a little bit of discomfort and this feeling of not belonging from people outside of that culture. Is that racism? Is that racial ignorance? Or is that just a general human unwillingness to be a little bit uncomfortable? I'm not really sure what the answer is, and I'm definitely happy to say that it's a combination of all three, but all of that impacts the algorithm. And all of that means that the smaller the minority of people within that culture, the bigger the impact on creators of that culture. Because if black folks watch black creators, white folks watch white creators, and Asian folks watch Asian creators, then the creators belonging to the largest population are going to do the best. And in the English-speaking world, 2thirds of the speakers are white. And the algorithm is going to exaggerate that bias. And this all means that creators of color are therefore less likely to continue making content because they don't get the views. And that reduces the number of successful creators of color, which then means that new creators of color have less people to look at and see themselves and therefore are less likely to take the chance. And it's a big vicious cycle. So now we understand the reasons that book is racially biased. Let's move on to the next of our three sectors, publishing.

[00:06:52]In 2022 in the USA, 11% of books acquired by the big five publishers were written by a person of color. People of color make up 42% of the population of the USA. So that figure is just very slightly over a quarter of what we would expect. Now, just quickly, the ratio of white people to people of color I've used here is slightly different to the figure that I've used for the book section. And that is because the data that I'm using here is US-based and not international data because that is the data that is readily at hand for this section. But even if you were to use the one in three figure I've used for the first section, 11% is still a massive under representation. And there are two other figures I want to include in the stats here that will help identify what is happening. Between 2019 and 2021, Penguin published 23.5% authors of color, a much better figure than the reported 11% that the Big Five published in 2022. But that figure came off the back of Black Lives Matter protests. That is the figure of a big publishing house when it was trying to be as inclusive to black people as possible. 12 months later that figure had dropped to below half. Now I am conflating Penguin who are just one of the big five to all of the big five. And it could very well be that Penguin is a more inclusive publisher than the other four big five and the drop off may not be enough. But whatever way you want to slice it, 23.5% is still well short of 42%. The other figure I think is very relevant is that in 2023, 25% of debut authors published by big five publishers were people of color. Now, my first reaction to this piece of data was, well, at least we're moving in the right direction. 25% much bigger than 11%. That's a great improvement. But nobody is seriously arguing that the 70s, 80s, and '9s weren't massively racially biased errors. And white authors were able to benefit from that and become established. I mean, just exactly what percentage of the remaining 89% of white books were written by James Patterson alone? What if the drop from 25% debut authors to 11% acquisitions is a measure of how hard it is to make it in the publishing industry as an author of color? What if it is a measure of a drop off rather than a gradual improvement?

[00:09:56]The unfortunate reality of being an author is that very few authors make a living from the books they publish alone. Sure, the very very popular authors do. A lot of authors, however, have to supplement their incomes by doing tours and speeches by teaching aspiring authors how to write or just holding down a regular job and writing in their spare time. And some big note examples of these are Donna Tart and George Saunders are both English professors while Caleb Hassani is a physician. These are definitely not small authors and they're also not working in terrible paying jobs. Wealth provides time and security that can make creativity easier. Although I do have to acknowledge that in this example, I have picked two of the least prolific authors I could find. Donna Kaled, give your editor something to read. Please, please, you're close to retirement age.

[00:10:57]In a world where folks of color systematically find it harder to gain stable and well-playing employment, is it any wonder that creative people of color stop being creative? I know we all love to romanticize struggling.

[00:11:14]Dosstoyes wouldn't have been the writer he was if his life was easy, but struggling honestly does make it harder.

[00:11:22]#publishingpaid me was a very interesting movement where authors showed what publishers paid them as an advance. Jasmine Ward was the first woman of color to win two national book awards in the US. She received $100,000 for her next book, a figure that she says she had to fight furiously for. In contrast, Jennifer Egan, an author I would argue of similar stature, a Pelitza prize winner, received a 7 figure deal. Now 100K is a nice figure.

[00:11:58]That is a good year's wage for a professional, but Egan is instantly a millionaire. And Charles Fraser, a winner of the National Book Award, got 3 million. Roxan Gay only received 15K for Bad Feminist. and NK Gmerson only 25K for each of her Broken Earth trilogy books. And that was a 15K pay cut on the back of her hugely successful Inheritance series, a series she published as an unknown author. By the way, the Broken Earth trilogy would go on to be the first book series ever to win three back-to-back Hugo awards, cementing NJ as one of the great writers of science fiction ever. White author Chip Cheek received 800K for his debut novel, a work of fiction that has a Goodreads average rating of 2.97, while Lydia Kesling received 200K for her debut work of literary fiction. I know there are plenty of struggling white authors, too. I'm certainly not saying individual white authors have it easy, but this is about a system consistently placing its biggest bets on white authors and consistently undervaluing authors of color.

[00:13:21]Publishing is ultimately a system which disadvantages one group without guaranteeing success for the other. No wonder we're seeing a drop off between the figures of debut authors of color and total book acquisitions by authors of color if they're paid so much less. A 2022 study published in PLOS1 by Dana Weinberg and Adam Capellaner asked 900 subjects how much they would pay for a book based on its description while there was a photo of the author next to it. They randomized which author's photo would appear next to which book for various participants and measured the bias of several things including black versus white, men versus women, older versus younger adults. The study found no difference in gender.

[00:14:18]That is, people were prepared to pay the same amount of money for a book written by a man or a woman. It didn't matter.

[00:14:27]It found a very very minor difference in age, preferencing older authors by a very small amount. And it did show a slight preference towards black authors, too. The very opposite of what we're seeing in the publishing industry, the very opposite of the pay they are getting. Now, the researchers of this paper postulated that the small bias towards black authors was due to the proximity of the experiment to the Black Lives Matter movement. And I would love to see a second study to confirm or deny this. Nonetheless, this is a really encouraging study because it means that we have an industry problem, not a societal problem. It means as a society, we don't value the work of black authors less. But an industry problem is still difficult to fix, although it is significantly easier than a societal problem. Publishing being a little bit dirty, I don't think that's the most unexpected thing. But what about your local library? So, cards on the table of time before I discuss this section. Some of you will know this, but if you're new here, you might not. I am a librarian.

[00:15:44]Now, I'm not saying that I am a racist or that any of the people that I have worked with or are currently working with are a racist. Some of them definitely are racist, by the way, but as a whole, librarians are absolutely the best group of people for values that I have ever met. However, the system in which they operate, the system in which I operate in, racially skews what appears on the shelves. One of the key jobs of any librarian is to manage a collection of books or whatever else the library has to offer. At a basic level, that involves two things. purchasing new books and weeding, which is the technical name us librarians call for throwing in the bin. And obviously, if bias is introduced at either of these stages, we will see bias in the collection on the shelves. whether it is racial bias or any other type of bias.

[00:16:46]My favorite type of bias is something I like to call the collections manager buying the cheapest copy of the title to make the budget stretch further only to have to end up throwing it out early because it's a cheap paperback that doesn't last very long. Next time you visit your local library, I really encourage you to go to a random shelf, preferably somewhere well clear of the pats, because there lies the work of the dreaded James Patterson, a plague of an author who seriously makes me reconsider my position on book burning. Now, once you select your shelf, just count the number of books and the number of books written by authors of color. You should be getting around one in three. Unless you happen to have randomly picked a shelf with the Nigerian, Mexican or Korean James Patterson, you'll be lucky to get one in 10. Libraries are more racially skewed than either publishing or book. And as a completely off-topic fact, Nigerian, Mexican, and Korean James Patterson is imaginary. He doesn't exist. And that's because publishing in those countries still values talent.

[00:18:01]Both purchasing and weeding heavily introduce racial bias. So let's explore why purchasing. A lot of libraries don't select the books they buy. Instead, they buy packs often suggested by the supplier, which is usually somebody in the publishing industry. This not only carries within it the same biases we have already discussed within the publishing industry but it favors the best sellers, it favors hyped books and anything else with really good marketing budgets. Look, this is the sort of package that contains a lot of lowhanging fruit, a lot of obvious purchases for libraries. It's also why library collections are so similar between different libraries. But the problem is that best sellers are more likely to be written by white authors.

[00:18:55]The New York Times did an analysis of all the bestselling authors from 1950 to 2018. And they found that the number of best-selling authors of color did increase in that time frame from 5% to a lofty 10%. A massive under representation. And 10% is very similar to that 11% figure we saw before, isn't it? This means our starting purchasing point is already massively skewed.

[00:19:25]Librarians will also suggest purchases when they'll notice a content gap in the collection, but authors of colors are unlikely to be a content gap. Now, that's because the average public library will have between 20 and 40,000 titles in their fiction collection. And even if they only had 3% authors of color, that's still 600 to,200 titles. A reader looking to read authors of color should be able to find something they are seeking, even in a completely under reppresented and racially biased collection. I think content gaps in general are more likely to be discovered in non-fiction. And if I used my most recent real life example that I personally spotted, it was books about autism in women, specifically women going through hormonal changes, that is puberty and menopause. And I think we can appreciate that while that is a very important topic, it is far more niche than authors of color. And in this case, I literally suggested we buy four books to fill the gap to achieve proportional representation in a fiction collection. We're talking about buying 4,000 to 8,000 new titles. And the reality is that is an impossible request to get past anybody managing a budget, especially the tiny budgets libraries have to manage. Any change in the collection would need to be gradual and therefore racial bias will be inherited by the next generation of librarians.

[00:21:09]And when looking at women with autism going through menopause, I certainly wasn't thinking I need to prioritize adding a book by an author of color, I was thinking, I'm so glad I found a book about autism and menopause that didn't refer to autism as Asperger syndrome.

[00:21:27]And patrons can suggest libraries add books to their collection too. But the reality is in a publishing world dominated by white authors, most patrons follow this bias in their requests. Bias is also introduced when we throw books out. It's introduced during weeding.

[00:21:46]Books can be discarded for a variety of reasons, but most commonly they come down to three reasons. poor condition, books that are no longer current, or books that are no longer being borrowed.

[00:21:58]Now, currency is much more a non-fiction thing than a fiction thing. You can imagine books about technology or travel guides go out of date very quickly, while books about art maybe stay in date a little bit longer. And this, as far as I can tell, is one of the only parts of the collection lifestyle that doesn't reinforce the existing racial biases.

[00:22:20]When a book is identified as being in poor condition and the librarian wants to throw it out, they'll decide if it needs to be reordered. This generally comes down to how popular it is. And to find out how popular a book is, well, all you really need to understand is that library borrowing statistics mirror sales data. And we've already seen that this is very biased towards white authors. As such, white authors are more likely to be reordered. And this is also a problem for items that are not being borrowed, something that librarians term dead items. Even when libraries try and add authors of color, they are more likely to not be borrowed and therefore they are more likely to be weeded.

[00:23:06]Libraries are ultimately attempting to be representative of their readers tastes, ensuring that they have something for everybody. In doing so, however, they reinforce a system that is racially biased and end up exaggerating it. A policy that on the surface seems to me to be the epitome of equality.

[00:23:29]Everybody should have a book for them available at the library manages to reinforce the biases that already exists within our society. And if you without any intention of being racially biased or prejudice get your recommendations from other critics and booktubers on YouTube through the algorithm through whoever is put in front of you. If you follow publishers and their trends and if you go to your local library and pick up books that look good or interesting, you're not going to be reading a representative number of authors of color. Now, I'm not saying you have to change what you're reading. You are an adult or a child. I don't really care.

[00:24:16]But you can read what you want to read.

[00:24:17]You're your own person. You're your own human. The purpose of this video, however, is to let you know that if you pick books in a way that doesn't see race, then you are picking books in a way that sees the existing prejudice of the system that you are acquiring those books in. If we don't regulate against bias, whatever that bias is, we end up reinforcing it. And if on a personal level you want to stop that, well, one in three people who speak English as their first language is a person of color. So make sure that a minimum of every third book you start is by an author of color. And this is ultimately an application of something the very excellent Iran X Kendi said in his book, How to be an anti-racist. The opposite of being a racist is not to not be racist, it's to be an anti-racist. You don't end racism by ignoring it. You end racism by taking a stand against it. So read whatever you want, but be mindful if you don't think about reading people of color, then you'll be reading a racially unrepresentative selection of our population. and that is your choice. Normally I review books on this channel, but I like to do a deep dive into political issues every so often, especially when they are bookish related or bookish adjacent. So if either of those things are things that you like, hang around and hit subscribe.

[00:25:57]If you like this video, well, the like button is a free way of showing your appreciation. And if you'd like to show your appreciation with money, I have a wonderful Patreon book club. Thank you so much for watching. Bye-bye.