The Eight Percent Problem: Authors of Colour in the British Young Adult Market (2006–2016)

Abstract

The conversations surrounding 'diversity' in the Anglo-American book publishing industry have increased in recent years, and often centre around the lack of representation of publishing professionals, authors, and characters of colour. This paper contextualises these discussions within British YA, a market that has grown in popularity since 2006. Through an analysis of the corpus of all Young Adult fiction titles published, in the UK, during the 2006-2016 period, this paper will investigate what percentage of the titles were created by authors of colour; to determine whether this number has risen over the years, and to pinpoint any patterns and anomalies that emerge over the time period.

Young Adult Literature in an Age with Less Reader

“…However, it faces criticism for its limited diversity and representation. Bold's (2018) analysis of YA novels published in the UK between 2006 and 2016 highlights a dominance of authors, particularly white, heterosexual, female writers. The main protagonists in these novels are often depicted as white, heterosexual characters of unspecified ethnicity.…”

Shaping Immigration Narratives in Young Adult Literature: Authors and Paratextual Features of USBBY Outstanding International Books, 2006–2019

“…In addition, as Koss (2015) asserted, readers “need not only to see themselves in what they read but also to see diverse authors and illustrators in order to internalize that all populations are valued in the publishing world” (p. 33). However, youth literature scholars have noted a persistent dearth of books by authors from diverse backgrounds in the United States and internationally (Koss, 2015; Ramdarshan Bold, 2018; Thomas, 2016). For example, 24% of books published in 2019 were written by authors from diverse cultural groups, as compared with nearly 29% of books featuring diverse characters written by authors who are not from that background (Cooperative Children’s Books Center, 2020), which Thomas (2016) argued is a “troubling trend…, leading to questions about who has the right to tell diverse stories” (p. 113).…”

“…Like Ross and Sibberson (2015), we turned to international awards and honor lists-in this case, the United States Board on Books for Young People (USBBY) Outstanding International Books (OIB) list-to locate immigration narratives. However, few OIB honor books about immigration were written by cultural insiders-authors who are members of the cultural communities they represent (Bickmore, Xu, & Sheridan, 2017)-a trend aligned with the scarcity of texts written by authors of color in the United States and internationally (Koss, 2015;Ramdarshan Bold, 2018;Thomas, 2016). Because awards and honor book FEATURE ARTICLE lists reflect social mores and influence future publishing trends (Capshaw, 2014;Horning, 2015), educators must take special care to evaluate these books to determine whether they equitably reflect particular cultural communities and feature authors and illustrators from these communities.…”

The Global Book Publishing Market as an Interdisciplinary Research Field

“…The largest part of the analyzed texts was concerned with bibliodiversity (Benhamou & Peltier, 2007;Hawthorne, 2016), discussed mostly in the community of French economists and sociologists (Peltier, Benhamou, Sapiro). Bibliodiversity is fostered by small and independent publishers (Bold, 2015;, release and promotion of diverse books (Shea et al, 2018), concerned with cultural, racial, and gender differences (Bold, 2018;Moeller & Becnel, 2018), books translated from less widely-spoken languages (Ban, 2015;Bold & Norrick-Rühl, 2017;Sapiro, 2010), authored by writers from communities marginalized by the West (Bold, 2018). Scholars concerned with bibliodiversity also seek to analyze the barriers present on the labor market in the publishing industry (Fröhlich 2014) and try to define changing relations in the publishing hierarchy (Carolan & Evain, 2013).…”