I'm taking a quick break from my SCBWI reports, though there are more to come, as I wanted to post on another topic. My friend, author Zetta Elliott, has been creating a list of middle grade and YA novels written by African American authors that have been published in the USA in 2011. And she has then broken this list down by publisher. The statistics are depressing: 47 titles by 35 authors (compared to 1 black-authored book in Canada, which is even more depressing). Blogger Ari responded by saying, "Call me stubborn but I refuse to believe that there are only 46 excellent titles by Black authors submitted in years past to be published in 2011. There’s just no way, especially when there are at least 3,000 YA books published a year. The math does no work."

An "anonymous editor" responded to the post. You can read her comments at the bottom of Zetta' post. I ended up writing a mini-essay in the comments box in response, and thought I would post my response on this blog too. I think this is such an important issue, and would love to hear more people who work in publishing speaking publicly with their thoughts. Here's what I wrote:

Thanks for speaking up, even if you did do it anonymously. This was an issue I saw in the publishing industry when I worked within it. People aren’t generally comfortable sticking their heads above the parapet when it comes to talking about controversial issues – especially diversity and publishing. So while I wish you could identify yourself and your publisher, I also know how difficult it can be.

I think the main point of your post is that you don’t ask (or necessarily want to know) the ethnic background of authors who submit to you. Instead, you judge a book only on the quality of the writing and story. And you think most publishers do the same thing. I think you’re right, that this is the approach taken by most publishers. You also said that the quality of many of the books you received which featured diverse protagonists was low (not knowing the background of the author who wrote the book).

There are a few things I would say to this. Firstly, I think it can matter who has written the book. I would not say that people can’t write outside of their background – authors do that all the time (men writing women, writing about people in different countries, etc.). But when you live in a world that is dominated with certain sorts of images and stories (generally white, middle class – think about it, what’s on TV, advertising, books, etc. - read Neesha Meminger’s fantastic post on aesthetics), then it is really important to write outside of your background with sensitivity and understanding. And I have heard authors of color say on various occasions that their book has been rejected because the publishing house already publishes a well-known white author who writes on the same theme. Or sometimes worse – an author who wanted to remain anonymous told me that she wrote books set in one continent, and was told the publisher already published a white author who wrote about an entirely different continent. I think this kind of thing goes on behind the scenes all the time, but it isn’t visible (as Zetta said in her reply to you about transparency in the industry).

And when people write from an insider perspective, there is a much higher chance that the story will have nuance, and won’t reflect generally-held stereotypes. As Zetta has said many times of the books that get published fea