Natasha Onwuemezi

In 2020 – amid a glut of black Instagram squares, urgent tweets and bold diversity declarations – publishing promised change. Five years on, the industry is seemingly teetering between stasis and regression. Behind the public messaging, many publishing insiders describe a quieter, more insidious reversal: funding has dried up, initiatives have folded and editorial interest has waned. Instead, the landscape of Black publishing appears marked by stalled momentum, systemic fatigue and profound frustration.

Despite the declarations made in the wake of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, the numbers tell a sobering story: industry-wide representation of ethnic minorities dropped (from 17% to 15%) in 2024, according to the Publishers Association, Black staff numbers remain stubbornly low at 3%, and mission-led ventures such as the Good Literary Agency, Unbound and Pop Up/Pathways Into Children’s Publishing have shuttered. And as mainstream publishers double down on commercial predictability and political agendas shift, there is also a growing sense that DEI is being quietly pushed off the agenda.

“The progress is temporary,” says Jasmine Richards, author and founder of Storymix. “It feels like we are in a cycle of attention and then attrition. A movement sparks interest, but then the spotlight fades and so does the interest and investment.” Abiola Bello, author, editor and co-founder of Hashtag Press, agrees: “When BLM happened, publishing went into a frenzy of trying to ‘help’ and signed lots of authors, but there doesn’t seem to have been a plan on how to help after,” she says. “I know a lot of authors who feel like once their debut didn’t blow up, the energy went down significantly.” 

Author and journalist Kuba Shand-Baptiste says the support from industry figures was “self-congratulatory and shallow”. “Those of us who broke through barriers were considered exceptions, not a tiny sample of a very clear abundance of untapped or unrecognised talent,” she says. “Almost a decade later, it’s not at all surprising that interest has dwindled so much.”

Selina Brown, founder of the Black British Book Festival (BBBF), describes the progress as “surface-level”, likening the spike of positive activity prompted by the BLM movement to the big injection of funding into the arts for “so-called ‘diverse communities’” after the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993. “But again, it wasn’t sustained,” she says. “What’s still missing is deep, structural change. Who’s actually in the room making decisions? Who holds the budgets? Black publishing in the UK has so much potential – but it’s still being treated like a side dish, not the main course.”

Indeed, gatekeeping and concentration of power remains a critical barrier. “The industry has quite a narrow, fixed definition of quality that has been influenced largely by the white middle class,” says Jodie Williams, head of DEI at Pan Macmillan. “Many in the industry don’t read books by Black authors. That makes it harder to recognise or champion talent.” 

Mireille Harper, author and editorial director at Bloomsbury Tonic, agrees: “Not only are a lot of people in publishing not Black – many do not engage with Black people or people of colour in either their professional or personal lives. This breeds a culture of conformity and groupthink that results in Black publishers, authors and readers being entirely disregarded.”

Williams also speaks of a “disconnect” between the industry as a whole and some of the “amazing” organisations and people set up to support Black literature, such as the BBBF, Dark Matter and the Black Writers Guild.

“They can feel like two separate worlds,” she says. “It was brilliant to see Selina Brown named Leader of the Year at this year’s FutureBook Conference, but I was surprised by how few people from the industry came to the BBBF last year. If the industry immersed itself more in events like these, we’d see real progress because the talent out there is undeniable.”

When it comes to talent, as Shand-Baptiste says, “there’s no shortage of brilliant Black British authors”, with numerous figures pointing to the success of Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge and My Name Is Why by Lemn Sissay as examples of positive audience reaction after big publisher investment. “These weren’t one-offs,” says Brown. “They were the result of long-term commitment, belief and visibility – exactly what we fight to create at the BBBF.”

Brown also argues that success does not always look like overnight bestsellers. “For authors like Yomi Sode, Caleb Femi and Jeffrey Boakye  the impact is deep and lasting – through classrooms, curriculae, theatre and community work,” she says. “Often, it’s the community that gets behind these books first – and then the sales follow. It’s a slower build because the infrastructure isn’t always there. But when publishers invest early and meaningfully, the outcome isn’t just commercial. It’s cultural transformation.”

A number of figures argue that this slower cultivation of long, sustained careers for Black authors should be a main focus for change. “I’ve seen more and more ‘mainstream’ publishers investing in individual books, rather than in the developing careers of writers,” says Jacob Ross, associate editor at independent publisher Peepal Tree. “It has enormous implications for the careers of Black and other ethnically minoritised writers.” But Richards is blunt: “Black people shouldn’t always be the ‘new voices’. We deserve franchises, backlists and careers.” 

Meanwhile, Mel Pennant, a debut novelist, warns against statistics becoming excuses.
“I’d like to see the dial shift significantly from viewing Black publishing as a risky statistic to it being seen as creating vast opportunities.” While Pennant’s publication journey has been mostly positive, she adds that the uncertainty is compounded for a Black debut writer. “I am anxious going forwards about being viewed as the ‘token’, or as the reason why other stories can’t get through the door.”

Williams points to the ostensibly data-driven risk aversion of mainstream publishing as a major barrier. “The practice of comparing books to others that are deemed similar in order to predict audiences and sales can hinder diversity and limit opportunities for new voices because there is not enough data on books published by Black writers,” she says. 

Brown agrees: “Don’t expect the same outcomes or metrics you use for white authors. And stop relying so heavily on BookScan. A lot of diverse bookshops aren’t tracked by TCM, so you’re missing huge chunks of sales data when it comes to Black and diverse titles. If you’re not counting us properly, how can you claim we’re not performing?”

The problem, of course, is not only with books that are published, but also by whom they are published. And the state of play for Black publishing professionals is bleak. “The challenge is progression,” says Brown. “People can get in, but they struggle to move up. You can be the only Black person in the room for five, 10 years – still waiting for a real opportunity. It’s exhausting. And that’s why so many leave.”

Demi Echezona, a publishing executive at Oldcastle Books, describes her experience as “extremely fortunate” but acknowledges how rare that is. “When [I] walk into publishing events, I am still one of very few – showing that more needs to be done. It is not enough to launch the odd prize or to champion the few diverse bookshops that exist here and there – this needs to be ingrained into publishing. Diversity and inclusion need to be everyday practices.”

The broader question facing the industry is not whether progress is necessary, but whether publishers are prepared to commit to systemic change. That commitment extends beyond statements of intent to investment in acquisition, staffing, marketing and leadership. “Martyrdom shouldn’t be a burden Black professionals have to bear,” says Shand-Baptiste. “Publishers and agencies need to take responsibility from the top down. If you can’t figure out how to market anyone but white people, or how to hire people from underrepresented groups, that is a serious failure.”