Recently, there was a thread started in Threads by a book-box company speaking about how POC books and especially Black books do not sell or make them a profit when they include them in their boxes. They showed the numbers and how revenue fell when they included BIPOC with most revenue going down featuring Black books. Supposedly, there are many reasons why this happens but the main reason, in my opinion, is racism and ignorance.

The publishing industry is mainly composed of white people; authors, publishers, editors, etc. A small amount of people, somewhere around 10%, are BIPOC.

I don’t know how the discussion started. I’ve only seen screenshots of the information the book-box company posted. However, this discussion and discourse has been going on for years. Simply put, a good majority of white people do not want to read BIPOC stories. They mask it as “not being able to relate”. However, those same people can find relatability with animals. So, you can’t relate to a human that has a different skin tone than you? That sounds suspicious all in itself. But, the undertone is racism and them not seeing us as human therefore, they don’t need to consume our stories. Yet, everyone is supposed to relate to their stories? Make it make sense. Those of us whom able to read between the lines get it.

The publishing industry is also to blame for their lackluster marketing of BIPOC stories. Let me scratch that, BIPOC stories written by BIPOC authors. They’ll market stories staring BIPOC people as written by white people but fail in marketing us.

I’m aware this discussion isn’t going to go away anytime soon however, this information and our views on the matter need to be told for people to open their eyes. There was a statistic I mentioned on my blog, Latrell Talks, how about 72% of white people do not have a Black friend. I’m sure a higher percentage of white people haven’t read a “Black book”.