| Features | ||||||||||||||
 | ||||||||||||||
It's axiomatic among black publishing professionals that black readers are as diverse as any other readership category. Offer them fresh and varied books that speak to their life experiences and they'll buy 'em. This is an unprecedented moment for black interest titles in mainstream publishing history. There are now a total of seven imprints--eight, if you count John Wiley's ongoing publishing series--devoted solely to publishing books for and about African-Americans. And black publishing figures contacted by PW invariably point to the increasing buying power of black consumers to explain the phenomenon. Three of the imprints were launched this year. Among them is Strivers Row, an imprint of Random House headed up by Villard associate editor Melody Guy (it will release its first three titles in January). Over at Doubleday, Janet Hill, v-p and executive editor, will publish fiction and nonfiction trade paperback originals under the second new Random House imprint, Harlem Moon, beginning next fall. The last of the new imprints, Dafina Books, was launched by Kensington Publishing in September with two trade paperback titles, Souls of My Sisters: Black Women Break Their Silence, Tell Their Stories, and Heal Their Spirits written and edited by Dawn Marie Daniels and Candace Sandy, and Lookin' for Luv by Carl Webber.
Established black-oriented imprints include Amistad Press, the oldest imprint of the lot, independently operated until it was acquired by HarperCollins (see sidebar) this summer; and Jump at the Sun, an imprint of Hyperion that publishes for African-American children. One World Books, yet another Random House imprint devoted to black books, dates from the early 1990s; and Walk Worthy, a copublishing venture between Warner Books and Walk Worthy founder and Detroit agent Denise Stinson, will focus on publishing Christian fiction for African-Americans. One World director Anita Diggs (who succeeded One World founder Cheryl Woodruff, who left the imprint this year) says the proliferation of black imprints means that publishers are feeling optimistic but are also having a financial wake-up call. "It can no longer be denied that there is a lot of money in the community, and publishers are responding to the dollar," she says. The imprints "show the power that the African-American consumer has demonstrated."
The black publishing professionals who spoke to PW repeatedly stress that there is no such thing as "a black book," an assertion reflected in the range of upcoming titles in a variety of genres. One of the biggest books of the year will be from Terry McMillan, the writer who helped to confirm, if not outright create, the African-American commercial fiction market with the 1992 novel Waiting to Exhale, the book that sent millions to bookstores. She will likely inspire another buying spike in black commercial fiction with her newest book, A Day Late and a Dollar Short (Viking, Jan.), her first book since 1996's How Stella Got Her Groove Back (Viking). Viking associate publisher Paul Slovak reports that there will be a near one-million-copy first printing and that advance orders are strong. "It's Mama [1987] meets Waiting to Exhale," Slovak says. "We think it'll be huge." (See sidebar). Facts and Figures Consumer research into black book-buying habits is beginning to back up publisher expectations. Very preliminary results from the African-American Book Buyers Survey show that out of 350 questionnaire responses, 51% of people surveyed said they had bought between one and five books in the past three months. Another 41% bought between six and ten books, and 8% bought 11 or more books, reports Ken Smikle, president of the Chicago firm Target Market News, which studies African-American consumer spending. TMN began the study in 1998 at the behest of Anita Diggs, then at Warner Books, who wanted data on black book-buying akin to the general marketplace research conducted annually by the Book Industry Study Group. Working with BISG, and with financial support from Time Warner, Scholastic, Warner, BET books, Scholastic, Essence magazine, Simon & Schuster, John Wiley & Sons and Doubleday Direct, TMN sent out questionnaires and did on-site interviews with customers at stores. "We wanted to make a distinction between books bought and books read," Smikle says. The survey results, Smikle points out, showcase the buying power of the African-American book market, but they also show that not all of the needs of black readers are being met. "If you have that large a number of people making multiple purchases throughout the year, they can probably support more titles than are currently available in this genre," Smikle says. Far-ranging Fiction Vanesse Lloyd-Sgambati runs The Literary, a promotional company that sponsors reading events around the country with corporate sponsors. She remains bullish on the "sister-girl"/ "brotherman" novels made popular by McMillan, Yolanda J (This Just In, Doubleday, Apr. 2000; and, under the name Ardella Garland, Details at Ten, S&S, Sept. 2000), Sheneska Jackson (Southern Comfort,S&S, May 2000), Eric Jerome Dickey (Liar's Game, Dutton, June 2000), E. Lynn Harris (Not a Day G s By, Doubleday, June 2000) and Omar Tyree (For the Love of Money, S&S, Aug. 2000).
Freelance editorial consultant Malaika Adero, former executive editor of Amistad Press, wants to see not only relationship fiction on the shelves but writing that lies somewhere between the literary and commercial categories. "In the next season, we'll see books that are more accessible and commercial but may be more reflective of the range of sensibility that exists in the black community. I'm ready for the next good thing," Adero says. Could that be Breathing Room, coming from Pocket Books in January? Tracy Sherrod, senior editor at S&S's Pocket Books, says the novel is an example of a departure from the "a-man-has-done-me-wrong" genre. "It's about two black women who are friends--one Afrocentric, the other mainstream--and how they work out their relationship." The author, Patricia Elam, who is also a freelance writer, has literary leanings (she's won an O. Henry award) and is a commentator for National Public Radio and the BBC. "Readers want fiction that reflects the complexity of their lives, and also offers them an element of escape," Sherrod says, mentioning The Living Blood (Pocket, Apr. 2000), a supernatural thriller by Miami Herald columnist Tananarive Due (My Soul to Keep, HarperCollins, 1998). Sherrod says she'd like to see more fiction in the market that features "good storytelling by people for whom craft is important, people who are reaching beyond the formulaic." More fiction is on the way. Novelist Patty Rice details the struggles of an abused woman in Reinventing the Woman (S&S, Jan.); an African-American neighborhood in Pittsburgh is the setting for Stewart O'Nan's sixth novel, Everyday People (Grove, Feb.); and, reminiscent of the style of McMillan and Dickey, Trisha Thomas's debut novel, Nappily Ever After (Crown, Dec.), details the fallout when she cuts her long, processed tresses to a close-to-the-scalp natural. On the heels of her first novel, Sugar, Bernice McFadden may return to the Blackboard bestseller list with The Warmest December (Dutton, Dec.), the story of a young Brooklyn girl and her alcoholic father. Marcus Major's second novel, Four Guys and Trouble, will be released by Dutton in April, along with Got to Be Real: Four Original Love Stories (New American Library), an anthology that features popular black novelists E. Lynn Harris, Eric Jerome Dickey, Omar Tyree and Colin Channer talking about love from a male perspective. And in January, One World will publish the second novel by p t and screenwriter Sandra Jackson-Opoku, Hot Johnny and the Women Who Loved Him. Comedienne and inspirational speaker Bertice Berry, who has written four nonfiction books and made a fiction debut this year (Redemption Song, Doubleday, Jan. 2000), tackles hip-hop's influence--both harmful and helpful--in her sophomore novel, The Haunting of Hip-Hop (Doubleday, Jan.). This fiction features a hip-hop producer who gets a history lesson when he encounters ghosts from Africa when renting a Harlem brownstone. In addition to bestsellers by Harris, Doubleday can lay claim to another male fiction voice in its winter 2001 lineup--that of David Anthony Durham. Durham's Gabriel's Story (Jan.) is a historical, literary novel about an African-American boy in the 1870s in search of himself on a trip through the West. Janet Hill, Harlem Moon director and Doubleday v-p and executive editor, says she would like to acquire more African-American historical fiction, a genre that can fill the yawn between commercial and literary tastes. "There's a huge opportunity for books of that nature. Readers are looking for different kinds of stories, different kinds of fiction," she says. At Crown, editor Chris Jackson says he was surprised by the strength and storytelling skills of Sister Souljah, whose gritty first novel, The Coldest Winter Ever (Pocket, Apr.), garnered critical praise. "It's not a sister-girl book. It's not a relationship book. It's just good fiction," says Jackson, who was recently hired to expand African-American acquisitions and wants to look beyond commercial fiction. "It's typical in publishing," he says. "One thing works and you ram more of it down the pipe. Smarter publishers are going to think more broadly. It's not one audience but 100 audiences." Crown will publish Souljah's second novel (as yet untitled) next fall, and is also billing If 6 Were 9, a new novel by former Time reporter Jake Lamar, as a "break-out whodunit," about a tenured black college professor accused of murder. In the meantime, Jackson says, he is going after black writers "with a vengeance," tapping resources like the recently published anthology, Step Into a World: A Global Anthology of the New Black Literature, edited by hip-hop essayist Kevin Powell (Wiley, Nov.). Of the market, Jackson says, "There's a lot of people who are looking for emotional depth, surprising stories, unpredictable things happening and a really strong use of language--not books just casually thrown off." The new black imprints have given publishing industry professionals a real buzz. "It's an exciting time to be a black agent. The market is so much more open than it's ever been before," says Tanya McKinnon of the agency Mary Evans Inc., who reps fiction and upmarket nonfiction books for black and white clients. In October she sold a project to Amistad--a book called Pimpnosis by writer Rob Marriott and VIBE photographer Tracy Funches. The book, slated for fall 2001, features ethnographic-style photographs and essays that explore the historical myth of the pimp in black culture. Working with a black imprint, McKinnon was able to sell directly to a black editor, who bought the book on exclusive--all without her having to extensively explain it to someone unfamiliar with the subject. It's not that a white editor couldn't also have accepted the project, McKinnon says, but "it was nice to be able to sell it to a black man interested in doing a book that would explore the issue. I feel like I don't have to worry about it now, that I'm pleased that I've placed a good book somewhere where it has a safe home." Black Bookselling Despite apparent gains on the publishing side, independent African-American publishers and African-American retailers and distributors still face challenges. Kassahun Checole, president of African World/Red Sea Press, a leading distributor and publisher of African and African-American books, says large returns from chain bookstores are a "perennial" problem. "The relationship is always difficult with major bookstores," he says. "It's not that they don't order, but they return quite heavily, and that affects any independent publisher's opportunity to really move and provide something for those stores." By contrast, Checole says, he sees few, if any, returns from African-American bookstores. "They serve as the point for bringing an audience to a book that did not exist before." Simba Sana, co-owner of Karibu Bookstore in Hyattsville, Maryland, just outside of Washington, D.C., says that 15 of his store's top 20 bestsellers are fiction. But he takes pains to promote nonfiction titles like Last Man Standing: The Tragedy and Triumph of Geronimo Pratt by Jack Olsen (Doubleday, Sept.), The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad by Karl Evanzz (Pantheon, 1999), Ancient Future: The Seven Egyptian Principles of Daily Living by Wayne Chandler (Black Classic Press, 1998) and My Life in Search of Africa by John Henrik Clarke (Third World Press, 1999).
"I want the ideas contained within the books to drive people to get the books, not because the author was on Oprah or Natalie Cole is telling about her crack addiction [Angel on My Shoulder: An Autobiography, written with Digby Diehl, Warner, Nov.]." In fact, Sana also urges members of the store's reading group to consider more serious authors, such as James Baldwin. "People have told me that if we didn't do it this way, they wouldn't take the time to read some of these other books," Sana says. Other African-American bookstores around the country contacted by PW noted the continued strength of self-published books in African-American stores. Joi Afzal, co-owner of the Hue-Man Experience bookstore (Afzal recently purchased the store from its original and very well-known owner, Clara Villarosa), says those titles have begun to pick up interest with her customers.
Although her customers tend to buy books from mainstream publishers, Afzal says she herself reads self-published authors like Nina Foxx (Dippin' My Spoon, July) and Mary B. Morrison (Soul Mates Dissipate, May) and hand-sells them to browsers in the store. Afzal is working with Strivers Row to have previously self-published author Parry A. Brown (The Shirt off His Back, Jan. 2000) come to the store for a reading next month. Afzal says, "We'd like to be a flagship store for these new imprints." A Wave of Nonfiction Barnes & Noble spokeswoman Debra Williams pointed to a wave of nonfiction titles that will be highlighted in B&N stores, among them How to Make Black America Better (Doubleday, Jan.) by talk show host Tavis Smiley; Black,White & Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting-Self (Riverhead, Jan.) by Rebecca Walker, the mixed-race daughter of Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Alice Walker; and The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks by Randall N. Robinson (Dutton, Jan.). The life of legendary jazz vocalist Billie Holiday is examined in If You Can't Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday (Free Press, Jan.) by University of Pennsylvania professor Farah Griffin. Stedman Graham, a consultant and Oprah's long-time special friend, gives a how-to tutorial in Build Your Own Life Brand!, coming from S&S in January; and Girl Get Your Money Straight: A Sister's Guide to Healing Your Bank Account (Broadway, Dec.) by financial management consultant Glinda Bridgforth offers black women tips for money management. "There is so much about us that hasn't been known, so much we haven't known about ourselves," says Carole Hall, Wiley's editor-in-chief of African-American books, on the wave of nonfiction titles coming out. Wiley is planning the publication of The Undiscovered Paul Robeson: The Early Years, 1989-1939 (Apr.), the first volume of a two-volume biography by his son Paul Robeson Jr. "What's old can be new again," Hall says. "We're looking at Robeson through fresh eyes--his son's--and looking at what issues exist today to which Robeson's life speaks." Confident about the future health of African-American nonfiction publishing, Hall says, "Every season, there's going to be a handful, guaranteed, of absolutely thrilling nonfiction that's new and vital and breathtaking." Demanding black readers with money to spend, an abundance of new authors, publishers newly cognizant of dealing with black readers' tastes and, particularly important, a slowly growing cadre of African-American editorial and marketing professionals will look to insure that the rest of the African-American market will experience the same good fate. Labbé is a journalist who also formerly worked at Doubleday. She is a frequent contributor to PW and is currently researching a historical novel about her Caribbean relatives. Amistad Reborn at Harper
The acquisition of the imprint (and the 44 books on its backlist) by HarperCollins in November 1999 provided formerly independent Amistad with the marketing and distribution clout Harris had been seeking since he launched Amistad as a trade paperback quarterly at Random House in the 1970s. "I wanted this kind of support," says Harris. "As an independent, my staff was having all the fun working with books. I was on phone all the time, talking business," he says. He brought
Known for serious nonfiction, Amistad will also offer commercial fiction, children's books and more. BET is still in the mix after Harris secured a deal to launch an Amistad book channel on BET.com, which will present black-oriented titles from all publishers. "With our name and Internet exposure," says Harris, "we can give greater exposure to African-American titles than anyone." Harris also told PW that Viacom's recent acquisition of BET (Viacom owns S&S) would not affect the Harper/ Amistad Web venture. Why this focus on black consumers in an industry that, until Terry McMillan came along, believed black consumers didn't read? "The climate is right," says Harris, pointing to an "upsurge in black buying that began in early 1990s. There's an increase in disposable income, a growing black middle class and more purchasing power." There are more books aimed at black readers, says Barron, and mainstream publishers "are more sophisticated about marketing to African-Americans." Besides, in an age of black media superstars, Barron notes, "black figures cross racial lines. Everyone's interested in Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods." Upcoming Amistad titles include Black Heat by crime writer Norman Kelley, the third book in a smart commercial series about black academic and private eye, Nina Halliday. In January Amistad will publish the trade paper edition of A Renaissance in Harlem: Lost Essays of the WPA edited by Lionel C. Bascom and including previously unpublished essays by Ralph Ellison, Dorothy West and others. Also forthcoming is The House that Jack Built by Hal Jackson, one of the founders of modern radio. Of all the black imprints, Amistad is the only one directed by men. "I think that will be reflected in our list," says Barron. "We understand that female readers dominate the market, but I think we can target black men. It's a challenge, but we have as much experience in this kind of publishing as anyone." --Calvin Reid Top | ||||||||||||||
Black Books in the House
Dec 11, 2000
A version of this article appeared in the 12/11/2000 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline:
