Diversity in Publishing

This story is told in every publishing office I’ve worked in, where you’d be hard pressed to see a Afro-Caribbean person, and might see more people of Asian extraction, but only just.  My gripe with the figures is that I can’t even see this 14% being borne out in any of my day-to-day, routine activities in the publishing trade.

It’s not as if this is all hearsay. From the BBC News article: ‘Minority groups have typically been under-represented in the industry – a situation demonstrated by a 2004 survey commissioned by the Arts Council which found nearly half of those in the profession did not believe it was "culturally diverse".’

The article is interesting reading: it once again credits Pearson’s ‘proactive’ nature, in that they have a scheme to recruit interns of an ethnic minority background.  But currently, this seems to be the only scheme trotted out.  I myself went along to a diversity day, and found the whole thing rather odd.  A room full of black and brown people in the grand building on 80 Strand was an anomaly (to me).  The pro-activity was just that – a sort of positive discrimination that has raised all sorts of internal debates here at the Society of Young Publishers, and it is also the reason for our newly implemented disclaimer at the bottom of our job emails.  My personal experience of Penguin has been that they have a rather hit-and-miss approach to human relations in general.  The aforementioned scheme may be in place, but there is also the rather over-the-top six-month probationary period, and what seems an alarmingly high staff turnover.

We all know that change is organic in these scenarios; we also know that publishing, along with many of the media trades, have for a long time operated on the old boy network, on word–of-mouth and introductions, on nepotism and favours for favours.  This is something that is hard to change overnight, but will inevitably occur as publishing is fast becoming more of a business than a vocation, more of a profit-and-loss exercise that a labour of passion or even a labour of love.

The profit-and-loss scenario neatly knocks onto what might essentially change the publishing mix more quickly than any proactive work scheme.  The Asian and black populations in England have amongst them a subset who buy books on a regular basis, but have reportedly found that their experiences and their perspectives are not represented by the majority of books that are published in England.  This lost revenue will no doubt spur the publishers to change their catalogues very rapidly indeed. 

But who’d be as cynical as that, where the book is concerned?

Answers on a postcard to

Plimbol Solano

Society of Young Publishers c/o The Bookseller
Endeavour House
189 Shaftesbury Avenue
London
WC2H 8TJ

(Plimbol is 26, and works in the publishing trade for a b2b magazine.  His hobbies are music and origami.)

Want to comment on this article?  Email the Online Editor, at gmattu@thesyp.org.uk

To read the original BBC News article, go to:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6426193.stm