WHERE’S THE NEWS ABOUT BLACK WRITERS?
We’ve been thinking a lot about this question.
After 2020, we saw a tremendous amount of attention directed toward Black voices, Black stories and Black authors. But as the urgency of that moment faded, so did much of the attention.
That isn’t just an observation.
PEN America found that the publishing industry continues to face significant barriers to bringing books by authors of color to commercial success. Its 2022 report identified persistent inequities in everything from acquisitions and marketing budgets to how publishers evaluate the potential of authors of color.
And when it comes to media visibility, research examining five decades of New York Times coverage of 500 Black writers found that fewer than 20 appeared in more than 500 articles. The research also found a pattern in which a relatively small number of Black writers receive sustained attention while many others remain largely invisible.
The pandemic also accelerated pressure on the broader media ecosystem. Newsrooms cut staff and more than 100 newsrooms closed during the pandemic period, while journalists of color were particularly vulnerable to the loss of newsroom opportunities.
So what do we do?
We create our own visibility.
Not because traditional media doesn’t matter. It does.
But we cannot make traditional media the only gatekeeper of whether our stories are newsworthy.
We need to own our time and our talent.
Take a page from the mindset of creators who have built their own platforms rather than waiting for someone else to decide when their work deserves attention. Your intellectual property, your expertise, your story and your audience are valuable assets.
For Black authors, that means we should strengthen our own media ecosystem:
Blog it.
Podcast it.
Press-release it.
Interview it.
Share it.
Tag the journalist.
Send it to the editor.
Put it in the newsletter.
Create the video.
Tell the story.
Don’t just write the book. Create the news around the book.
Interested in sharing your book news, email us at support@direct2author.com.
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