All Things Great and Small.......Are Racist! Part XI

By Rich Kozlovich 

So, you're an author, you're black, and you have a book you want to sell, but Barnes and Noble isn't selling it.  So obviously the only conclusion must be Barnes & Noble Is Racist.  Now here's proof positive of racism on the part of Barnes and Noble.  They only want to put books on their shelves that sell.  Imagine that!!!  Now just how racist is that?  Or perhaps......and....now here's another thought.  You're book stinks and no one wants to read it! Nah, it has to be racism! 

In that article the author, Ellie Gardey, quoted Bethany Baptiste:

Bethany Baptiste, who is black, instructed her Twitter followers to “[g]et mad, y’all” and described Barnes & Noble’s policies as “[a] middle finger to debut authors esp if they’re midlist & marginalized.”

So, bad spelling, bad manners and nastiness aside:  Would that bit of flame throwing encourage you to buy her book?   Gardey goes on to say: "The cries of racism have been going viral on Twitter", again quoting Baptiste:

In a tweet, Baptiste criticized the practice of only stocking books that Barnes & Noble has determined will be financially successful:

If B&N withholds their support to stock debut titles in-store until they receive some sign a book is ‘worthy,’ this will give trad pub MORE incentive to throw more money behind books they WANT to be considered worthy. And most of the time, the debut books trad pub uplifts are white or white-appealing ones. This is bad, bad, bad all around.

It appears that's not true, as "the stores feature plenty of books from writers of many races and nationalities".   So is there any evidence of racism.  Yes, there is.  "In July, the author Joyce Carol Oates said, “A friend who is a literary agent told me that he cannot even get editors to read first novels by young white male writers, no matter how good; they are just not interested.”............But that isn't the narrative they want and "the literary community again erupted in fury!"  But the fact is: "Publishers say they are engaged in an effort to prioritize writers who are not white or male."

Here's the reality of any business, and publishing is a business, not a social engineering activist movement.  Publishers have to sell books to make money, and if not for all this internet flame throwing by race baiters, they don't really care what the race or nationality of author may be.  

 

Books that get put on shelves and never leave are like bread that never sells.  Eventually the bread goes moldy and is thrown out.  Books that never sell collect dust and get thrown out.  If your book stinks it falls into the "gets thrown out" category because those people who buy and read book are looking for books with "merit — not a story crafted by a person of a certain race."  That's not racism.  On the buyer's part, it's a matter of taste.  On the publishers and books stores part, it's good business. 

 

Get over it!

• All Things Great and Small ....... Are Racist!   
• All Things Great and Small ....... Are Racist!, Part II
• All Things Great and Small ....... Are Racist!, Part III 
• All Things Great and Small ....... Are Racist!, Part IV
• All Things Great and Small ....... Are Racist!, Part V
• All Things Great and Small ....... Are Racist! Part VI 
• All Things Great and Small ...... Are Racist! Part VII
• All Things Great and Small ....... Are Racist! Part VIII
• All Things Great and Small ....... Are Racist! Part IX
• All Things Great and Small ....... Are Racist! Part X