Walk into a bookstore — any bookstore. What is the first thing you see? If you say “books,” you’re probably right, but not very specific. But there are hundreds of them, possibly thousands. You can’t miss them. They shout at you from their displays, saying, “Pick me! Choose me! Love me! Add me to your TBR! Look me up on Goodreads! Take me home with you!”
This is not the first time these books have said that. They’ve been through this wringer before, trying to call the attention of someone they hope will give them a chance. Agents, editors, publishers, book buyers, distributors, ARC readers… The fact that that book is on that shelf is a feat all on its own, years in the making. Being in a bookstore at all might already seem like a success, but oftentimes, the work is only beginning. It’s an uphill battle to reach readers, especially for people of colour who want to tell their stories.
DEI, or diversity, equity and inclusion, has become somewhat of a political buzzword in recent years, especially to some conservatives, who see it as a radical boogeyman that wants to steal jobs and turn the Super Bowl halftime show into something that isn’t “good old-fashioned American apple pie”. But people who push for DEI aren’t trying to erase anything; they’re emphasizing the importance of ensuring that the voices of people from diverse backgrounds (people who aren’t white, cisgender, straight, abled, or male) are heard alongside the voices that have been heard for decades, including in the publishing industry.
In 2020, the New York Times published a study of over 7,000 adult books released in 2018 by the “big five” publishers (Simon & Schuster, Penguin Random House, Doubleday, HarperCollins and Macmillan), and found that 89% of them were written by white authors – a disproportionately large percentage, considering that they accounted for only 60% of United States’ population at the time.
In 2024, The Atlantic published its findings after replicating the study from 2019–2023, showing that by 2023, the number of books published by white authors had dropped to 75%. In just five years, the percentage of books by non-white authors had more than doubled.
That seemed like a win for DEI, right? More books by authors of colour were hitting the shelves. For a moment, it seemed like a new dawn was rising, and people of colour were finally being given a chance to shine in the publishing industry.
But getting published, while difficult and back-breaking all on its own, was just the first step. Marketing support for authors of colour, whether in the run-up to their release dates or during their book launches, isn’t up to par with that of their white counterparts.
“There’s consistently a lot of talk about whether BIPOC and queer voices are represented appropriately in publishing, and interestingly enough, examining the body of work released every year reveals that there is a decent [amount] of publishing that is BIPOC, that is queer. Our works are being acquired. However, they aren’t being promoted or featured to the same extent that, say, non-BIPOC work is,” says author Shalini Abeysekara. In April of 2025, her debut novel, This Monster of Mine, was released. An ancient-Rome-inspired fantasy romance, the novel follows a young woman, Sarai, on a journey of vengeance as she tries to uncover why she was nearly killed four years ago — and why her case was never brought to justice, while working for a powerful man who she believes may have something to do with it. Brilliantly clever, dark, and rich, the novel became an instant #1 Sunday Times bestseller.
Still, Ms. Abeysekara is very aware of how her identity as a South Asian woman has affected her publishing journey. Even though their books are being published, many authors of colour struggle to reach the mainstream success of their white peers due to the lack of marketing dollars and push from publishers.
“I think my publishing experience was, in some ways, extremely fortunate because I did get my book included in a big book box. At the same time, I will say that I was very conscious of the fact that I wasn’t getting the same marketing and support that perhaps a non-BIPOC author would have, purely because my name is very, very obviously ethnic, and I still have a lot of regrets about not choosing a pen name in that regard because I think that there are still misconceptions about books by authors with very obviously ethnic names – that people might look at them and think, ‘Oh, well, the main character must also be ethnic.’ And then comes the really tragic part, which is, ‘I will not be able to relate to this character.’ […] But I think that’s an understanding of the world that my publisher also seemed to have. And they marketed the book, I believe, hopefully to the best of their ability, but also with the understanding that perhaps their marketing dollars would be better spent on a different property. And that seems to be a recurring theme with several other BIPOC authors, with those I’ve spoken with over the course of this debut journey and with debut authors I’m speaking with now who are set to release their first book in 2026. They go, ‘I have made the same strides, the same advances, sent the same emails that my white peers do, and I am not seeing the same responses that they do.’”
A look at the books that topped 2023’s New York Times bestseller list shows just how large that disparity is. Despite The Atlantic’s study finding that the ratio of books published by authors of colour had jumped to 25% in 2023 from 11% in 2020, none of the 23 books that reached #1 on the paper’s bestseller fiction list that year were written by authors of colour. On the nonfiction side, of the 18 unique books that topped the list, only two had BIPOC authors.
So what’s the solution? Ms. Abeysekara has an idea. “I really do think it’s as simple as throwing money behind it. I’m currently looking at the runaway success of Daggermouth. I learned about Daggermouth back in November, back when H.M. Wolf was still building hype for it. It’s an amazing book, and people were excited, but no one was really paying that much attention. And then people started reading it, and it really started taking off. And what happened – what happens every single time – is that one group of influencers will read it, recommend it to people. Then they will read it, they will enjoy it, and then you hit the sweet spot where everyone’s like, ‘People are talking about this. I need to know why, and it doesn’t matter.’ At that point, ethnicity ceases to matter. It just becomes, ‘there is a phenomenon, and I am not part of it. I need to know, I need to be a part of it.’”
Ms. Abeysekara could personally speak to that. In July of 2025, a bookish influencer, @whatemmyreadss, featured her book on Instagram and TikTok, garnering over 66k views and 7k likes across both platforms.
“You can quite literally see the spike in ‘adds’ [for This Monster of Mine on Goodreads] on the day she posted [the video],” she attests. “Publishers can create that sweet spot at that moment, literally just by throwing money behind a book. You send it to enough influencers. Some of them are going to love it. And the second they love it, they will say it. And the second they say it, people are going to run straight after it. So it really, truly is as simple as throwing money behind all of your books equally. The ones that were going to do well will always do well, and the ones that people were not going to hear of otherwise will now do well because you threw money behind it.”
Until the publishing industry supports and markets diverse authors in the same way it does white authors, the opportunity for BIPOC authors’ success remains more difficult than that of their white peers. But their stories are already out there. For now, it’s up to us readers to scour the shelves looking for them, elevating and championing the ones we love in hopes that the wider industry takes notice.
You can find Shalini Abeysekara on Instagram, TikTok, and her website. This Monster of Mine is available across North America and the UK, and translations are available in Germany and Slovakia. Its sequel, This Blade of Ours, releases on June 30th in North America and July 2nd in the UK.
