More on TechnologyTell: Gadget News | Apple News
E-stores accidentally dissing minority writers?
February 14, 2008 | 9:03 am
|
By David Rothman
I toured the category areas of Amazon’s Kindle and Mobipocket bookstores, eBooks.com, eReader.com and Fictionwise today. “How easy,” I wondered, “are minority-written books to browse for? Is it as simple as visiting a p-store and looking on the right wooden shelves?”
While reporting on the memorable and informative Tools of Change conference, PW’s Calvin Reid had called for “a bit more ethnic diversity.” In fact, he suggested possible TOC partnerships with “programs like the Publishing Certificate program at CUNY.” Amen, Calvin. But what about the world of e-books, part of the territory TOC covered? Major sections of some p-bookstores cater to the literary tastes of Afro-American, Asians, Latinos and others in real life. So what gives on the Web, especially while we’re in Black History Month?
At the Amazon Kindle Store, alas, I could find no ethnic areas within either Fiction or the Genre subcategory. Nothing in nonfiction, either–even though Barack Obama is a best-selling writer in Biographies and memoirs. Yes, the Kindle store might carry works from zillions of Black writers, searchable by name, among the 90,000+ titles. But at least during a quick tour I saw no obvious way for novice shopper to browse for Afro-American books by the authors’ race without using the problematic search engine.
Did I miss something just now? You bet—as a Publishers Weekly editor alerted me after I posted an earlier version of this essay on the PW site! You see, a more common term than Afro-American these days is African-American despite the existence of, say, the Howard University Department of Afro-American Studies or the Washington Afro-American or hundreds of thousands of Google references or mention of Afro-American in the 2007 edition of the Oxford University Pocket Dictionary of Current English (notice “Current”?). A search for “afro-american” led–with or without caps, or with “books” added–to just 29 Kindle-edition listings, while African-American yielded more than 900. Names such as Toni Morrison, the Black Nobel Prize winner who had endorsed the Kindle, didn’t show up in the 29 tied to “Afro-American” even though, yes, Amazon carries at least some of her titles in Kindle format.
A topic guide using the most common term in the book world nowadays, African-American, would have helped immensely at Amazon’s Kindle store. The issue isn’t whether the Kindle store carries the books—it does!—but rather how discoverable they would be if you didn’t use the optimal term; and as you’ll see, this isn’t an Amazon-only issue but rather one affecting other Web stores as well. A press aide at the Congress of Racial Equality was astounded when I told him of the Kindle store’s omission and when I asked for a definitive quote on the matter. Another CORE person, an official spokesperson named Niger Innis, later e-mailed me with more than a little diplomacy toward Amazon and other Web stores without African-American areas: “Having sections in a book store or online book store that promote black intellectual progress is always helpful.” That’s a verbatim reproduction of the sentence, complete with the lower-case “black.”
At the other stores…
What about the issue of an African-American section or other ethnical section at other online stores? As noted Amazon isn’t alone in this accidental but unfortunate omission of a section explicitly labeled “African-American” or whatever the purists would insist on.
Amazon’s Mobipocket store: No luck, again, in the category department, except for Asian Interest with 28 items–almost all nonfiction, with no listings of books by, say, Maxine Hong Kingston. Oh, and guess which African-American’s work was in the best-seller range at this store? Of course: Barack Obama’s.
eBooks.com: Within the African-American subcategory in Fiction, I found listings for 19 books, with Morrison’s Beloved at the top. Notice the helpful use of the right term. No guesswork needed. The subcategory already exists within Fiction. CORE would have been delighted. Ironically, eBooks.com, the outfit mentioned here with both an African-American section and the apparently optimal usage, is an Australian company.
eReader.com, just acquired by Fictionwise: Scores of titles associated with Black History Month–but good luck slogging through it all. Less than perfect organization.
Fictionwise: No ethnic areas. Hey, Steve and Scott, maybe this could be a great new market for you, just like e-romances. Ditto for other retailers, Amazon included.
I could go on–with apologies in advance to any stores with minority categories I’ve missed, a very real possibility–but you get the point. The retailers as a group could be somewhat more respectful toward minority shoppers in the browsing mode or toward nonminorities who aren’t up with the optimal search terms. And how about other areas of e-bookdom? Are there enough minority writers with the right preparation to come up with the best fiction or nonfiction? Or how about the number of minority e-publishers and staffers? I suspect that, just as with the book world as a whole, minorities don’t abound.
No, I’m not saying aggressively enforced quotas are the answer–I just wonder if the industry couldn’t do more on its own, in the spirit of the CCNY program. I’ve heard that Pat Schroeder has decried the shortage of minority-fit material for K-12. Might e-books be one solution? They cost less to publish than p-books, and thanks to the marvels of the Net, can be distributed globally to provide a good variety of them anywhere.
Let me insert an important caveat. Maybe in some ways it’s healthy that e-bookstores haven’t created minority sections; they’re probably thinking of minority shoppers as just shoppers. Like the perception of Obama as a mainstream presidential candidate, not just one for African-Americans, that is good. I myself like to read the works of dead WASPs, even though I’m Jewish; and I would hate for it to be impossible to transcend race or religion in reading or writing novels. Remember the fuss over The Confessions of Nat Turner? Oh for William Styron to have been able to have hidden his race so the authenticity of his work, which I’m unqualified to judge, could be evaluated strictly by merit! Furthermore, in an increasingly multiracial society, with Obama himself in more than one category, should race and ethnicity even matter?
Actually, yes–not always, but at times and in nondiscriminatory ways. I’ve been polishing a somewhat Jewish-American novel set in an era when gentlemen’s agreements were still strong in the characters’ memories. A friend, otherwise perceptive about the book, suggested that I go with an Afro-American protagonist instead to elevate the ethnically related tensions. But I refused to do a Styron act. I want to be myself, ethnically at least, even if Jewish-American fiction isn’t the rage that it was decades ago; and many an African-American, Latino or Asian novelist would probably feel the same in my place. Giving them freedom to be themselves means not only discovering and publishing minorities—which the laudable CCNY program can facilitate—but also enabling their audiences to find the resultant books. Perhaps e-tailers can be a little more helpful and, along the way, turn a few extra bucks for themselves and the book industry as a whole, not just the writers.
* * *
In defense of PDAs and cellphones as e-book readers: Some folks on TOC’s e-book panel questioned the screen sizes and battery lives of such gizmos. I myself have three E Ink machines and an XO within reach as I write this, but I still gravitate to my PalmTX when I’m in the mood. I enjoy TX’s compactness and am used to scrolling on a small screen, and the battery life of at least several hours is enough for my needs. Besides, a foldout e-paper screen is already on a soon-to-be-sold European cellphone, and eventually it might show up in a more refined form on PDAs, too.
(Last revised at 6:22 p.m.)
|
Previous
SUBSCRIBE TO RSS
Comments:
The idea of separating literature based on race is completely stupid to me. From a marketing standpoint, I can understand some people within a minority wanting to find literature by those of their own race. It’s a cultural thing and it’s one, as a middle-class white person, I will never understand. However, good literature is just that no matter what color the author is. I’ve read books by people of other races without realizing it beforehand (this obviously does not happen with authors who have distinctively foreign names). Someone like Ralph Ellison is not, to me, a black writer. He is simply a great writer. I would look for him in the “literature” section, not the “Afro-American” section or the “minority” section. Frankly, I think that categorizing any author by his race is an insult to his art. As long as people persist in separating the races through labels, there is always going to be some kind of divide that shouldn’t exist in our country in this day and age. The idea of “Black History Month” has always been an absolutely absurd idea to me, as if “black history” were somehow separated from the rest of history. When I study history, I intend to learn about all the major players no matter what race they are. In any U.S. History class a person can expect to learn about Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr. without having to take an aditional class titled “African-American History.” In an open and free society such as ours, movers and shakers and talented individuals will always move to the forefront in spite of race. This is why Obama’s book is a top-seller without a designated section for black people. Separating the races will only serve to bring more attention to mediocre writers and I don’t need to know about mediocre black writers any more than I need to know about mediocre white writers.