The visibility and accessibility of books authored by Asian ethnic writers to the general reader

Lynn Tan

In 2022, the results of the first ever First Nations and People of Colour (FNPOC) Writers Count conducted by Dr. Natalie Kon-yu in 2018, were finally published, and it was a sombre reminder that much is to be done in the diversification of the Australian publishing industry.

With much attention on the responsibility of publishers, editors, agents, and other experts in the publishing industry to diversify Australian literature, this report will instead draw light to the latter half of the publishing process: the responsibility of traditional publishing houses and bookshops—the reader’s gateway to obtaining the limited diverse literature available to them.

The research conducted in this report focuses on the mainstream traditional publishers and booksellers, calling for the acknowledgment that not all readers make conscious decisions in reading books written by ethnic minorities. The intention of the research is to highlight the extent of visibility and accessibility that the general reader has, to be exposed to books written by ethnic minority authors.

Language

In this report, the term ‘ethnic minority writers’ refer to FNPOC writers in Australia. The report will focus on Asian ethnic writers, whereby the term ‘Asian’ encapsulates writers originating from the continent of Asia, as well as first-generational migrants and their descendants, and migrants who arrived in their host country at a young age, which Ommundsen refers to as the ‘1.5’ generation. It is important to note in this report that the research presented is limited to the information available through a Google search on author ethnicities which may not have been obvious from the author’s name; authors have therefore been identified in this report as ethnically Asian, based on the information available through a basic search. Further information to identify and highlight ethnic minority writers could be solidified in a readily available database through regularly recurring surveys and research similar to Kon-yu’s FNPOC Writers Count.

The term ‘general reader’ will also be used throughout this report in which the context refers to recreational readers with no association to the publishing industry and no strong political or social agenda that may influence the way they read.

The displacement of Asia in Australia

Ethnic minority writers have been subjected to writing about their struggles of displacement since their emergence, which Ommundsen describes as ‘the boat,’ inspired by Nam Le’s short story collection of the same title. He quotes Fan Wu’s Beautiful as Yesterday: ‘I can’t write a memoir. Last year, I met an agent in New York, and she asked me to write a memoir about the Cultural Revolution, saying those kinds of books were hot. I told her I was seven when it ended. Also, aren’t there many overseas people writing memoirs about that period already?’. This dilemma is that of the ethnic minority writer; perceived by the White-dominated publishing industry by the generalized struggles of the immigrant story.

Despite the conversations to diversify the Australian publishing industry, Asian ethnic writers still struggle to find their place amongst their White counterparts. In a 2004 issue of The Age, Andy Quan shares the same concerns, asking ‘Have I been published because I am Asian and gay, or instead did I write more powerfully from this part of my life? Have I been tokenised and ghettoised? Or was I just writing in the right places and times?’. This doubt seems to persist as, when asked about the whiteness of the Australian publishing industry and grants committees, Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen voices her concerns that she may be commissioned to write for the sake of diversity.

In the same interview, Julie Koh shares her beliefs that the majority White industry ‘can influence whose work gets attention’. With the White gatekeeping of the Australian publishing industry, there is a focus on the ethnic minority writer’s fluency of the English language and their ‘assimilation of the conventions’ that determine the writing’s literary quality ‘in the English tradition’. Even when ethnic minority writing may be of equal literary value, they continue to be rejected due to its difference from ‘Anglo Australians’ and ultimately, ‘its invisibility within Australian literature was proof that the nation’s literature did not reflect the cultural diversity of the nation’.

Traditional publishing houses’ bestsellers

According to research conducted by Dr. Natalie Kon-yu and her team, only seven percent of one thousand, five hundred and thirty-one sampled books published in 2018 were authored by ethnic minority writers. While the FNPOC Writers Count serves as a valuable starting point for collecting data proving the lack of diversity in Australian publishing, when presented with numbers that solidify the pre-existing assumption, it is difficult not to ask why these numbers remain so low.

‘With bestselling authors like Benjamin Law, Maxine Beneba Clarke, Behrouz Boochani, to name a few, it’s clear there are countless stories of diverse communities just waiting to be given a chance to be told.' In Farrukh’s interview with Sano and Teo from Amplify Bookstore, they highlight a ‘problematic—and untrue—sentiment’ that there is a lack of demand for diverse books despite the existing performance of bestselling ethnic minority authors. It is because of these persisting challenges from gatekeepers that ethnic minority writers continue to work hard to prove their ‘merit and relevancy’ to mainstream publishers.

From an editor’s perspective, Najah Webb has experienced the conversations shared between gatekeeping publishers, editors, agents, and even established influential writers in America; she discloses ‘five recurring assumptions about the marketability of Black books,’ the first being that ‘Black books don’t sell.’ Unfortunately, with the results of the FNPOC Writers Count, this assumption seems to be prevalent in the Australian publishing industry as well.

This critical impression is certainly being reflected in the bestseller lists curated and advertised by major traditional publishing houses throughout Australia. The following research focuses on the bestsellers list due to their influence on the reader’s decisions, as discussed later in the report. The research data was collected on 30 April 2023, with the understanding that the bestsellers lists are updated on a regular basis, while acknowledging a lack of insight on the criteria of selection by the publishing houses researched, apart from informed beliefs based on the industry insiders quoted throughout this report.

The traditional publishing houses in this research consist of Simon & Schuster, Penguin Books, Hachette, Harper Collins, and Pan MacMillan, whereby the sample of bestsellers included one hundred books from Simon & Schuster, Penguin Books, and Hachette, as well as thirty-four books from Harper Collins and Pan MacMillan, coming to a total sample size of three hundred and sixty-eight books. The latter two publishing houses presented a smaller sample size as their respective bestseller lists contained only thirty-four books each. This research was conducted as an individual with no association to any of these publishing houses whereby the information was collected through their website, accessible to any general reader.

In total, twenty-seven out of the sample three hundred and sixty-eight books were authored by ethnic minority writers, with a majority of thirteen books published by Hachette, and an underwhelming zero published by Harper Collins. In terms of percentages, Pan MacMillan came on top with five out of thirty-four books—or fifteen percent of their bestseller list—authored by Asian ethnic writers, where Hachette still remains strong in second with thirteen percent of their bestseller list being authored by Asian ethnic writers. When taking away the aspect of authors repeated on the list, a total of sixteen Asian ethnic writers were named in the total bestseller list.

From these overall findings, it seems that the disappointing results of Dr. Natalie Kon-yu’s FNPOC Writers Count conducted in 2018 remain to be relevant five years later, as the report’s research shows a similar seven percent of books advertised in these large traditional publishing houses’ bestseller lists are authored by Asian minority writers. Of course, there seem to be minor improvements as the FNPOC Writers Count includes other ethnic minority races in the seven percent result, while this report focuses on Asian ethnic minorities, including books that were not published in 2023 but were chosen even so as bestselling features. Though this report was not made to mirror the FNPOC Writers Count, it remains to share a similar message of the lack of diverse authors being pushed by publishing houses.

In an opinion blog published by Publisher’s Weekly, Bluemle puts succinctly: ‘When you have only one title on your list per season that’s diverse, and it doesn’t sell, and you say that therefore “diverse books don’t sell,” you’re saying something equally absurd.' As suggested, with the limited number of ethnic minority writers being published and competing against the dominating number of their White counterparts for marketing attention, it is difficult to gauge their performance—and even more so unreasonable for gatekeepers to determine their value with such insufficient support.

Bookshop bestsellers

Marina Sano and Jing Xuan Teo are cofounders of Amplify Bookstore, which Sano describes as ‘an online bookshop dedicated to supporting black, indigenous and other people of colour (BIPOC) authors’. The two, both raised in Singapore before moving to Melbourne, were disappointed in the Westernised bookshelves of authors in bookshops across both Australia and Singapore. Ultimately, as general readers, they felt a lack of representation on the pages of these White-authored books dominating the bookshops. Sano voices her frustrations: ‘The only way I found books by or about people like me was if I actively sought them out—an option I didn’t realise I had until I was an adult.’

Nonetheless, Sano highlights that, while ‘book people’ are under the impression that ethnic minority writers are difficult to access, these book titles are still readily available in large local bookshops such as Dymocks and Readings. She describes an overlap between Amplify Bookstore and other large bookshops’ stock lists whereby the issue of visibility lies in the marketing: ‘Despite knowing and anticipating the lack of marketing and attention given to books relevant for us, we still underestimated the extent of this lack of marketing.’

While it is assuring to read from a BIPOC-focused bookseller regarding the overlap of books authored by ethnic minority writers being sold in large bookshops accessible to the general reader, the question of visibility remains.

The research conducted in this report includes an investigation of the number of books authored by Asian ethnic writers being displayed and advertised as bestsellers in large bookshops located throughout Melbourne CBD, namely Dymocks, Readings, and QBD. It is important to recognise that this investigation was conducted with the intention of identifying Asian ethnic authors, a consciousness that the general reader may not have when browsing a bookshop. The investigation also acknowledges its limitations, as the general reader may face difficulties in identifying a writer’s ethnicity based solely on their name as printed on the book.

Dymocks and Readings both featured ten titles in their bestseller display, whereas QBD did not have a bestseller display at the front of the bookshop but instead featured a large display of books on sale, categorised as ‘top fiction,’ ‘children’s books,’ and ‘nonfiction.’ Of the bestseller displays, Readings featured three out of ten books authored by Asian ethnic writers—#1 Toshikazu Kawaguchi, #2 Sehee Baek, and #8 Jessica Au—while Dymocks only featured one out of ten—#3 Toshikazu Kawaguchi. In a bleak comparison, QBD’s ‘top fiction’ category contained zero Asian ethnic writers despite the approximately thirty-book spread. From the other categories, QBD featured zero Asian ethnic writers in ‘children’s book,’ and two Asian ethnic writers out of twenty-seven books in the ‘nonfiction’ section, namely Anh Do’s The Happiest Refugee and Inazo Nitobe’s The Way of the Samurai.

According to a few booksellers asked at the bookshops—who have requested to remain anonymous in this report—the bestseller list is put together through sales figures, explaining Kawaguchi’s place in both bestseller displays albeit in different positions due to the differing stock lists of each bookshop. Indeed, the results are not abysmal as it not only shows a positive outlook on the diversity of the population’s reading list where sales figures of books are a determining factor to their visibility on bestseller lists, it also reflects a willingness from readers to pay attention to books authored by Asia-born and Asia-based authors such as Kawaguchi. McIntosh attributes this willingness to the digital age whereby ‘the rise of social media platforms has enabled a wider range of voices to be heard, and for communities to be formed.’ Though the question of how readers are shaping bestseller lists through social media such as booktok is a different—though not completely unrelated—question, it is unreasonable to write off their influence.

Dymocks, for example, does a great job of highlighting its reader’s preferences and stocking its shelves as such. Opposite their bestseller shelf is a ‘staff recommendation’ shelf with an impressive list of Asian ethnic writers including Murakami, Han Kang, Bora Chung, Nguyen Pham Que Mai, and Mieko Kawakami—all authors who were not mentioned in any other bestseller list in this report’s research. This list, curated by Dymocks staff surrounded by a variety of books, truly seems to reflect the reader’s deviation from the traditional publishing house’s bestsellers to form the community highlighted by McIntosh above.

As voiced by Farrukh, Sano and Teo, and Webb, the reader’s deviation from the bestseller lists in this report’s study may truly indicate the publishing industry’s misperception of a lack of demand for diverse books, potentially resulting in the lack of marketing that allow these books—chosen and acknowledged by readers—to achieve the sales needed to reach the visibility of bestseller book lists.

The general reader

To investigate reader habits surrounding ethnic minority writers and bestseller lists, as explored throughout the report, a survey was conducted with a sample of ten Asian identifying readers and ten White identifying readers.

During Chowdhury’s Beatrice Davis Editorial Fellowship, she contextualises Saha and van Lente’s academic study of Black, Asian, and minority ethnic (BAME) authors in the UK, whereby they identify the publishing industry’s ‘ideal reader’ as a ‘White, middle-class older woman’ under the assumption that ethnic minorities do not read to the same extent. The survey results, while not gathering data on age and income, definitely show a disparity in the regularity of reading between Asian and White participants, with a difference of 2.25 books per month on average.

Additionally, White participants appear to take more interest in bestselling authors than Asian participants, drawing concern to the scarce representation of Asian ethnic writers taking up between zero to fifteen percent of the large traditional houses’ bestseller lists, whereby the White readers’ exposure to Asian ethnic writers is being limited by these gatekeeping decision-makers.

Conversely, Asian participants place more emphasis on the author’s ethnicity when purchasing books. While the survey does not specify the preferred ethnicity, it is fair to conclude an indication that Asian-identifying readers are seeking more representation on the pages. Taking this into account, alongside the distinct lack of Asian ethnic authors being marketed to the general reader, it is no surprise that Asian participants read much less than their White counterparts.

To reach a balance between both reader habits that allow White readers more visibility to Asian ethnic writers on bestseller lists while satisfying the Asian reader’s needs for representation, it once again comes down to the decision-makers to create a more diverse publishing industry that is able to accurately reflect the diverse readership and population in Australia.

What has been done

Since the rise of the digital age of social media platforms that discuss social issues such as racial and gender inequalities on a global scale, McIntosh notes the cultural shift in representation. We’ve seen Asian literary prize winners of 2013, 2017, and 2021 that feature books that are ‘thrillingly different, spanning genres and themes, refusing to be defined through the ever-shifting label of “identity politics”, so often wielded against minority writers.’

In terms of booksellers, Amplify Bookstore is one example used throughout this report, as they are creating a space where ethnic minority writers are able to gain more exposure and importance in marketing compared to the prioritized White authors in larger bookshops while allowing the general reader to ‘diversify their bookshelves.’ As Webb highlights the publishing industry’s misconception that diverse books do not sell, Amplify Bookstore aims to ‘prove that not only are there excellent stories by authors of colour, but also that people are interested in these stories and will buy them when they are given a platform to shine.’

On top of that, Writers Victoria have consistently provided free skills and development workshops, as well as commissioning bursaries to Asian Australian writers since 2013 onwards. This includes the ‘Directory of Chinese-Australian Writers’ with intentions to ‘assist literary organisations, programmers, and publications increase the diversity of their programs and journals.’

Although the publishing industry continues to show reluctance in diversifying due to uncertainty of quality and audience, it is important to acknowledge that initiatives from smaller independent groups have already taken place. They continue to increase awareness of ethnic minority writers in Australia with hopes that it will cause an impact and influence the direction of traditional publishers and booksellers throughout the nation and wider society.

Conclusion

It is evident in the flourishing initiatives that movement toward a more diverse publishing industry has been led by those who are affected by the lack of diversity most—First Nations and people of colour. The intention of this report and its research is to bring to light the underwhelming representation of ethnic writers—Asian ethnic writers, specifically—in the playing field of mainstream and traditional publishing houses and booksellers. While it is encouraging to see a slow but sure increase in Asian ethnic writers being published in Australia, the effort is naught without the general reader’s awareness of their works.

Overall, this report is only a small snapshot of the visibility of Asian ethnic writers in the Australian book market from traditional publishing houses to large bookshops accessible to the general reader. While it shows some improvements to the existing and ongoing concerns of industry practitioners discussed throughout the report, it remains largely evident nonetheless that there is still a long way to go. This report highlighted a few of the issues that need addressing with regards to the publishing industry’s assumptions about the identity of general readers and their preferences, as well as the marketability of books authored by ethnic minority writers.

It is difficult to ignore the changing landscape of Australia’s ethnic composition with the increase of immigrants and their consequent descendants, therefore it is important for the publishing industry to make hast in predicting and adapting to potential shifts in the market and demands that may follow. Ultimately, the biggest step remains the responsibility of decision-makers in the industry; ‘until the publishing industry diversifies its audience, writers of colour will always be “othered”.’

Appendix A

Traditional publishing houses’ bestseller lists summary:

Appendix B

Traditional publishing houses’ bestseller lists as of April 30 2023:

About the author

Lynn is an avid reader and film viewer of horror and crime genres, with an interest in Asian representation in the media. She was a founder and editor of Silent Mayhem Online Literary Magazine, and is now undergoing her Master’s Degree in Writing and Publishing at RMIT, Melbourne.