A Few Statistics on the Extreme Whiteness of the Book Industry

‘We were shocked by the extent of the inequality once we analyzed the data’

A customer browses the shelves at Eso Wan Books, a black-owned bookstore in Los Angeles. Photo: Dania Maxwell/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

When Toni Morrison worked as an editor at Random House from 1976 to 1983, about 3% of the books published during that time were written by Black authors. After Morrison left to focus on her writing career, that number dropped…