Reading time: 5.08

1,219 words

Hey Reader,

Libraries are magical places. Not just because there’s a high concentration of books, stories, and accumulated wisdom that definitely warps space-time and creates a kind of vortex that gathers universes known and unknown in its embrace…

But because librarians are the pathfinders who show us how to get into those unknown universes.

Most of us, if left to our own devices, will settle into a comfortable little track and read what we know and enjoy. And that’s fair enough! I have my comfort books and movies and TV shows, and I bury myself in them when I want familiar and cosy and safe.

That’s not enough, though, because there are SO MANY BOOKS OUT THERE WAITING TO BE READ!

One of the great tragedies of life is that I cannot possibly read every book I want to read. Or visit every place I want to visit. Or do everything I want to do.

I do, however, want to experience a broad sweep.

Which is where libraries — and book clubs, for that matter — come in.

When I go into my local library on a Monday morning, I usually have a book in mind or a reservation to collect and I always get distracted by the displays the librarians create. What a cool job! They get to shape the reading habits of the library-visiting portion of my local area. Which means they get to open up new worlds and expand horizons.

Which is why I recently read Ocean Vuong’s The Emperor of Gladness. I’d been wanting to read something of his for a while, but where to start? Then its orange cover waved cheerfully at me from the display, so I picked it up, brought it home, and loved it.

The librarians and their displays are the reason I read Oyinkan Braithwaite’s Cursed Daughters — then reserved My Sister the Serial Killer. Both set in Nigeria, and both thoroughly enjoyable.

I read Zeinab Badawi’s An African History of Africa because one of my book clubs put it on their list (expansive and fascinating, by the way).

My bookshelves are more diverse than they were ten years ago… but they’re still not as diverse as I’d like them to be. And, while I could step out and look more actively for books from Black authors and brown authors, it’s not entirely my fault.

It’s frustrating to walk into a Waterstones and see the main table displays piled high with the latest Richard Osman book. And, ya know, I like Richard Osman’s cosy murder mysteries. No shade to him at all. I also understand that booksellers want and need to maximise their profits. But Richard Osman’s books are going to sell like mince pies at Christmas regardless of whether or not they’re on a table display.

It’s not only the table displays, either.

When books by Black authors are included, they’re often hidden away in more obscure sections like “world literature” or “Black history” — when actually they belong in fantasy, or romance, or thriller.

We’re less likely to buy and read something we can’t see. Of course.

​The Bookseller found that sales of books by Black writers fell in the first half of 2026. It’s not particularly easy to analyse the numbers because NielsenIQ BookScan’s Total Consumer Market (TCM) doesn’t include ethnicity data on the books in its charts, so there is a small margin for error in the stats, but here they are.

The 2021 Census estimates that 4% of England and Wales’s population is Black, with another 1.3% describing themselves as Mixed White/Black African or Mixed White/Black Caribbean.

But only 1.2% of the titles in the TCM 5,000 list are by Black authors. Over the first 24 weeks of 2026, there were 14 Black authors in the top 1,000, together earning £2.8m — just 0.9% of ALL the money earned by that top 1,000. In 2025, the Black authors on the list earned 1.6% of the money.

That’s quite a shortfall, and it has nothing to do with ability or quality.

When we look at the political landscape and the swing to the right, with the rise of the far right, it’s perhaps not surprising that we’re seeing this. I don’t know for sure, of course, but large organisations tend to follow current political and social feeling so consciously or unconsciously, their displays are going to reflect that.

It is disappointing — and not only for the Black authors who are busting a gut to write incredible books for adults and children.

It’s disappointing for all of us.

So. What can we do about it?

Quite a lot, actually.

1. We can shop in smaller local bookshops which are almost universally better at choosing the books they want to display. I live in the whitest town EVER and our local bookshop has a surprisingly diverse collection and they choose to display plenty of books by non-white authors on the main table as you walk in. So does our library.
2. We can go into libraries and bookshops and request the books we want to see. If they get enough orders, they will start stocking the books — and often the back catalogues as well.
3. We can vote with our wallets and buy and borrow a higher proportion of books from authors who don’t look like me. Then we can recommend them and buy them as gifts for our friends, family, colleagues, and clients.
4. If we’re feeling brave, we can do a little guerilla marketing on behalf of Black authors — rearrange the table displays. Find our favourite books and drop them in prominent places. Move them from inappropriate sections to the sections that make more sense for the book itself and the author.
5. Run your eye across your bookshelves. What does it look like? Who’s missing from the picture? My fiction shelves are looking pretty interesting, but nonfiction remains a challenge. There are still not enough books on business, productivity, writing, marketing, sales, and tech by authors who are not wealthy white guys. Seek them out.

If you’re looking for a place to start, Penguin’s list of books by and about Black business owners and creators is a good one. Not least because it contains Phoebe Robinson’s hilarious Please Don’t Sit On My Bed In Your Outside Clothes, a sentiment I thoroughly agree with.

I’m not saying there should be fewer books by straight white people. I’m saying there’s space and demand and desire for FAR more books by people who don’t look like me. It’s not a zero-sum game. We don’t have to lose for everyone to gain.

We all deserve better than a political and media elite who decide what we should be reading, how, and why. We deserve a rich, full picture of the world we all share. And we deserve to have access to stories that show us a glimpse of a version of the world we’re unfamiliar with. A lens that shows us familiar stories through a cultural background that changes the way we see and experience those stories, and the world.

Isn’t that magical?

Yes. It is. And I want more of it.

TTFN,

Vicky 🫡

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