and now for the analysis…

I think my list of black-authored MG/YA novels published in the US is pretty complete—thanks to Edi and everyone on Facebook for helping me develop the 2012 list. We came up with 51 titles altogether, but 3 were reprints so that leaves us with 48 new middle grade and young adult titles. Of those 48 books, 11—nearly a quarter—were published by Saddleback Educational Publishing; the Juicy Central and Lockwood Lions series feature “hi-lo” content for teens reading below grade level. The two major romance publishers—Harlequin and Kensington—are next in line: Kensington’s K-Teen Dafina imprint published 10 black-authored titles in 2012 and Harlequin’s imprint published 3. That means THREE publishers are responsible for HALF (24) of the black-authored novels published for young readers this year. Scholastic and Aladdin both published 3 titles and Amistad published 2. The rest of the titles are “loners”—they represent the only black-authored MG/YA novel published by Wendy A. Lamb Books, Chronicle, Carolrhoda, Nancy Paulsen Books, HarperTeen, HarperCollins, Little, Brown, St. Martin’s Griffin, Darby Creek Publishing, Margaret K. McElderry Books, Henry Holt, Knopf, Simon & Schuster, Urban Books, Turner, and my own publisher AmazonEncore. I’ll leave it to someone else to figure out which imprints belong to the “big 5.” It would also be interesting to figure out how many first-time authors are published each year—are publishers even looking for new talent or are they happy to just wait for their “regulars” to produce a new novel? Any way you slice it, it’s not good. There are 13 million African Americans in the US and our kids have fewer than 50 novels to choose from each year…and how many do you think have LGBT content? (3, I think)

We need greater transparency in the publishing industry, which is why I compile these lists. We’re working on a new initiative so stay tuned…