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The organiser of the Black British book festival, Selina Brown, announced earlier this month that the festival will launch a publishing collaboration with Pan Macmillan, focusing on “raw talent”, in particular writers who have not been traditionally published.
The publisher will commission adult and children’s books, set to hit shelves from 2027.
This year the BBBF saw a 50% decline in the volume of books pitched by publishers for the festival, a figure festival CEO Brown describes as indicative of a “definite issue in Black authors being acquired”. She compared the situation to 2022, when the BBBF received hundreds of book submissions after the George Floyd protests and Black Lives Matter movement.
“This year was completely different. Some publishers were even saying ‘We don’t have any books to give you’.” The problem is reflected in a recent Inclusive Books for Children survey, which found a sharp drop in the number of children’s books featuring a Black main character. This widespread decline in the publishing of Black literature motivated Brown to pitch the new publishing collaboration to Pan Macmillan.
Brown has seen publishing from all angles, from working at Birmingham Central Library to running marketing campaigns with publishers and writing her own books. She felt the publishing industry was slow to innovate.
“For me the missing gap has always been the people, the voice of the people. Shaping the way books are acquired, shaping the marketing, shaping the genres, because we know what we want to read and how we want to access the books,” Brown says. She wants “community” to be at the “core” of the new publisher. “That way we’re saying that you guys are experts in this and we need to learn from you, rather than having all the meetings in publishing houses with a lot of people not from our backgrounds.”
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Working with Pan Macmillan, the main sponsor for BBBF for the past four years, was an easy choice for Brown. “They’ve always championed our ideas. They’ve always been behind us, been an ally … They get us,” she says.
The new publisher is looking for stories that reflect the “height of Black British literature”, and can be read by everyone. “We want to bring the type of books that editors would water down to life because it’s about time, it’s 2025 now,” Brown says.
She nodded to other UK publishers who help to spotlight Black British voices. “We stand on the shoulders of great publishers that have come before us – HopeRoad, Jacaranda Books, Merky Books, Dialogue. Shoutout to Margaret Busby and Verna Wilkins because they laid the foundations.” The new publisher does not yet have a name.
The announcement came right before the festival’s headline event featuring actor Tabitha Brown. “It was a magical moment,” says Selina.
