This month we're talking with Léonicka Valcius about how to interrogate and rethink in-house processes and assumptions when publishing diverse books, including acquisitions, audience identification, setting priorities, and building in-house excitement.
(Scroll down for a transcript of the conversation.)
Learn more about this topic at Tech Forum 2018, the largest tech-focused professional development event in the Canadian publishing industry.
Transcript
Ainsley: Welcome to the BookNet Canada podcast. I'm Ainsley Sparkes, the marketing associate at BookNet Canada. And this month, we're talking with Léonicka Valcius about how to interrogate and rethink in-house processes and assumptions when publishing diverse books, including acquisitions, audience identification, setting priorities, and building in-house excitement. Léonicka is a Toronto-based publishing professional who advocates for equity and inclusion in Canadian publishing and literature. She's the chair of The Festival of Literary Diversity's board of directors and is the founder of Diverse CanLit. She's currently a title analyst on the online and digital sales team at Penguin Random House Canada and she'll be joining us at this year's Tech Forum to lead a panel called, “Building In-House Momentum for Diverse Books”. It's going to be a conversation between the panellists and attendees. We hope that this podcast episode starts that conversation and that you'll join us at Tech Forum in March 2018 to continue it.
Thank you for agreeing to be here with us.
Léonicka: Of course.
Ainsley: First I thought we should clarify what we're talking about when we talk about diversity.
Léonicka: Sure. I think when I talk about diversity, I'm talking about people who have been marginalised, or underrepresented, or in other ways oppressed because of their identity. I think that can mean a lot of different things to different people. For me, the definition is inclusive of sexual identity, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, neurodiversity, race, religious identifications, all those things. But I think it's important for each person and each group to define those terms for themselves so that they're very clear on what they mean because that's going to be the starting point of the conversation so everybody's on the same page because I think often, people aren't on the same page and one person's idea of what diversity means can be very different from another's, and therefore, they're having conversation and not being aligned on the same basic assumptions.
Ainsley: Right. So, in publishing houses, they might think they're doing really great in terms of diversity, but they're only measuring one metric maybe or one aspect.
Léonicka: I think so. I think it's more of being clear. I think there's often a hesitance to say it clearly because people wanna get it right, people want to say, "Oh, yeah, I accept everyone." Well, who is everyone, right? And different organisations have different parameters and different things that they're looking for. For example, there are people who when they talk about equity and inclusion, they're specifically talking about black, indigenous, and people of colour. That's their very specific framework. And that's okay, but they need to be clear so that when other folks call them to question, they're able to say, "Here's what we're doing and here's why." There are people and there are organisations who only focus on queer people of colour or just queer people, and that's okay as well.
So I think what often happens in publishing is that there isn't that time taken to define terms at the beginning. There isn't … in an effort to be sure like, "Oh, yeah, we're doing everything for everyone," then when publishing organisations are asked to be held accountable or are called into question, they aren't able to articulate their stance because they didn't think of it. It was more of a, "I don't want people mad at me, so I'm going to put out a blanket statement rather than I have thoroughly thought through my ideology as a company and what we stand for as an organisation, and this is what our foundation is about."
Ainsley: So what do you think are the biggest obstacles in-house? I mean, that seems like one of them, not articulating their ideas of diversity, but others, do you think it starts at acquisition? Do you think fewer editors seek out or know authors of diverse backgrounds? Do you think it's sales and marketing-driven? Do you think publishers are less willing to take on risk on unknown quantities which ends up upholding the status quo?
Léonicka: I think, honestly, the obstacle is people, right? It's not that publishing is more or less diverse than other industries. I think the conversation that's happening in publishing is the same that's happening in tech and the same that's happening in movies and television and the same that's happening in other sectors because we don't exist in a Petri dish, right? We're all part of the same society and the problems that are pervasive in society are reflected in the publishing industry as well. So I think some of the obstacles are how do we, as people, come to our work, and what assumptions do we bring with us? What assumptions do we make about what a reader is and who a reader is? What assumptions do we make about what a good book is like? What assumptions do we make about what kind of writer is a good writer and what kind of writer is a real writer, or what kind of writer is a writer we can work with? What assumptions do we bring when we think about what media outlets we value, and what blurbs we think are important to get?
I think all of these start with our own personal conditioning, our own personal reading habits, our own personal tastes, and because of our various positions, they amplify and compound upon each other. So it's not just the editor's reading tastes right? Because that editor then acquires, but then it's also the salespeople's reading tastes, and what they think is valuable, and what they push towards their customers, and what the marketing leads or what the marketers and the social media people, and the publicists, all those folks, what they think actually has a hook, and what hooks they recognise, and what hooks they don't see as really being appealing. So it's not about the functions so much as the baseline assumptions that we bring to them.
Ainsley: It does sort of come a little bit top-down, though, right? Like, the editor does acquire the sales and marketing leads to sign a budget to the book. So, yeah, it is the people, but it feels like it might be people at the top.
Léonicka: Okay. So, if we walk through a book, let's say an editor acquires 10 books and three of them are "diverse," whatever that means within the confines of that publishing house. So the editor has used their own biases, their own judgments, their own personal taste of what they believe is a good book to acquire that book, right? But then it has to go through all the other steps. So we've all seen how in-house support for a book can make or break that book. So let's say of those three titles, one of them, the salesperson reads and falls in love with and starts just pitching it everywhere. Every meeting, they're like, "You know which book I love and I think we need to do more work for? This book, book A."
That automatically shifts the perspective in the room. It shifts the type of attention, it shifts the type of budget that book A receives, right? Books B and C, if nobody is championing those books, doesn't receive that love, doesn't get that attention, and or if people are like, "You know, I don't really know how this one's going to work, I don't really know if there's an audience, I don't really know who would buy this, none of my friends would really like this type of book," then books B and C may get fine treatment, but nobody is giving it the same focus and attention as the other books. So now, book A takes off, and that's great, or book A doesn't take off, and people are like, "Crap, what did we do wrong? Let's try harder for book A next time, right?" Because either way, they love that book and believe in it, because of whatever they brought to it.
And so that's why I'm saying it's not just the people at the top, it's everybody in every position. That said, I think for it to be consistent and for the changes to be made system-wide rather than relying on one person, there need to be process changes. So the difference could become that, now let's say that same editor, the next year says, "I have noticed that we don't publish enough people of colour, or enough queer people, or enough people with disabilities. And now, it is my goal for us to do better than we did last time." Maybe, let's say, it's my goal for us to do 50% or maybe it's just better than last time. So, if last year or last span they published 3 out of 10, this time they're going to aim for 4 out of 10. Now, there's an active investment, right?
And now, even if that editor leaves, the company mandate is we're going to publish 4 out of 10. That, you start building systems in place. That said, for people to be able to follow through on that mandate, they still need to believe, and they still need to understand, where am I gonna sell this book? Right? You could say, as an editor, "I'm gonna publish 4 out of 10 of my books are going to be diverse." And then people are like, "Mm, I don't know how...it's really tough to get media interest for these books," because there's media they value, and there's media they don't, or they don't know what angle to pitch it in, or that's not the type of book they'd be interested in. They don't know who'd be interested in. They're not keen to find out who'd be interested in it. So the systems are made of people. So the only way to change the system is to change the people for them to make a system that can last beyond their work.
Ainsley: Right. Publishing is notoriously white, middle-upper class. So there is a tendency of the people in the room to think that they are the reader and not have the tools to understand or the experiences to understand where their readers are coming from. I mean, I suppose that's one way to overcome the obstacles to publish more diverse books, is to hire more people from diverse backgrounds. Are there other ways to overcome these obstacles?
Léonicka: Well, I think hiring more people from "diverse backgrounds" is important, but that's going to take time. And there are lots of people who have the jobs already, and they're not all just going to leave to make way for a wave of new people, right? That's not realistic. And if we're saying we're going to wait until all these new diverse employees change the industry, that's one, a lot of pressure on those new employees. And two, that's a long time. The turnover is not that high in publishing, especially in the positions that have the most power and have the most impact. So I think one of the major components is to reevaluate internally who makes decisions and how they make decisions and ask them to interrogate their decision-making processes. I think professional development is something that everybody needs, no matter how long they've been at a job.
And we have a vastly changing industry. And I think, for example, when ebooks were new, people trained folks who had been in the job for a long time to say, "What does this mean for our market? What does this mean for our business?" When there are new retailers and new ways of purchasing, we talk about, internally, what does this mean for our market? How does this affect the way we do business? I think it's also important if publishing is going to really take this seriously rather than give lip service to diversity. If publishing is really going to say, "This is something we're gonna commit to doing as a cultural industry, as an industry that is part of legacy-making, as an industry that is very involved in the history and culture and story of a people," if we want to take inclusivity and diversity seriously, then we have to interrogate how we do things and how we can do them differently. And that includes everybody who already works in the industry. It would be great and it is important for there to be more diversity in the workforce. Absolutely, do not take me wrong, I agree. In the meantime, while all those people are junior, the folks who are already here need to step up.
Ainsley: It needs to be a double-pronged approach.
Léonicka: Exactly, exactly. And there needs to be avenues and ways to hire and train mid-level employees, senior-level employees. Like, how do we get folks who are not necessarily from the publishing industry, but who have experiences that publishing industry would gain from to join? How do we do that?
Ainsley: I think now is a great time for a shameless plug about Tech Forum, speaking of professional development, I mean, attending your panel on building in-house momentum.
Léonicka: Right, right. That panel, my vision for it is to have more audience interaction. The feedback we got from last year was that we needed more time for question and answer, and I felt that too. I felt like it was too short and we could have kept going for much longer. So what I'd like this time is for folks to come in with their problems, with the obstacles they’ve faced in-house, with the obstacles they;ve faced within the industry and for us to work together to brainstorm solutions. Because in my time working within the industry, I've never encountered a person who has outright said, "This is not important, and I don't want to try." So I'm going to walk in there with the assumption that everybody recognises that this is an important thing that we need to do and that they're all willing to try. So the next step beyond that is, what are the real obstacles that are preventing success, and how can we work through those together?
Ainsley: That sounds great. And last year, there was so much interest. That room was packed.
Léonicka: I think the industry is ready for it. I think we are ready for it. And I think it's a matter of putting in the work. It's not easy because it's so tied into process and ways of thinking and ways of working and how we create art and how we disseminate that art. So I'm not saying it's going to be easy, but I am saying that we have done harder things.
Ainsley: Well, exactly. And publishers have had to be an adaptable bunch in the last decade or so, ebooks, you mentioned. I mean, social media is all-new for the marketers, so we're capable of learning…
Léonicka: Absolutely.
Ainsley: ...new things. So do you think readers are becoming more aware of the orientation, the race, the ethnicity, the religion of the authors they're reading?
Léonicka: I don't think so. I know it's a conversation that is very loud in my circles, but I work in the industry. I also spend a lot of time with writers and bloggers and people who are in some way connected to the industry. I always say that if you have a NetGalley account, you are not a regular reader. Most regular readers don't know what NetGalley is. So, even those bloggers don't count as regular readers. So, no, I don't think the regular reader is thinking about those things or having those conversations the same way. What I do think is happening is that the regular reader or the regular customer knows what they like, and they're not necessarily going to hold the industry to task when they don't see what they like. They simply won't buy anything. And when they do see what they like, they will buy something.
And I think that's what's happening. I look at the sales of "The Hate U Give" and it heartens me because I don't think that's a book that folks would've predicted would do so well in Canada, but it has consistently been a top seller. And I don't think it's a matter of readers being like, "Oh, yes, I was looking for a book by a black woman that fills my checkbox." I don't think regular readers are thinking that way. I think it's more folks are attracted to what they're attracted to, and they found that story and are excited by it. If that story wasn't there for them to buy, they simply wouldn't have bought it. And there would've been no way to know that they were looking for it.
So I think often we think of the readers as a finite group of people, and I think that's wrong. I think rather it’s people read what they're going to read. And when we don't publish books by people of colour or queer books or books by disabled people, we're just missing an entire audience. So we can't tell that they're not purchasing because there's no action that they're taking. We have to produce it for them to show us that they'll purchase it. So I don't think that the finite group in our heads are actively changing their habits. I think what we're seeing instead is that we're publishing things that more people are willing to buy.
Ainsley: That's interesting. I'm not a regular reader, but I fall into the trap of thinking that I am one. And I just have noticed that loud conversation as well around expanding your reading horizons.
Léonicka: I mean, absolutely. That within the industry is happening and it's fantastic. Regular readers are the market, and that's great, but it's not to discount the importance of all these folks who are librarians, who work in bookstores, who have blogs, who have Twitter pages and they share quite heavily, like those … “book advocates” is a great word for it. And they do...they have a lot of influence, and it's important. And it has changed the conversation and amplified the conversation to the point where every publisher has to at least acknowledge that the conversation is happening, whether they respond or not. And that has caused shifts. When we ask if the regular reader is also looking for books by diverse authors, then if we don't find evidence that that is happening, I worry people would say, "Well, then it's not valuable, and that's not true."
Most people say, "I don't think about the author's race, ethnicity, background, whatever." And I believe that's true. I believe most people walk into a bookstore, and they pick up what they've heard of, what they've seen, what their friends are talking about. And I think it's up to us as industry folks and as book advocates to make sure that when they walk into the store and see those things, that they'll find something for them. That's the tricky part because sometimes the conversation becomes around, "Well, there are plenty of diverse books if you look hard enough." Well, who's gonna spend hours searching for a book? Like, I have things to do. My Netflix queue is fine. I can go do other things, right? I have plenty of podcasts. I have plenty of music to listen to. I have video games I can play. So, if it's gonna take me searching throughout like 20 pages of internet before finding a book to read, that's a mess that I don't need to wade into.
Ainsley: Even if you are choosing to use that time reading, you wanna read the book that has the buzz, right? You wanna read the book that everyone else is reading too.
Léonicka: Exactly.
Ainsley: You wanna be part of that conversation.
Léonicka: And I wanna read the book that is aligned with the things I like. Like, I'm a big romance reader, I'm a big sci-fi and fantasy reader. So I'm going to go to the things I like. And if I can't find something very quickly to pick up or something that calls to me, I just won't buy anything. And so it's up to us to make sure that every person who's looking for a book can find a book quickly that they want, that would interest them. And I think that's the work we're getting better at. In kids' books, especially picture books, books for young people because parents actively are looking for books for their kids, you see it more precisely like, "Oh, I want a picture book for my kid. I want them to see themselves," things like that.
And you do hear parents have that conversation. They're like so frustrated, or, "Why can't I find any books for my little black boy? Why can't I find books for my little Asian child?" And so you see it more defined there. And I think that's part of the reason a lot of the conversation about diversity is often geared towards children's books. But that impulse doesn't go away. People get really excited when they find something. Like "Scandal" is a success that it is in large part because it had a black female lead and people got really excited and galvanised around that. "Black Panther" is gonna be massive in large part because it's a majority black cast. So people do get excited, but nobody was sitting around saying, "You know what? I'm just not going to go see any movies until..." Oh, it's a black one, I'm actively... People don't tend to do that. It's just when they find something that they do want, they get excited. That's how I'm seeing it so far.
Ainsley: The conversation with children’s books, it sounds like that's heartening and these children will grow up seeing themselves in books. They'll maybe start expecting to continue to see themselves in YA books and adult books. It sort of feels like that two-pronged approach about hiring junior people in publishing. If we kind of just wait for these kids to grow up and demand this, it's gonna take a long time.
Léonicka: Well, both at once I think is important mostly because I think of the way we think about books changes as we get older because I think there's less joy in adult books. Whereas in children's publishing, it's very important to make sure that the kid will want to read and finish that book. And so that thought process is very much part of it. I think in adult publishing, we accept that, "Hey, sometimes people read books because they're important books, or everybody else is reading them," or, like, there's other reasons we assume and we forget that sometimes books are entertainment. And so I think because of that, and, like, we don't think of, "Oh, books as teaching empathy anymore," we assume that adults already have all the empathy that they're gonna have, or that the adults, they have their self-esteem put together, and they don't need any more role models. Like, they don't need to learn. Like, there's other functions that the book's doing that aren't the same as what children's books do, we think.
And so the importance of seeing yourself, we don't say that. I think it is different. I do. I think for me as an adult reading, it's like, "What interests me?" And I do wanna read about people like myself because that's interesting to me. I also wanna read about people around the world and people who aren't like myself but who are experiencing things that I've never experienced because I find it interesting. At some point, I don't need another story about the collapse of a white, suburban family. It's not interesting anymore. I've read lots of books like that. So I think the reasons are different and that's fair, but it's just as important because if a person is not interested in reading about white suburban families, and that's all we make available, they won't buy anything. So, if we want to, at the base level, increase, or piece of the pie, make sure that we have a growing market rather than a shrinking one, we need to publish more interesting and varied works.
Ainsley: And so that includes probably genre fiction? There's a quote here from Naben Ruthnum, who in his book, "Curry," talks about how he was writing crime fiction and publishers were initially intrigued, but then they sort of lost interest. And he says, "It seemed to me they wanted the brown nostalgia book, the one that fit a slot in the publication schedule for readers who like buying that sort of thing." Do you think that happens frequently?
Léonicka: Yes. I absolutely think it happens frequently. I think, again, who do we imagine the reader to be? So, if you imagine that the reader is a white person who doesn't know much about Indian culture, then you want to help them find out a little bit more about Indian culture. You can't see this, but I'm doing like a little jig with my shoulders and being super exotic. But you want them to learn something. You wanna take them on a journey. And so a story about a third-generation Indian Canadian is not interesting because, like, that person's pretty much like them and with a weird name maybe, but that's not that interesting, not exotic at all. That person goes to Tim Hortons, what about their fancy tea? What about their weird food? What about their weird customs and like...?
Ainsley: Or the conflict with their first-generation parents.
Léonicka: Exactly. So it's not quite exciting enough, right? I've read many immigrant stories about how sad and awful a person's home country is. And then they came to Canada, Canada made it all okay. And isn't it wonderful and aren't they lucky to be in Canada? I've also read immigrant stories where they go back to visit their home country because they missed it and, whew, aren't they glad they didn't stay there because it made them realize and appreciate Canada even more after having gone back to visit? So there are stories like that. And it's about who do you think the reader is? How do you write the story? What do you explain even? When you imagine that the reader knows these things already, you tell a whole different story, right? So there's more nuance in there, there's more soul tea. If you imagine the reader to already know those things, you focus on a different type of story, a more interesting story, a more true story. You can write about anything because you're not spending time explaining the identity, which is fun, and it ties into whose stories do we value? What audiences do we value? What do we think of as a good book? What do we think has merit? So I can definitely imagine it.
Ainsley: Yeah. I mean, it seems to me that...I mean many of those immigrant stories, I hope they come from a place of truth from the author, that it's the author's story that they want to tell. It's a shame that that's the only story they get to tell.
Léonicka: Well, here's the thing. I think any author should be able to write about anything they want. If a writer wants to write about their immigrant story, great, that's important. I wanna hear more of those. Believe it or not, I do. Every one is interesting. If a writer feels that that's the only way they can get their foot in the door, not great. I've heard stories of people and what they think will sell and what they've gotten feedback about. I've heard stories about, you know, "This is not quite Asian enough." Or, "Would that really happen?" I've been in meetings where you can't quite tell that they're native in this story. So it happens, and it happens because, again, of our basic assumptions of what a story is and what stories are worth telling.
That's why I love reading genre. I love specifically reading genre by people of colour because it kind of breaks open that idea of what makes sense. Right now, I'm reading an anthology edited by Hope Nicholson. It's called "Love Beyond Space and Time." And it's an anthology of queer, science fiction, and fantasy love stories written by indigenous writers. And it's fantastic because each writer comes at it from a different perspective. Each writer has a different idea of what speculative fiction can be, and how they weave in their identity is beautiful. And it's so much more interesting than other things I've read in sci-fi and fantasy and other things I've read in romance, and because you're letting people just write and then categorising it afterwards and figure out how it fits later. But, yes, I think our understanding of the market is limited, our understanding of what people are willing to read and what people would be interested in is limited. So that limits what we publish.
Ainsley: I mean, these seem like great starting points for the discussion on your panel at Tech Forum. I hope this has given people a lot to think about and that they can bring their obstacles with them to Tech Forum.
Léonicka: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Ainsley: Well, thank you for talking with me.
Léonicka: Thank you for having me.
Ainsley: Thanks to Leonicka for joining me on this month's podcast. We hope you've come away with some ideas for how to bridge the gap between good intentions and good actions, and maybe we've raised some questions that you can bring to the Building In-House Momentum for Diverse Books session at Tech Forum for further discussion. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for this project. And as always, thanks to you for listening.
