Read and White: Is Publishing As Diverse as it Loves to Say it Is?
Publishing keeps calling for greater diversity in writers, but not themselves? From the houses to the agents.
This strike by the Writer’s Guild of America isn’t the first since 2007, despite what a lot of coverage has been saying. It’s happened since—and not long ago. Back in 2019, writers went on strike because they were being screwed by their agents.
The short version of the 2019 episode: the agencies had merged into a few big players, and were attempting to double dip—taking their percentage from writers, but charging studios for what they called, packaging fees. These fees, as you might imagine, came out of production budgets. Resulting in writers getting paid for their work even less.
What’s this got to do with publishing?
The State of the Industry
To summarise the state of publishing; Penguin Random House got denied the ability to merge with Simon & Schuster. That would’ve made the Big 5 the Big 4:
- Penguin/Random House/Simon and Schuster
- Hachette Book Group.
- Harper Collins.
- Macmillan.
And, as you’d imagine, would give the hypothetical PRHS&S company a ridiculously large market share.
In 2009, Pace University’s Michelle Kratz observed that the overall trend of media mergers had significantly affected publishing. It made all media coalesce into a broader Big 5 industry:
This has affected the overall demographic diversity of media—in the finished products, and in who is creating them, by virtue of a more limited number of gatekeepers. Gatekeeping roles determine what is and isn’t bought, produced, and sold, in media.
There are two primary groups in publishing who serve that role: editors (for books, acquisitions editors) who buy from agents, and literary agents who sell for authors.
Understanding the Industry
To understand why this important for agents (and thus, to authors), it’s important to understand the industry they work in.
The publishing industry has openly supported a greater diversity in books—they’ve openly stated and marketed books from diverse writers: from peoples of color to the LGBTQ+ community.
Between 1950 and 2018: 95 percent of books published were written by white authors.
In 2018, non-Hispanic white authors made up 89 percent of total books published—in that year. Year-over-year to date, the range average is closer to 91%.
This, after the introduction and embracing of Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion (DEI) policy, very publicly, by the industry.
This is problematic alone for an industry that, of late, breaks an arm self-back-patting for the changes they’ve made. And sure, they have. Women have made a lot of strides in publishing, up to 56 percent of the houses had women in senior leadership roles, an all time high in 2018.
Alfred Knopf claimed in 2021, via their VP and executive editor Erroll McDonald, that POC had been given more senior leadership positions that year, than in decades prior—
But most weren’t internally promoted. The entry-route into publishing was often from the outside—people having achieved internal success elsewhere, before out-to-go-up into publishing.
Publishing is one of the whitest industries in the U.S.
Law, a notoriously white and legacy/dynasty field, had an 88 percent white makeup back in 2018, according to the American Bar Association.
Publishing?
Isn’t much better.
Lee & Low’s report in 2019 showed that editorial in publishing actually got less diverse—going 82 to 85 percent white, cisgender, straight, and non-disabled.
In their methodology, they say this about literary agents:
Literary agent demographics are in line with the rest of publishing: We did not include literary agents in the first DBS, but their inclusion has not really impacted the numbers because their demographics match the rest of the industry: mostly White, straight cis women who are not disabled.
And they have a chart for that:
This given some extra flavor by Zippia’s industry statistics.
- There are around 290–300 literary agents in the U.S.
- 58% of agents are over 40.
- All but 6% of agents hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, a hallmark of exclusionary industries. This is important, because few states require formal, education-based licensing for literary agents. Licenses tend to be given at the agency level.
- Over half leave the job after 4 years—this from an industry that heavily, and publicly, promotes the value of an experienced agent.
- Another 18% leave after 7 years.
Out of (rounded up) 300 agents active, at any given time, that means:
- 150 of those won’t be around in 4 years. That leaves:
150 active agents, who’ve spend more than 4 years in their role.
Out of those, another 18% drop between 5–7 years.
That leaves 123 agents for the entire book market, in the U.S. with what, in most industries, constitutes enough time in the role to know what they’re doing—that’s why most professional-level jobs require 5-year minimums, and most professional licensing is the equivalent of 5–7 years of training.
Out of those 123, 98 are white, extrapolating.
These are the people who choose what manuscripts to represent—to even try to sell to publishers.
If any of you authors wanted to know why it’s so hard to get an agent—it’ll be this, in part.
The Cost of Doing Business
The attrition rate does track for sales agent jobs—real estate agents have a notoriously high attrition rate, but there’s many more of them.
Literary agents don’t have a set path to working as an agent. But, most get the positions through internships, and often unpaid, or underpaid. Some get in through volunteer work. Most have worked at least 2 years in traditional publishing.
If you’re following along with traditional publishing—that means most of those jobs are in NYC. Most of those internships are also in metropolitan areas with high costs of living.
Industry estimates of first year pay vary, with many agents reporting the first 5 years (much like in real estate) tend to be more lean years.
Comparably puts the salary median at $78,553 per year, for all literary agents. Most of those jobs are concentrated in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, and a salary of $78,000.
Comparably puts the low end of the salary range at around $27,000—and again, keep in mind these jobs are mostly in-person, and mostly in major metros. Also keep in mind that pay structures vary.
Not all agencies offer a salary—some are purely commission-based, with the agent taking a (usually) 10% cut of a publisher’s advance to an author, with any of a number of different kinds of royalty structures. Most books don’t earn out, so most agents don’t get royalties from most of their client list.
The average book advance in 2022 was around $7,500.
At 10%, that’s $750 per manuscript sold, possibly split with the agency’s desk fee.
That’s roughly 46 sales per year, to make $35,000.
This is important to diversity as well. How? Math.
How is a literary agent, needing to make an average of 4 sales per month, without experience to know the industry—surviving?
For much the same reason internships as a whole tend to be very homogenous.
Simple: You’re supported.
Most unpaid internships are taken by people who have either:
- Parental support.
- Spousal support.
That demographic, much like in college and business start-up, tend to be:
- White
- Cisgender
- Non-disabled
- Upper middle class
- Straight
And you’ll notice the correlation with the publishing industry’s makeup, and with the statistics for literary agency.
That demographic largely crosses over with all of the least-diverse fields.
Authors themselves have talked about elitism.
Publisher’s Weekly called out a culture of quiet and often race- and class-based exclusivity.
Publishing is very risk-averse, and very change-resistant.
It’s not the first time that consolidating media has gotten a reputation for being exclusionary, either, and it’s been studied widely.
The Cancer of Exclusivity
The concept behind the gatekeeping system is nominally to save time. This is a valid reason. There are exponentially more manuscripts out in the wild than there are agents to represent them—their job was previously done by the acquisitions editors themselves.
Publishing gave it to agents to cut their costs.
There is a de facto financial requirement for agency—you have to survive being poor during the internship, and likely the first few years. That takes money coming from somewhere.
The concept behind these requirements—that it requires specialty knowledge:
- Being able to find and contact editors
- Negotiation
- Contracts
- Sales
- Talent relations
And it requires a great deal of time and responsibility—you’d think out of all of that, that there wouldn’t be a need for outlets like Writer Beware—coverage of all things scammy in the publishing world—to cover agents.
They have a whole section of scams involving agents—many of them working for literary agencies, until they get caught.
And again, for context: this, in an industry with only several hundred active agents, at any given time.
That’s not getting into incestuous hiring practices in publishing—they tend to hire their own. Agencies hire from publishers. Publishers hire from agencies.
When really, the average freelance writer has every single one of the skills required to do the job.
The average paralegal does.
Social services workers do.
If the skills are so relatively common, and transferrable—it begs the question: why do they hire their own?
When we talk about nepotism and publishers deny it, they’re really only talking about authors. Much like Hollywood is really only talking about their line creatives—from technical jobs, to production, to workhorse actors, and writing.
A Labor Force survey from the U.K. in 2019 (the UK and U.S. industries are functionally interchangeable, in demographic makeup) found that only 12% of respondents were from working class and working poor backgrounds.
As the demographics between the wider industry and agency are congruent, even conservatively extrapolating differences would put anywhere from 8–20% in agency. And given the financial barrier to entry, likely higher.
Awards and grants have been pitched to make the industry more accessible. But while progress has been made in grants and arts and literary awards, it’s still usually the same players winning meaningful awards:
- White
- Upper middle class/upper class
- Cisgender
- Straight
That’s not getting into the financial barrier to contest entry for traditional literary magazines—or how difficult it is for smaller, independent magazines to start, find their feet, and get their own funding.
When PEN America starts laying out the state of obstacles to diversity, it’s long past being a problem.
Problems with diversity in any industry live and die on the heart of the industry itself, and the gatekeepers therein. It’s a primary failing of DEI policies—policy initiatives for line workers and supervision, and consistently less, as you move up the ladder.
Unless gatekeeping and industries cores change—they will remain homogenous.
The only industries that have managed to create meaningful DEI incentives, did exactly that. They self-reflected and changed from the heart.
Not from the wallet.
Which is, it seems, where publishing keeps its heart—and its gatekeepers.
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