Beyond the “good story” and sales history: where is the reader in the publishing process?

In recent years, critics’ attention has been drawn to a persistent lack of diversity in the publishing industry. These claims are based on ethnic and cultural homogeneity amongst authors, publishing company staff and content. While scholars have pointed to the role that publishers’ decision-making processes have played in reinforcing a lack of diversity, this article focuses on how such processes position the audience, and how they contribute to an absence of knowledge of or attention to the audience, which then serves as a factor contributing to homogeneity. It identifies practices within the industry that allow for this absence of knowledge, including a focus on the book as a cultural form and the industry’s use of proxies, such as sales data and social media reviews and discussion, in place of audience data. The article ends by suggesting ways in which the industry may be supported to increase its knowledge of actual and potential audiences without jeopardizing its objective of publishing “good stories”