I agree there’s nothing wrong with the existence of an African American book section in a bookstore — or any specialty grouping for that matter. It helps people of like interests and backgrounds find what they like to read and I’m all for that. Didn’t know about the political statement of having such a section, but that makes sense, too.

As a sf/f reader, I was just lamenting that Alaya’s book was *only* found there and not where all the other sf/f books are located — where geeks like me browse. So, as far as I can tell, we are in complete agreement. It is indeed a problem of placement. –Roger

The problem is when a book like Alaya’s, which is a YA fantasy, is shelved away from YA fantasy and its primary audience, and thus loses many sales.

Bleh.

The decisions on where to shelve are theoretically to make the most sales. Or other weird reasons. Anne Rice isn’t shelved in Horror but in Literature— not because of any judgement on her books (good or bad), but because her fans like hardback. Seriously. That’s the reason.

That being said, a good store can keep on top of these things and have employees that recommend good books. The store I worked at used to be phenomenal at this kind of thing. Alas, I have heard since then that compliance regulations from the corporate level have sucked the soul out of many a store, and that the general manager whose style had built such a wonderful group ended up quitting and going to work for the Chamber of Commerce. Remember this, if you ever end up high in a corporate chain— if a store is doing really well by being individual, it may not be wise to force them to be just another chain store.

“You’ve searched Books > Keyword: “Alaya Dawn Johnson” > Science Fiction and Fantasy.”

That is the breadcrumb trail above “Racing the Dark” and “The Burning City” when I search for your name. I thought you might like to know this.

I will be ordering your books from the website soon, as well. Thank you so much for sharing this with us.

I found this post almost shocking. I don’t browse the AA section at my local bookstore, and I really didn’t even know there was such a section until recently. I would certainly not look for a book like Racing the Dark in that section.

While I understand the point as mentioned about PoC having priority on finding the book, I also think that sort of attitude will slow down acceptance of work written by PoC and about PoC. I know no white genre readers who regularly or even ocassionally browse the AA section of Borders, and that means they aren’t being exposed to this material. And I would respond the same way about having to dig through a bunch of other material to find such books. I would love to read more of this kind of book, but if it’s not shelved where I browse, I have only the internet to learn about it from, and there’s only so many recs I can keep up with at one time.

If we want these books to reach a larger readership, then they need to be shelved where that readership can find them. I think double shelving would be a great compromise, perhaps with a note to check the other section if the section the reader is in is out of that particular book. Perhaps a cover brochure featuring the cover blurb and book info would also be appropriate. Wishful thinking, I know, but one can dream.

I’m a geeky white guy who almost exclusively reads science fiction and fantasy. When I go to a bookstore, I gravitate to the section that contains the books I like to read. While there, I browse, read flap descriptions and look at the covers. Sometimes cool art will tip the scale in favor of a purchase, but in reality I could care less who (or what) is on the cover. I’ll buy the book if the flap describes the type of story I like (there are usually aliens and explosions or dragons involved).

I don’t look for my sf/f fix in the “African American” section because 1)I am not African American and assume the books there are primarily of interest to African Americans and 2)those shelves are not on my radar as the place where I can find aliens or dragons.

I suspect every author’s goal is to get their books into the hands of as many people as possible. I also suspect that, unfortunately, a large part of the potential audience is lost when a sf/f book is placed (exclusively) outside of that section. As a reader of those genres, what matters to me most is story and, ultimately, whether or not I can find the book on “my shelves”.

In the case of both these monolithic chains, the decision of where a particular title is shelved is made on the national level, at corporate headquarters. (B&N, New York; Borders, Ann Arbor, Mich.) Every copy of every book gets a computer-generated label with a barcode and a printed legend telling you where it has to be shelved. Yes, I said HAS to be shelved.
If a customer wants a particular title, the bookseller has to know where to find it and should not be encouraged to guess or rely on personal opinion. It’s a matter of cold hard fact and does not yield to argument, no matter how well-founded. (“This really isn’t romance, it’s more gothic suspense.” “Sorry, that’s where we have to put it. The computer says so.”)

There are district managers whose primary job is to travel around from store to store, making sure that their managers are in compliance with corporate policy. In my experience, a lot of their scrutiny was devoted to the timeliness and accuracy of displays (did the Halloween display go up on the appointed day? Were the required titles placed on it?), but if the manager of a local store goes rogue and decides to shelve an “Afro-American” title in fantasy, she could get penalized. I’m not making this up.

This is why arguing with your local employees is not effective. It’s like going into your local Safeway / Giant / Kroger supermarket, tracking down the high school kid who is stocking shelves and arguing that the Wheat Thins really should not be in the same aisle as the cookies because, you know, they have a lot more nutritional value.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re right. You’re talking to the wrong person. Is this corporate dominance over local needs business maddening? Bone-headed? Frustrating? Just plain wrong? You bet. How to fix it or make a difference? I don’t know. Just pointing out some reality here, which tends to get lost in the shuffle when we start getting passionate.

Your Father may have a bit of a point, but hell, change has to start somewhere, right?

I came in from John Scalzi’s post on Whatever that linked over here, and I just wanted to say that I’ll be showing my support for fantasy novels with covers that correctly portray their non-white protagonists by buying a copy of this book.

Thanks for sharing your experience with this, Alaya, and thanks Justine for hosting the post.

Emma: I think I’m blushing.

Thank you–and your dad–for providing another piece of the publishing puzzle.

@Alaya I went to my local Borders this weekend, moved “Racing the Dark” from the Af-Am section to the Fantasy section and left a post-it note on one copy telling them (politely) that they’ve misshelved this book and the author herself wants to be in the SFF section. Hope they’ll take that to heart in that store, at least, but yeah–the change has to be made at the top.

If the computer says a book is supposed to be in the AfAm section of Borders and you move it to fantasy, it will most likely NOT be moved back to AfAm. It will sit on the fantasy shelf until someone discovers it’s not “supposed” to be there. Meanwhile, if someone comes in and tries to buy it but it’s not on the “right” shelf, it will not be found or sold.

I certainly didn’t mean to imply that all YA readers are white or straight (or even only teens). I know from my personal experience that this is not the case, and I’m not sure how I managed to so completely mess up what I was trying to say. (eep!) I should have been more clear. I was actually thinking of fiction broadly, not YA, and just trying to say that there’s a lot of POC and queer people who really want to read more books about people like them and that (especially with publishers whitewashing books) it can be hard to find those books in the general fiction section. What I was trying to say was that if it’s a choice between a white or straight person finding such a book, and a POC or a queer person finding it, I want it to be easiest for the POC or queer person to find it because they need it more. To me, when I shelve books in the African-American fiction or queer fiction sections it’s because I’m trying to say to our customers “I value your need for this book and I want you to have a place you can come where you can easily find books that reflect your identity & culture and not be placated with only the “mediocre,” the erotica, or “issue” books that feature people like you.” Just to clarify, I would not shelve YA books in these sections, and I agree that double coding would be ideal.

I apologize if my tone was unclear at all, I certainly didn’t mean to attack anyone and I won’t post again on this thread because I don’t want to derail anymore than I already have.

Borders does not seem to do this with any other ethnicity when it comes to literature. When it comes to sociology, yes — “Native American Studies,” “Asian Studies,” “Middle Eastern Studies,” and so on, but not fiction. Af-Am fiction is, for who knows why, relegated to its own little ghetto, topic and genre notwithstanding. (Fascinatingly enough, I’ve found British writers of African descent and Afro-Caribbean writers shelved in with general literature.)

I brought this to the attention of a floor worker, who was rather upset as she told me, “I know, I know, we’ve tried.” The only way to get change is to go to the top.

A while back, author Monica Jackson posted this address:
Borders
100 Phoenix Drive
Ann Arbor, MI 48108

It’s a place to start.

One of the things many indies do that chains don’t is doubleshelve. In which case the books get exposure to more than one audience which is fantastic.

When a genre book is shelved only in the Af-Am section it loses the majority of its audience. Because the number of those who browse the Af-Am section looking for YA fantasy is much smaller than those looking through the YA shelves for same. This is bad for not just the author but for the reader. There have been very few bestselling African-American YA writers. I believe the way their books are shelved is part of why.

This is very explicitly a conversation about how shelving genre books such as Alaya’s in the Af-Am section reduces the sales of those books.

I find this assumption of yours troubling: “Yes, certainly there would be some white/straight people who wouldn’t browse that section and wouldn’t find those books, but (from a customer point of view) it’s not always about the browsing needs of white/straight people.”

I’ve spent a lot of time in the YA sections of bookstores all over the US and I can tell you that the teens browsing there are not all white and probably not all straight either. They are the ones who are being kept from books like Alaya’s when it’s not shelved in YA. Almost no one, black or white, thinks to look for a YA fantasy book in the African-American section.

Many people seem to be coming at this from the point of view of the author — being concerned about sales, finding a wide readership, etc. Which I totally get — authors need to sell their books and want as many people as possible to love their books. Absolutely that is important. But bookstores (especially indies) tend to think of shelving based on the customers’ viewpoint, because that’s who they’re interacting with the most. If an indie bookstore has a lot of African American customers and they have an African-American fiction section, it’s going to be pretty important to them that they’re not just relegating the “crap” or “issue-novels” to that section while the “quality” gets elevated to the level of “real fiction.”

I know it’s problematic, but I’m going to make my analogy again between LGBT fiction and Af-Am fiction: I would LOVE to read an amazing scifi queer novel, but as a queer woman I don’t want to have to sift through the entire (mostly straight) scifi section to find it. If I were a customer that would be way too overwhelming and I would probably just assume that there aren’t any if I don’t see any in the LGBT section. From a customer point of view, those books should be shelved in the LGBT section to serve the needs of the people who are browsing that section, not shelved in the “regular” fiction section to serve the needs of straight customers who need that book less. I could be wrong, but I could imagine that there might be African American customers who feel similarly.

I don’t think it’s necessarily an act of racism to shelve a scifi book featuring a black protagonist in the African American fiction section. I think it certainly CAN be, and perhaps in Borders case it was (since they’re not a particularly politically-minded bookstore), but I think there’s something to be said for a politically-minded bookstores having well-stocked African-American and LGBT Fiction sections that hold a wide-variety of fiction genres. Personally, I would be beyond stoked to wander into a bookstore and find such a section. Yes, certainly there would be some white/straight people who wouldn’t browse that section and wouldn’t find those books, but (from a customer point of view) it’s not always about the browsing needs of white/straight people. If bookstores are going to have identity-based sections then they should be sections that are for the needs of the customers who have that identity — not for the needs of white/straight customers who don’t want to have to go out of their way to find Alice Walker/Ali Smith.

I also think that the big time publishers, and the bookstores need to catch up to the thinking of the average person. I really feel that most people (expecially people who are big readers) are more interested in the story than the race of the storywriter. They need to stop insulting the intelligence and morals of us readers and just shelve by genre and quite being so afraid of putting brown skin on the covers of books. Just take a look at all the people you see walking around in groups, or just in general. I see so many “mixed” groups of people having fun together, that I can’t believe that the majority of people are going to NOT buy a book because of the cover color.

Alaya is not the only person this has happened to. I’ve also found Samuel R. Delany, Octavia Butler, Tananarive Due, Steve Barnes, and Nalo Hopkinson (who isn’t even African-American! She’s Canadian/Carribean) etc etc all shelved in that section from time to time even when the publisher is an sf/fantasy/horror imprint.

My last book, Liar, has more African-American characters than Alaya’s fantasy trilogy. In fact the three leads, Micah, Tayshawn & Sarah are all African-American. Liar never gets shelved in the African-American section. I have never seen a book about African-Americans by a non-African-American in that section of the store.

I don’t think that the publisher is the biggest deciding factor in what books go into the African-American section of a bookstore.

Oh man, I mixed titles up. Sorry about that. Teach me to do posts very late at night. Fledgling was put out currently by Grand Central, which is a general fiction imprint of Hatchette, along with some of her back-list in editions that are geared for course adoption. So again, those titles are more likely to be in general fiction, or African-American or women’s studies sections of the bookstore if Grand Central puts it in their catalog that way, not the SFF section which is largely the domain of the SFF specialty houses and imprints.

It may be that the situation can be improved by Alaya talking to her publisher about making sure her particular title is placed in the fantasy section, or if she prefers, the YA section, though I don’t think she was writing specifically for YA. Yes, authors don’t get the say on this stuff — as you found yourself — but I’m sure her publisher would like to get her as many audiences as possible. But when a box of ordered books comes in to a store from a publisher, that publisher’s whole list usually directs where the books go, and her publisher is not a fantasy press. Their mission statement is that they are putting out titles about African-Americans. The same thing goes if a publisher is a specialty house for gay/lesbian works, Asian works, children’s works, etc.

This has been a particular problem for non-category speculative fiction, which, like category SFF, is made up of many kinds of stories. While the publisher may try to cross-market to multiple audiences, the bookstores don’t always get the message. The books in the SFF section come from the SFF publishers while other SFF books from other publishers may go numerous places in the store and usually do get lumped with the publisher’s other titles. For instance, Christopher Moore, a white satiric SFF author who is currently published by William Morrow, always published out of category and so you’d usually find his titles in the general fiction section of the store, not SFF, and still do.

Which is not to say that Alaya is not going to run into problems concerning race, even if she doesn’t have a black person’s face on her covers. Starting in the late 1980′s, what they awkwardly termed “ethnic” fiction got extremely successful with hit authors like Amy Tan, Terry McMillan, etc., and much sought after, but it also meant that non-white authors tended to get pigeon-holed, and that’s the way a lot of the market tends to think, in the same way that Margaret Atwood is still confused that she’s written science fiction. And now we have to deal with the wide evidence of this undercurrent, this idiotic belief about white readers and non-white readers, (I’m so thrilled that Liar is doing well.)

But bookstores are Alaya’s business partners. And in this case it may have been more of a misunderstanding based on publisher than a deliberate effort to squeeze her out of fantasy because of her cover. As you found, a dialogue can create change, and if this is a chain store local to her, it’s a good idea for her to politely make herself known to them as a local author. They might even do a signing with her, and if she can publicize it to local SFF fans as well, they may come out and spread the word.

(Sorry for the double long posts.)

And as Justine said, Fledgling was Octavia Butler’s last book. It was published in hardcover by Seven Stories Press. I’m honestly not sure where Borders would have shelved it, but considering that Seven Stories publishes both fiction and non-fiction, one would also hope they would have bothered to look at the label in that case.