It's a Black Thing

It's a black thing and some people just don't understand. There's a customer discussion group on amazon.com called how to avoid indie authors. They basically talk about how self published authors should be avoided and that there should be some way to stop them.

Now I am all about freedom of expression, but most of today's top selling black authors are self published. And many others were published by previous self published authors. Self published authors like myself have been able to get our books in Barnes & Nobles and have sold good enough for stores like Barnes & Nobles and Borders to have Urban Fiction sections.

The big publishers won't pick up most of today's black  writers unless they've sold a lot of books already, whereas if write something that will appeal to or not threaten white readers you can actually get an advance before you even write the book. The reason for this is economics. Most readers are white and if you want to sell a million books it's best to write for them.

On the other hand, even though most urban fiction books will never sell a million copies, many have sold in the  thousands and have been very profitable. But just not on the scale that the major publishers would want to deal with unless it was a sure thing like Zane or K'wan.

Triple Crown  started out as a vehicle for the owner to self publish her own book and now puts out other books. If this indie author would not been able to thrive many others never would have had their work read.
Even if you never read a Terry Woods book, chances are you've heard of her. This is more proof that for African Americans ebooks and self publishing in general has created a new Renascence.

Yes there are some books out  there that are garbage. But there are also songs movies and plays that are garbage too. The thing is, we as black people should be glad that so many of our brothers and sisters are trying to write. We should be glad that many of our people who never would have picked up a book a few years ago are reading. Nothing but good can become of this. With all these books floating around, our reading and writing skills can only get better. Any book that can get kids in the hood reading is a good book to me.