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I usually don’t link to Book Riot things here on TIB in the first couple of spots, but am making an exception today. Our editor Danika Ellis does a weekly look at what books are most popular on Goodreads, and this week she noticed that all 50 of the top books were by white authors. Now, Danika notes that it usually is only very, very white not exclusively white. To say this is dispiriting is an understatement.
I am tempted to make arguments and observations, but I don’t really have anything new to add. For a while it looked liked long-hoped for progress towards a books and reading culture in the U.S. that looks (and sounds) like the U.S. itself was happening. When it comes to awards, things look a lot different than they once did. The line-up of what is getting published does too. But when it comes to the books that are getting the most reader attention, and the Goodreads list is the best proxy for this we have, it looks like nothing has changed. Hell, the most popular books from 1995 on Goodreads have Obama and Kahlo on the list. And now, zero books by people of color. 40% of the U.S. identifies as something other than white, but zero percent here.
This is the main reason I have zero time for “but what about men reading.” Yes, the share of books written by men, at least in fiction, is down from the absurd levels in the last century. Over time, as I linked to this week, this is more cyclical than people seem to understand.
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But even with diversity in books being a signal (the signal?) issue within the industry itself over the last decade, we still find ourselves here.
I have to believe the wider political environment is partially responsible. When colleges are getting sued for DEI initiatives and libraries defunded for collecting for a broader tent, I probably shouldn’t be surprised that the reading choices people make narrow, at least when it comes to race.
The other element at work is the algorithm. And while BookTok gets the headlines, “the algorithm” exists on Facebook and Twitter and Instagam and SEO and all throughout the Internet. And it is an unseeable tectonic plate of herding. Of herding people toward their existing interests, ideas, biases, tastes, and attention. There is variation, but do not mistake that with plurality. This means that there is almost every kind of romantasy you could want, almost any commercial romance or thriller trope on searchable, taggable demand. And the winners win enormous, unprecedented reading share (the idea that one author could have 5-7 of the best-selling books of the year would have been unthinkable before BookTok, and we have seen this happen twice within the last five years).
The algorithm so relentlessly solves for attention maintenance that things that present any kind of friction fall away. Things that seem too different. Things that are hard to immediately recognize as this or that get sidelined.
And so you get a list like this. A list where no single title is really objectionable on its own. I have read a handful of these and like them. But taken together they show us something uncomfortable. And I really have no idea how it gets any better. But I am not done thinking about it.
