Reading While Black

Last week I did a Wal-Mart run to see if they had Liz Carlyle’s latest in stock and was floored by the transformation of the books & magazines department. I’d already known about Wal-Mart’s change in policy back in April and witnessed it a month or so ago when they’d chucked a lot of the African-American section to focus on the best-selling authors, but now, the section has completely changed. The entire African-American section is gone, replaced with books in Spanish. The romance section has been pushed to the back of the aisle and sf/f is now featured prominently beside the racks of mainstream best-sellers. YA & children’s books are facing the outer aisle, and where the African-American section used to be, prior to the store moving it beside the magazines, is where the Christian fiction and non-fiction is hosted.

It was already bad enough that only Wal-Mart’s in “urban” areas hosted an African-American section in their book department, but now it appears they are no longer stocking the books if they aren’t selling. And they weren’t. The section was always full, so I agree with the business decision. However, I am forced to buy online because the Borders and B&N in my city are in the wealthier suburbs–mostly white–and rarely update their stock of  African-American fiction and literature.

This is bad news not only for those who depend upon Wal-Mart for their new releases, but for the mainstream audience black authors hope to attract. It is especially damaging to black authors since a great portion of their audience is not online. This creates an even more arduous up-hill battle for black romance authors when the online romance community stubbornly resists integrating their reading choices.

So what to do?