British Black Book Festival launches publisher | books

British Black Book Festival organizer Selina Brown announced earlier this month that the festival would launch a publishing collaboration with Pan Macmillan, focusing on “raw talent”, particularly writers whose work has not been traditionally published.

The publisher will commission books for adults and children, scheduled to hit shelves from 2027.

This year the BBBF saw a 50% drop in the volume of books submitted by publishers to the festival, a figure that festival CEO Brown described as indicative of “a specific problem in the acquisition of black authors”. She compared the situation to 2022, when the BBBF received hundreds of book requests following the George Floyd protests and the Black Lives Matter movement.

“This year was very different. Some publishers even said, ‘We don’t have any books to offer you.'” The problem is reflected in a recent survey of inclusive children’s books, which found a sharp decline in the number of children’s books that include a black main character. This widespread decline in the publishing of black literature prompted Brown to offer his new publishing collaboration to Pan Macmillan.

Brown has experienced publishing from all angles, from working at Birmingham Central Library to managing marketing campaigns with publishers and writing her own books. I felt like the publishing industry was slow to innovate.

“For me, the missing gap has always been people, the voice of the people,” Brown says. “Shaping how we get books, shaping marketing, shaping genres, because we know what we want to read and how we want to get to books.” She wants “community” to be “at the core” of the new publisher. “This way we say you are experts in this and we need to learn from you, rather than having all the meetings in publishing houses with a lot of people who are not from our background.”

Working with Pan Macmillan, the BBBF’s main sponsor for the past four years, was an easy choice for Brown. “They always defended our ideas,” she says. “They were always behind us, they were our allies… They understood us.”

The new publisher is looking for stories that reflect “the pinnacle of black British literature” and can be read by everyone. “We want to bring to life the kind of books that editors want to bring to life, because it’s time, it’s 2025 now,” says Brown.

She nodded to other UK publishers who are helping to highlight the voices of black Britons. “We stand on the shoulders of the great publishers who came before us – HopeRoad, Jacaranda Books, Merky Books, Dialogue. Kudos to Margaret Busby and Verna Wilkins for laying the foundations.” The new publisher doesn’t have a name yet.

The announcement came right before the festival’s main event featuring actress Tabitha Brown. “It was a magical moment,” Selena says.