US publishers take part in staff diversity survey

In the US, more than 30 publishing houses, including Macmillan, Abrams, Lerner, Bloomsbury, and Chronicle have agreed to take part in the ‘Diversity Baseline’ survey, reports Publishers Weekly. The survey, which is created and overseen by Lee & Low Books publisher Jason Low, aims to gather statistics about the staff makeup of both publishers and review journals based on gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, and disability. Low said statistics indicate that only about 10 percent of children’s books published are by or about people of colour, and that ‘if the staffs at publishers and review journals were more diverse, more books about people of colour would be published’. Publishers Weekly, which has also taken part in the survey, found in a 2014 survey that 89% of publishing house employees identified themselves as white.

Category: International news