People are asking for more diverse voices
There is an opportunity within the publishing industry to publish more books written by black authors. Lee & Low Books’ 2019 Diversity Baseline Survey found that while 76% of authors in the United States are White only 5% of authors are Black despite Black people representing 13.4% of the United States’ population.
The success of movies with Black producers and casts like Black Panther demonstrate that Black people are hungry for stories that reflect their own experiences. The desire for more diverse perspectives does not lie just within the Black population but in the population at large. Black Panther made $1.3 billion, more than any of the other seven 2019 Oscar nominees for best picture combined. This demonstrates that a market for content from black creators and people of colour in general is much broader than the demographics of the creators themselves.
This sentiment is also reflected in an analysis of Google Trends which shows some of the most popular search terms over the past 12 months.
When considering investing in projects and businesses from minority populations a challenge is often raised that a “market” does not exist for those types of initiatives. The data tells a different story. Considerable buying power exists within the hands of people of colour. Buying power within the Hispanic community is expected to reach $1.9 trillion by 2023. The communities with the fastest growing buying power over the past two decades belongs to Multi-Racial and Asian Americans whose buying power has grown by 389.7% and 382.3% respectively. The group with the lowest growth rate is White Americans who saw their buying power grow by 116.7% over the same time period.
There is power in numbers. Now and in the future. There are now 125 million minorities in the United States representing 40% of the United States population. By 2045 today’s minority populations will be the majority. This trend has already started to materialize. Non-White and Hispanic Americans are now the majority among those under the age of 16. Now is the time to support and elevate more diverse voices and causes. It’s the right thing to do and it is also good for business.