A Few Good Men.

In publishing, African American men are as scarce as Hen's teeth, but a stalwart cadre are still making a difference.

The room at New York University's Center for Publishing was packed, mostly with black women who had come out on a mild, early summer evening for a rare sight: a discussion among black men who work in the publishing industry. "Men in Black" was considered the best-attended panel discussion that Black Women in Publishing had hosted during the year. While African Americans as a whole are underrepresented in the book business, the number of black males is minuscule.

Panelist, Earl Cox personifies the success-oriented titles he sells as African American books manager at John Wiley & Sons. While he admits to sometimes feeling isolated being black in a predominately white industry, Cox says that in publishing the sky's the limit.

About fifteen years ago, just before he landed his first job in the industry, Cox had a dream. The Bronx native envisioned walking leisurely down the street in an upscale neighborhood, looking into store windows. Shortly thereafter, he was hired as a clerk at a Doubleday bookstore in Manhattan, across the street from Trump Tower. Although Cox had no interest in selling books, at the time, he took the job to help pay his college tuition. Little did he know where this job would lead.

After Doubleday, Cox held several sales and managerial positions in the book industry, until he became a sales representative with Wiley. Around the time he was hired there, Wiley published Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun (autobiography of the late African American corporate empire-builder Reginald F. Lewis) which, after selling 100,000 copies, became the cornerstone of Wiley's list of more than 40 African American -- interest titles. Early on Cox saw the need for someone at Wiley to specialize in selling black books, and he suggested to his boss that he be that person. "I knew someone had to focus on those books to ensure they were being sold properly," Cox said.

The added responsibility of selling African American interest books has increased his workload, since he still sells other Wiley titles, but he finds it "enjoyable, and something that I feel passionate about."

Enthusiasm for their work prevails among other black men who, like Cox, have found in publishing what is difficult to come by these days: career advancement coupled with personal satisfaction. Their eyes trained on the bottom line, they are also service-oriented and committed to meeting the growing reading demands of the black community.

According to Target Market News, African Americans spent $285 million on books in 1997. An American Booksellers Association survey conducted a year earlier translated into about 160 million books per year bought by African Americans. Yet while we actively buy books, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission figures from 1997 revealed that of the almost 20,000 "professionals" and "sales workers" in publishing, African Americans made up only about 4 percent of the pool, with black men constituting little more than 1 percent. Despite the low figures, those in the business are making their presence known by diversifying titles available for African American readers.

Manie Barron, publishing manager at HarperCollins' Amistad Press and formerly an associate editor at Random House, knows there is an audience of black men who are avid readers of fiction and nonfiction, and says the problem is that there isn't much reading material out there for them. Barron tells the story of a late-night visit to Harlem, where he passed a young man standing on a corner under a streetlamp. At first Barron paid the young man little attention, then he looked again and saw that he was actually using the weak light to read a book. This young man confirmed a long-held belief of Barron's that black men are dedicated readers despite the industry's current focus on black women.

"Of all the things he could have been doing on that corner," Barron says, "he was there reading a book." Barron looked at the cover. The book was by 1970s black pulp fiction writer Donald Goines, whom Barron had read growing up. A few years ago W. W. Norton created an imprint, Old School Books, to reissue novels by such black male authors from the 1950s to the 1970s as Goines, author of Daddy Cool, and Roland S. Jefferson, author of The School on 103rd Street.

Barron first worked at Doubleday, then went to Random House where he moved from sales into editorial and solidified a niche editing mostly black books. "As an editor, you do what you like," he explains, "and what I like doing, and what is my mission, is to get more black people to read."

Describing himself as a "post-Terry" editor (referring to bestselling novelist Terry McMillan), Barron observes that there are more opportunities now for African American editors to work on black projects than there were before the black commercial fiction explosion. He says editors who have been in the business longer weren't able to get black projects through previously because of the old belief that "black people don't buy books."

In Barron's office are piles of submissions, which he goes through on the lookout for writing he hopes will strike a chord in black readers and especially underserved black males. One book Barron edited, Standing at the Scratch Line by Guy Johnson, seems to have found its intended audience, with sales of nearly 30,000 copies. Barron also edited the successful Lest We Forget, an interactive book about slavery by Velma Maia Thomas, with more than 60,000 copies in print.

If, as Earl Cox suggests, the potential seems limitless with this largely untapped market of black male readers, why aren't there more black men entering the business? Most insiders agree that it's not overt racism that keeps African Americans out of publishing; rather it's the elitist structure. In publishing, career entry and movement are based on apprenticeships. Not a single major publishing house recruits specifically at any of the nation's 105 historically black colleges and universities.

Christopher Jackson, an editor at Crown and formerly an associate editor at John Wiley & Sons, believes that information and recruitment are key to luring more black men into publishing. Jackson, who was introduced to the book business while working as a high school intern for a book packager, says that the newly developed publishing program at the City University of New York is a step in the right direction. Most publishing programs (where companies go to recruit) are at mainly white schools such as Stanford, Harvard and New York University. "The fact that there is one now at City College, which is a predominately minority school, is a good thing." It's also important, Jackson says, for people to understand at an early age that publishing is a career option."

If you don't want to have to work your way up in one of the big publishing companies, entrepreneurship is one way to pursue a career in publishing.

John McGregor started in the traditional editorial-assistant route at Paragon House with a goal to start his own company one day. He took a few other positions to see the various aspects of the business, and in 1996 started JMG Books.

It's challenging work--meeting authors, searching through mounds of manuscripts for the diamond in the rough. But McGregor is clear in his purpose as he quotes from one of the writers he admires most, James Baldwin, and sees himself serving "as witness."

That emphasis on redefining perceptions and creating new literary visions for the future is a common thread uniting the brothers in the book business. They all feel that their work is more than just a job: it is a mission. As Manie Barron exclaims: "Seeing someone on the train reading a book I've edited is the greatest victory!"

Leah Mullen is a freelance writer living in the Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn with her husband and son. Leah received a B.A. in Print Journalism from Pennsylvania State University. Her articles have appeared in the Daily Challenge, Mosaic and Sisters in Motion. She talked with male movers and shakers in the publishing industry for BIBR.