Writing a new chapter in book publishing: African Americans are making money doing what others thought impossible; getting blacks to buy hardcover books. But do we have the clout?

IT'S BARELY NOON ON A FROSTY Sunday at Two Steps Down, a buppie cove in Brooklyn, New York. Four African-American managers are there, sipping chamomile tea and munching on waffles. And they're discussing their favorite book of the month, Bebe Moore Campbell's bestseller, Brothers and Sisters.

Sharing their takes on the corporate chaos depicted in this novel, one woman reflects that her position in banking is much like that of Campbell's protagonist, Esther Jackson. "Finally someone gets it," she exclaims.

Many people are sharing this sense of identification, finding in books an open window onto the black middle class and blacks in corporate America. "[Readers] like the fact that I get inside the heads of different kinds of people," says Campbell of the success of her books.

She may not have the same homegirl entourage as Terry, McMillan, but the commercial success of Campbell's book delivers the same message to publishers: The African-American community can no longer be overlooked; in fact, it is one of the fastest growing segments of the book-buying market.

Swarms of books with commercial appeal by and about blacks are now stocked on shelves at Dalton's as well as Black Books Plus. These days, roughly 80 titles with African-American themes are published each year.

Thanks to this cultural boom, Campbell is the distinguished member of a new black renaissance of writers that is reminiscent of the literary scene during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. No longer restricted to one or two genres, these authors write both nonfiction and fiction, and deal with politics, culture, history, self-help and spirituality.

Unlike their literary counterparts 70 or even 30 years ago, today's writers are reaping the rewards of commercial popularity. Bestselling titles include E. Lynn Harris' Just as I am, Walter Mosley's Black Betty, Nathan McCall's Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man In America, Maya Angelou's Wouldn't Take Nothing For My Journey Now and Cornell West's Race Matters.

Although the sales base is mostly the African-American community, these books are crossing over into the mainstream and drawing readers from all walks of life.

But even while volumes by and about blacks are rolling off the presses, there are a limited number of blacks in key editorial or managerial roles in the $16.1 billion publishing industry. (Some 50,000 titles are published each year in this country.

In fact, many white editors are making a name for themselves by acquiring books with African-American themes. On the other hand, "I wouldn't have reached the level of success I have attained had it not been for a black editor," says Campbell of Adrienne Ingrum, then an editor and vice president at G.P. Putnam's Sons, who acquired Campbell's first book, Sweet Summer: Growing Up, With and Without My Dad.

Without question, one of the highest-ranking and most powerful black executives in publishing is Marilyn Ducksworth, Vice president, associate publisher and executive director of publicity at the Putnam Publishing Group.

Will the dearth of minority workers eventually impact publishing's bottom line? Maybe. But it seems that opening the doors of opportunity in major publishing houses may require a hard push and endorsements from some high-grossing African-American authors.

THE BLACK CULTURAL EXPLOSION

The Harlem Renaissance introduced black America to preeminent literary works by such writers as Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes and Zora Neal Hurston. But the revolution in books about the black experience took the publishing scene by storm in the mid '50s. By 1969, The Guide to African-American Books listed more than 5,000 titles, including the remarkable first novel by 1994 Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye.

Noted bestsellers in nonfiction from that period included Black Rage, Soul On Ice and Black Power. Among the most influential top-selling novelists were James Baldwin, Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison.

By the early '70s, the black literary fire was extinguished. Once the market was flooded with books relying on the shock value of attacking white society, they stopped selling.

A select band of literary authors, such as Morrison, Angelou, Alice Walker and Gloria Naylor helped rekindle the flame in the '80s. But their critical success was mainly within the black intellectual community. Walker's The Color Purple and Naylor's The Women of Brewster Place enjoyed huge success and were both turned into films. But they were the exceptions.

The new black cultural explosion did not hit until 1989, when Terry McMillan introduced publishers to readers apart from the usual highbrowed literary book buyers, The commercial appeal of McMillan's second novel, Disappearing Acts, spoke to the contemporary black female who was hungry to buy books.

"African-American women developed an appetite for stories that represented them in society. Once fed, they craved for more," says Clara Villarosa, owner of Denver's Hue-Man Experience bookstore.

Just two months after the release of Waiting To Exhale in 1992, McMillan found her book on the New York Times bestseller list, alongside the works of the grande dames of black literature, Morrison's Jazz and Walker's Possessing the Secret of Joy. McMillan's novel stayed there for 38 weeks.

"The fact that you had three African-American women appear on the bestseller list at the same time made people sit up and take notice," says Juanita T. James, senior vice president of club management editorial at the Book-Of-The-Month Club. "As in any business, the confirmation of their success caused publishers to open up and become more favorable toward other projects by African-American authors."

Deemed the male Terry McMillan, Atlanta native E. Lynn Harris tapped into female as well as gay readers in the black community when he self-published his first book, Invisible Life, in 1992. After he sold 10,000 copies on his own, Doubleday signed the paperback rights and published Harris' next book, Just As I Am. Both books became bestsellers.

In the past two years, publishers have been eager to jump on the "black book" bandwagon, but the resurgence is more of a revelation than a literary revolution. "Black readers have long been there and so have black writers. It's just that now book publishers are getting around to recognizing them," says literary agent Faith Childs. Childs represents some 40 ethnically diverse writers, including the noted African-American authors Jill Nelson, Paule Marshall and Thulani Davis.

African-American readers, who have spawned the 1 million unit sales of bestselling authors such as Campbell, McMillan and Mosely, have more than dispelled the old myth that blacks don't read.

Major publishing houses are avidly acquiring manuscripts to market to a once underrepresented, growing, better educated and more affluent black middle class, notes Childs. In 1985, she left her job as a lawyer to serve as an apprentice to a New York literary agency. Later, Childs founded her own company.

Statistics show that since 1967, the number of black families with incomes of more than $50,000 has quadrupled to more than 1 million. An increase in disposable income has afforded them a greater interest in the arts and in leisure activities.

But given that this group reads roughly 15 books a year per person there are still not enough books that reflect their lifestyle. Hence, publishing's lament that there are too many books on the market does not apply to black readers.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Many major houses have not been shy about luring black talent with six-figure advances--anywhere from $100,000 to close to $1 million. Money is the biggest difference between now and the black cultural explosion of the '60s, says 27-year industry veteran Marie Dutton Brown.

Today, the market is more consumer driven, says Brown, founder of the literary agency, Marie Brown Associates, which represented some 100 clients last year. Thirty years ago, books by African-American authors had more social and political motives and were marketed to libraries and schools rather than to general readers.

The commercial success of many African-American authors has translated into bigger bucks for some agents as well; 15% of a $500,000 advance is a lot of money to make off one person. But it also puts a great deal of pressure on that individual to write a $500,000 book. "Just to earn out a $60,000 advance on a $17.95 book, you would have to sell more than 20,000 copies," says Brown, who is ecstatic about her newest projects, which include editing Brotherman: The Odyssey of Black Men In America--An Anthology by Herb Boyd and Robert L. Allen and These Long Bones by Gwendolyn M. Parker.

An advance is just that: an advance against the royalties or money that the book will earn from its sales. So the book has to cover itself before the writer can earn any money, says Tonya Bolden, editor of the Quarterly Black Review of books and author of Rites of Passage. "It's more important for the writer to have a book that will stay in print. That's when the checks will keep rolling in."

Ideally, the advance should be earned back with the first print run, say literary agents Barbara Lowenstein and Madeleine Morel, principals of Lowenstein-Morel Associates. Lowenstein cites, for example, an advance of $100,000. "Say the book sells for $20. The royalty is 10% for the first 5,000 copies, 12.5% of retail for the next 5,000 and 15% thereafter. If the royalty is $3 per book (15 cents x 5,000) and the advance is $100,000, that book has to sell at least 33,000 copies."

The larger the advance, the more the publisher spends on publicizing the book, says Morel, who is quick to note that her agency has snared $100,000-plus advances for most of its writers. One client, George Fraser, author of Success Runs In Our Race, received a $75,000 advertising budget and a 12-city tour.

There are some misgivings, however, that the black book boom will be short-lived if some highly paid writers don't earn back their advances. "A lot of publishers see gold in them there hills," says Martha Levin, vice president and publisher at Anchor Books. The Anchor list is 30% devoted to the African-American market. "Many [publishers] will leap into it blindly, overpay, publish poorly and then wipe their hands of the whole thing and say, 'I never should have gotten into this in the first place,' and walk away," she says.

As with any business, publishing is about the bottom line. So, if an author's book doesn't sell well, then the publisher may be hesitant to back that writer the next time around, says Essence magazine's Executive Editor Linda Villarosa, who got six-figures for her new book, Body & Soul The Black Women's Guide To Physical Health & Emotional Well-Being.

Villarosa exemplifies how the industry has changed its tune about books with African-American themes. Many books that were rejected more than five years ago have been recently signed and published. "I first took the idea for the book to an agent eight years ago who said it wouldn't sell," recalls Villarosa. "Two years ago, that same agent came back to me with the exact book I had proposed."

Many of the big deals were cut in the last couple of years, Villarosa points out, so it's too soon to tell which books aren't going to sell and whether there will be repercussions for African-American authors as a group.

"Publishing is an industry that is notorious for some of its high-end deals, not unlike professional sports or the film industry," says Cheryl Woodruff, vice president of the Ballantine publishing group (Random House). She is also the founder and executive editor of One World, the nation's first multicultural imprint at a major publishing house. "But just as every actor isn't paid $10 million per film, most authors aren't making $1 million per book. The average deal is $ 10,000."

Besides, white writers who put out less-than-quality books or who don't earn back huge advances still continue to get nurtured and signed to new books, says Walter Mosley, whose latest Easy Rawlings mystery, Black Betty, made the New York Times bestseller list.

Some major publishing houses will continue to publish books that cater to African-Americans. In fact, Harper Collins has put an emphasis on republishing books on its backlist, and getting back the rights to books they used to own. For example, Zora Neal Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God was republished in 1990, and has since sold some 685,000 copies.

Many publishers have had success with reprints. One World has scored big with hardcover, trade paper and mass market reprints of The Autobiography of Malcolm X Possible 1994 hitmakers: Herb Boyd and Robert L. Allen's Brotherman and Linda Beatrice Brown's Crossing Over Jordan.

One World was founded in 1991 by Woodruff and four other African-American women from Ballantine's publicity, sales and marketing, art and editorial departments. "Ballantine had a backlist of about 75 African-American titles, so it wasn't a hard sell to get an imprint, which is the equivalent of a new car line for an auto manufacturer," explains Woodruff, who has been an editor for 16 years.

Though the industry is still dominated by white publishers, there are a few black houses, including Chicago-based Noble Press and New York-based Amistad Press (the latter is a subsidiary of Time Warner, that have reaped the benefits of the new black renaissance.

Transactions between major publishers and independents have proven to be quite beneficial. Nobel Press publisher David Driver sold the paperback rights for Jill Nelson's Volunteer Slavery to Penguin. The dream among African-American authors and publishers alike is to take their work and transfer it to audio cassette, film, home video and software (CD-ROM).

Coexisting in peace (and for profit) with the big boys is Amistad, which sold the paperback rights for its No. 1 seller, In The Spirit, to HarperCollins. So far, Essence Editor-in-Chief Susan L. Taylor's collection of editorials has over a quarter million copies in print. Two books that Amistad is banking on this year are Dorothy Dandridge, a biography by Donald Bogle and Skin Deep: The Story of Black Models in America and Abroad by Barbara Summers.

Charles F. Harris, who started Amistad in 1986 after serving as director of Howard University Press for 15 years, acknowledges that "the publishing industry is built on fads. If cookbooks are hot, then everybody will jump on that bandwagon."

Black authors and publishers fear that if the major houses don't understand a particular segment of the market they're trying to serve, they won't know why certain books are popular or how to duplicate their success.

"Books in our community have to speak to what we are interested in," explains Harris, who is looking to publish 50 books this year. "You can't just put "black" on a book and think that it will appeal to African-Americans."

BIG HOUSES, CLOSED DOORS

The recent boom in black books has some insiders wondering: How can the publishing industry adequately serve the growing market of minority readers when it has failed to attract and pursue African-American, Asian, Hispanic and Native-American employees?

A 1991 study from the Association of American Publishers reports that blacks make up 4.6% of the management positions in book publishing, and Hispanics, Asians and other minorities, 9.3%.

As the demographics shift, or as America gets browner, publishing houses may find that their workforce is lacking in the insight needed to bring to this market quality books that sell.

Believe it or not, you wouldn't run out of hands counting the number of African-American editors in book publishing. Some insiders feel there are cultural biases at work; others contend that there are racial causes.

"I don't understand why the publishing industry has been so negligent when it comes to hiring minorities," says Marie Dutton Brown, a self-professed advocate of a more diverse literary workforce since her first days as a Doubleday editorial trainee in 1967. "Many of the major publishers have had profitable experiences with black books, yet there is little or no reciprocity."

A recent study done by Publisher's Weekly, one of the industry's trade bibles, reports that several of the black employees interviewed considered book publishing to be a "hostile climate for minorities." Whatever the underlying cause of the mysterious absence of minorities from the publishing clique--be it lack of capital, the glass ceiling or cultural differences--many editors agree that the big houses are simply not engaging to anyone who does not fit the stereotypical publishing background: white, privileged, with Ivy League tastes and habits.

One book publishing giant, Random House, is not singled out as much in those major criticisms. Perhaps that's because of the influence of Morrison, who was an editor there from 1965 to 1983. Now under Random House's roof are top editors Erroll McDonald (Pantheon) and Carol Taylor (Crown) and executives Cheryl Woodruff and Adrienne Ingrum, vice president and director of trade paperback publishing (Crown). But Random House's track record dates as far back as 1969. At that time, only two black editors had influential positions in the trade divisions. Along with Toni Morrison, Amistad Publisher Charles Harris was then at Random House as managing editor of its juvenile division.

Publishing is not an industry that people routinely aspire to get into, nor is it one that aggressively recruits. Random House's McDonald says there is a major reality when it comes to minority representation in publishing: How many people are willing to take on a low-paying, uncertain future?

On the low end, the average editorial assistant makes $20,000 to start. But at the high end, top-ranking editors can command six-figure salaries.

Of course, editorial isn't the only area. There are also opportunities in sales and marketing, promotion and publicity, production and design. But minority representation in those ranks is also dismal.

"There is this assumption that because there are few blacks in publishing, few books of merit are being published," says McDonald. "But it is conceivable to have greater minority representation in the industry and have more crap published."

Tracy Sherrod, an associate editor at Henry Holt & Co, counters, "In a lot of cases, the editor is the one who has a clear understanding of the value of a book and what it takes in order to push it in the stores. The editor's job isn't done after the manuscript is edited. Making sure that the cultural identity of a book is protected is an important role," she adds. "There are cultural nuances that white editors don't know."

Either way, the black commercial boom in publishing offers African-American authors power. The basic consensus now is that authors must wield that power and bring more blacks into the literary fold.

At least three industry groups are actively addressing the need for a more diverse workforce, including PEN American Center, of which Mosley is a vice president, the American Association of Publishers and Black Women in Publishing.

Mosley questions what will happen to African-American authors once black literature is no longer in vogue at the houses. "I'd feel more comfortable going into the 21st century having someone of color inside saying. `We haven't heard from Walter Mosley in a while.'"