Stepping Into the Breach : Books: Left by major houses, books by, for and about African-Americans are being produced by black publishers.

When Wade and Cheryl Willis Hudson tried to sell their “Afro-Bets” children’s books to mainstream publishers in the early 1980s, they were told there was no market for their books because black people don’t read.

One editor thought the books were great--if the Hudsons got Michael Jackson or someone like him to promote them.

Wade Hudson recalls thinking: “If we could get Michael Jackson, we wouldn’t be talking to you.”

Defying the naysayers, the Hudsons used $7,000 of their own money to launch Just Us Books, a small press based in Orange, N.J. Since 1988, the company has published seven Afrocentric titles for children and one book of poetry for adults.

The two Afro-Bets titles, which feature six acrobatic African-American children who teach numbers and the alphabet, have more than 125,000 copies in print. Just Us Books this year topped $1.4 million in sales.

The Hudsons discovered that interest of mainstream publishers in ethnic materials changes with the times. Literary agent Marie Brown says that in 1967, when she worked for Doubleday Publishing Co., African-American culture and authors were hot properties. When she returned to Doubleday five years later, after living and working in Los Angeles, things had changed. “In a short time, the boom was over, based on the premise that there’s no market for these books.”

Brown says one reason for the change was that money that libraries and school districts had used in the 1960s to purchase multicultural books disappeared in the 1970s. But Brown remained committed to publishing. Today she represents such authors as Eloise Greenfield, Ed Bradley, Verta Mae Smart Grosvenor and Louis Edwards.

The Hudsons say their books speak to a need in the African-American community for children’s literature that builds self-esteem and a sense of belonging. “When kids see themselves in books, they’re attracted,” Wade Hudson says. “It’s just like looking into a photo album.”

According to the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, only 58 of the 5,000 children’s books published in 1990 in the United States were known to be by African-American writers or illustrators.

Center director Ginny Moore Kruse says that even this is an improvement since 1985, when 18 of 2,500 titles were by black authors and illustrators.

One factor driving the upward turn, she says, is the advent of black-owned presses.

During the last 10 years, unprecedented numbers of independent black publishers have stepped into the void left by major publishing houses to produce books on African-American history, culture and lifestyles.

Utilizing a grass-roots approach and relying heavily on direct mail, these publishing professionals coordinate promotional and bookselling efforts with civic groups, black business organizations and churches. Some vendors make a living buying African-American books wholesale and selling them at conventions and festivals or even on the streets.

“Small presses live by direct mail,” says Charles Taylor, founder and executive director of the Madison-based Multicultural Publishers Exchange, a 250-member group composed primarily of independent publishers. Seventy percent of its membership is African-American.

The exchange, which recently held its second annual conference in Madison, helps publishers find appropriate markets for their books, in part by providing lists of black newspapers, black-owned bookstores, minority student advisers, librarians and black student associations.

Samimah Aziz, co-owner of Akbar’s Books-N-Things, a St. Louis-based mail-order business that specializes in African-heritage and religious titles, organizes black book fairs nationwide.

Aziz’s fairs are free, daylong events with musical entertainment, speakers and the sale of ethnic jewelry, clothing and art. A book fair in St. Louis this year drew more than 5,000 people. At a typical fair, Aziz sells 600 to 800 books.

“If you bring literature to the community and say: ‘These books are for you, they’re about you,’ people come out and they buy,” she says.

Charles Taylor estimates there are between 400 and 500 independent black-owned publishing companies in the United States.

H. Khalif Khalifah of United Brothers & Sisters Communication Systems, a Virginia-based publishing company, says his mailing list includes 600 black-owned bookstores. Taylor estimates that 90% of those bookstores were not around 10 years ago.

Showing further proof of a black book renaissance, the Black Caucus of the American Library Assn., more than 20 years after it was founded, will hold its first national conference, “Culture Keepers: Enlightening and Empowering Our Communities,” next fall in Columbus, Ohio. Conference organizer Bennett J. Johnson says the group is meeting to figure out “how black librarians can do more to promote literacy in the African-American community.” Book publishers will have a chance to exhibit and sell their products to more than 2,000 librarians.

This increased attention to Afrocentric books, however, has not necessarily translated into greater recognition or sales for rank-and-file authors.

When Faye Childs of Columbus, Ohio, was working on her first novel two years ago, she was dismayed to find only two black authors, Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, on the major bestseller lists.

So Childs started to work on creating a black bestseller list. In July, after polling 35 general and African-American bookstores in 22 major urban markets, her first “Blackboard” list was published in several Ohio newspapers.

Childs recently clinched a deal with the American Booksellers Assn. to make Blackboard a standard feature in the group’s quarterly newsletter, which goes out to more than 8,000 booksellers. She is seeking national newspaper syndication for the list.

Many in the growing arena of African-American publishing recognize the need to help each other. Marie Brown hires part-time workers so she can introduce young African-Americans to the field of publishing. Cheryl Willis Hudson says her press is “identifying new authors and new illustrators and nurturing them as we grow.” Khalifah of United Brothers & Sisters will help other African-Americans get started in the bookselling business by offering a line of credit equal to what they invest.

Three years ago, publisher Haki Madhubuti, who started Third World Press in Chicago in 1967, helped found the Chicago-based African American Publishers, Booksellers and Writers Assn. The purpose is to “aid in the promotion and sale of literature published by its membership,” says executive assistant Bakari Kitwana.

Taylor of the Multicultural Publishers Exchange wants wide exposure for black authors, but he worries that “as soon as mainstream presses see the dollars coming out of the alternative black markets, they’ll come in and reap the harvest.”

Mainstream publishers, says Taylor, are “trying to get a handle on this whole movement of multiculturalism and Afrocentricity, but I only see a few who are trying to do it in an authentic fashion.” For instance, Taylor says, some publishing companies now use black consultants to help find black authors and markets, rather than hiring blacks to participate in the entire publishing process.

Wade Hudson sees such dangers too, but he sees great promise in the embrace of multiculturalism: “This is really going to be a godsend if, as a nation, we take it seriously. To be able to appreciate others is a humanizing thing.”

African-American Bestsellers

FICTION

1. “Disappearing Acts” by Terry McMillan (Viking Penguin; Pocket Books).

2. “Family” by J. California Cooper (Doubleday).

3. “Some Soul to Keep” by J. California Cooper (St. Martin’s).

4. “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston (HarperCollins).

5. “Middle Passage” by Charles Johnson (Dutton; New American Library).

NONFICTION

1. “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” edited by Alex Haley. (Ballentine).

2. “Black Men: Obsolete, Single, Dangerous?” by Haki Madhubuti (Third World Press).

3. “The Isis Papers” by Frances Cress Welsing (Third World Press).

4. “Visions for Black Men” by Na’im Akbar (Winston-Derek Publications).

5. “Civilization or Barbarism: An Authentic Anthropology” by Cheikh Anta Diop (Lawrence Hill Books).

Source: Blackboard African-American Bestsellers Inc. and American Booksellers Assn.