Information, inspiration and interviews on writing, self-publishing, book marketing and making a living with your writing. If you need help with writing your book, or you want to learn how to navigate the new world of publishing and book marketing, then join Joanna Penn and her guests every Monday. Also covers the business of being a writer and how to make money with your books.
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African Authors And Diversity In Publishing With Tolulope Popoola
Race shouldn't be an issue in publishing, but it is, and I love the possibilities that self-publishing is opening up for authors who have been generally marginalized. Today I talk to Tolulope Popoola about African authors and Nigerian publishing. This topic is also of personal importance as my immediate family consists of people from Nigeria, Canada, Grenada, a Hungarian-Jewish-Kiwi, as well as White British and I'm proud to be multi-cultural.
In the introduction, I mention the lack of diversity in traditional publishing – check out this report on Black and Asian writers in the UK publishing marketplace, & the Salon report on the dominance of white women in publishing. Here's Idris Elba talking about diversity to the UK parliament.
Here's the article about The Subversive Women Who Self-Publish Novels Amidst Jihadist War from Wired. Also mentioned, The Times of India on Amazon's 26% stake in Westland publishing, and that India and China are now the biggest growth market for the Kindle.
Plus, the Feb Author Earnings report and Lee Child's article on Amazon and bookstores. And, I'm doing a webinar with Joseph Michael, the Scrivener Coach on How to use Scrivener to Write, Organize and Export your Book into Multiple Formats. Thurs 3 March at 3pm US Eastern, 8pm UK and yes, you can get the recording if you sign up. Click here for more info.
This podcast episode is sponsored by you! THANKS for all your support on Patreon! You can support the show, and get access to extra Q&A audios at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn
Tolulope Popoola is the author of flash fiction, romance and short stories and she's also a publishing consultant and coach. She is Nigerian but lives in London.
You can listen above or on iTunes or Stitcher or watch the video here, read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and full transcript below.
* How Tolu got started with blogging, writing and moved into self-publishing
* The problem of being labelled “ethnic fiction”