George Floyd’s death and the subsequent raised visibility of the Black Lives Matter movement has surfaced racism and discrimination in institutions and industries across the board. The newly formed Black Writers’ Guild wrote an open letter to the publishing industry calling for the industry to address deep-seated inequalities in output and personnel.

One of the specific requests they made was:

“We ask that publishers make an additional financial commitment to new awards recognising and amplifying black talent as well as other initiatives such as a festival, and a literary magazine that can help build and foster readers from the black community.” [i]

The majority of black authors who were signatories to the open letter represented literary genres, including fiction, poetry and children’s books, but the niche but significant genre of business books is also an area that this might apply to.

In response to this expanding and evolving area, author and publisher Lucy McCarraher and the events company ThinkFest founded The Business Book Awards in 2017 to celebrate and recognise the work of business authors and publishers. In the first year of the awards, despite a gender balanced judging panel and a third of entries from women, all award categories were won by white male authors.

The second year of the Business Book Awards saw the Founder and organisers campaign for more business women to write and publish their books, and an award for An Exceptional Book by a Woman. Entries from women authors increased and their books were shortlisted and won awards in many categories.

For the third year, 2020, the BBAs championed diversity in its widest sense, expanding the judging panel to include more people of colour and a wider range of experience. The special award was for A Book promoting Diversity, and the shortlist and winners featured diverse authors. [ii]

To mark this moment in the #blacklivesmatter movement, the Business Book Awards has interviewed seven shortlisted and winning authors to discuss their experiences of challenges and discrimination as business people and authors, and to canvas their views on the way the BBAs could further support authors of colour.

The interview series talks to:

Kubi Springer, author of I Am My Brand (Bloomsbury Publishing); Chris Wilson, author of The Master Plan (Scribe UK); Sapna Pieroux, author of Let’s Get Visible! (Rethink Press); Jonathan Macdonald, author of Powered by Change (Nicholas Brealey Publishing); Teresa Boughey, author of Closing the Gap (Rethink Press); Thomas Oppong, author of Working in the Gig Economy (Kogan Page); Taruna Chauhan, author of Outstanding (Rethink Press).

Thomas Oppong, entrepreneur and blogger, said, “If you don’t have access to resources or capital to grow your business, you do feel marginalised. If you don’t have access to the social capital or social support it makes it hard to grow your business, which is why people of colour are finding it more difficult to make progress in their entrepreneur journeys. The Business Book Awards gave me a huge sense of accomplishment – to know your work has been recognised gives you huge motivation and inspiration to keep moving forward.”

Branding expert, Kubi Springer acknowledged that “Race really has been centre in my career. Now as a 40-year old woman I recognise that my difference is my strength and I teach people that. But it’s also been very painful as well… The Business Book Awards gives your book an element of credibility and I’ve found myself giving training on even bigger stages.”

Chris Wilson, serial social entrepreneur and campaigner, said, “More people are waking up and being educated, especially white people, about the situation for black and brown people. This is the most I’ve cried in my entire life. It’s anger, it’s rage and it’s painful. I felt like it was important for me to write my book and tell my story so that people who don’t come from where I come from see why people like me get swept up into the criminal justice system. To talk about the plight of black people in this world.”

The seven online interview series will be released on a daily basis via the Business Book Awards Facebook Page & YouTube Channel starting on Monday 13th July 12pm.

For more information contact info@businessbookawards.co.uk

• [i] The Guardian report of the letter from the Black Writers’ Guild to the publishing industry
• [ii] The Business Book Awards 2020 Shortlist