A few months ago, I wrote an essay that looked at the African American sections in bookstores like Borders. When I wrote it, just weeks before the publication of my second novel, The Untelling, I believed that these segregated sections were likely the only way that African American authors would reach the readers that are willing (and even eager!) to purchase our books.I cited such anecdotal evidence as the listing on Amazon, which suggested that people who purchased my books also purchased other books, not just by black authors, but by black female authors. It seemed that even online, where there are no “sections,” people who looked at my books did so because they like books by black authors. No color blindness there. Then I looked up a couple of books by my white authors, and on their Amazon pages I saw that their readers had also bought books by other white authors. It seemed to me that this was an open and shut case.
