The Ripped Bodice, a romantic bookstore in Culver City, California, has released an annual report the last few years called “
The State of Racial Diversity in Romance Publishing Report,” which tracks the number of romance books being published by BIPOC authors and details which publishers have been the most inclusive in terms of race. Their most recent
2019 report found that for every 100 romance books published that year, only 8.3 were written by writers of color. That number is only a 0.4% increase over the last four years.
“While many groups are still woefully underrepresented in the romance genre including people with disabilities, marginalized religious groups, and members of the LGBTQ+ community, we had to start somewhere,” the owners of the store wrote
on their website. “This is a difficult subject to discuss, but racial discrimination is one of the largest to barriers to equality in any professional industry. Publishing, unfortunately, is not immune.”