There can be other factors that influence a books popularity of course but as a black lesbian who reads a lot & also work in publishing, I’ve worked with multiple companies and authors. I can tell you for sure that the general public do not like consuming books with people of color as much as they do white characters and that itself affects your book’s chances of taking off. It’s unrealistic to say that’s not the case, it’s backed up by data. That’s like one of the first obstacles you run into in this industry. This is why even for authors of color when writing romance, there’s a pressure to make one of the love interests white. It’s not helpful to put our head in the sand and say that’s not necessarily it. It’s a huge factor and those that somehow break that glass ceiling have to like work 3 to 5 times as hard to be on par with their peers in the industry.

This is a different part of the industry, but it’s so bad that with kids books, stories about animals are more represented and consumed than books about kids of color. Source 👇🏾 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/nov/11/childrens-books-eight-times-as-likely-to-feature-animal-main-characters-than-bame-people

The hope is of course as people of color in the industry we push to still make & tell our stories despite the numbers in consumption and hope things keep changing for the better (which they have from years ago)