Diversity at the Front Door, Amnesia at the Back: Why Recognition Still Matters in Publishing
- David Salariya
- Jul 5
- 4 min read
When I read the recent Bookseller report on junior publishing staff of colour burning out from being expected to act as in-house DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) experts, I felt a familiar sense of disquiet.
Not because the panel, thoughtful, experienced professionals like Sabah Khan and Mia Oakley, weren’t doing vital work. They clearly were. But because beneath the surface of these well-meaning discussions lies a troubling contradiction the business of publishing seems reluctant to confront.
We have, in publishing today, a system that is loudly pushing open the front door in the name of diversity, while quietly closing the back door on those who came before. It’s a pattern I’ve watched unfold over recent years: the future-facing campaigns, the shiny initiatives, the new language. But behind the scenes? The long memory of the book itself -the credits, the acknowledgements, the biographies are disappearing.
I’ve worked in publishing for over forty-five years. When I arrived in London, I didn’t have contacts or really any idea of how publishing actually worked. There were no fast-track schemes or carefully curated pipelines. Like many of my generation, I just got on with it. You were commissioned, you got paid - if you were lucky. And if the book did well, your name stayed on and in print. That was the deal.
But increasingly, that deal is being rewritten.
Branding Trumps Biography
Today, many creators, especially illustrators, designers, packagers, co-authors, and the originators of bestselling series - are finding themselves quietly erased from reprints, websites, and marketing materials. I’m not speaking hypothetically. This has happened to me. And I’ve watched it happen to others, especially those from working-class, freelance, or historically marginalised backgrounds who may not have agents or lawyers to fight their corner and especially in the world on non-fiction where books are not simply created by an author and an artist - but a large team can bring a non-fiction book together - starting with the person who has the idea in the first place.
In some cases, a new edition of a book arrives stripped of any trace of its original creators. The work survives, but the name does not. When questioned, publishers speak of “brand consistency,” of “house style,” "generic crediting" of “streamlining metadata.” Rarely does anyone pause to ask what it means for the people whose names once sat proudly on those books - whose careers, reputations, and livelihoods depend on that visibility.
This is not inclusion.
This is deletion by design.
Diversity Without History Is Theatre
The junior staff on that DEI panel spoke movingly about the emotional toll of being expected to perform inclusion while lacking structural power. But their exhaustion mirrors a wider truth. We’ve reached a point where diversity has become a kind of theatre: highly visible at the front: panels, social posts, campaigns, but hollowed out behind the curtain.
Because if publishing only wants to show new faces of inclusion, without recognising the foundations laid by earlier contributors - many of whom faced considerable barriers to entry - what are we building?
A showcase or a legacy?
True inclusion means embedding respect into every part of the system:
In recruitment and mentorship.
In long-term credit and reprint policy.
In cataloguing, archiving, and digital attribution.
In the very DNA of how we talk about books and those who make them.
Otherwise, we risk creating an industry in which marginalised staff and creators are offered the performance of visibility - without the permanence of recognition.
Publishing Needs a Memory
We are the stewards of cultural memory. If we can’t remember who made the books - if we allow “house style” to trump human contribution - we lose the ability to honour the very people who made publishing diverse, dynamic, and worth inheriting.
There are people in senior roles today capable people who have grown strangely comfortable with this quiet rewriting of the record and in effect are the ones implicating these ideas to wipe away a books past - the word is "refresh". But what happens when this is a whitewash?
They don’t see it as erasure.
Just stream lining.
Just marketing.
Just the way things work now.
But history teaches us that when institutions forget the individuals who built them, those individuals don’t disappear. They just become ghosts. Unnamed hands behind books. Footnotes redacted from the record.
A Modest Proposal
If publishing is serious about inclusion, here’s where to start:
Audit your backlist. Who’s missing from credits? Who’s been dropped from metadata?
Set policy. Make it a formal expectation to retain creator credits unless there's a compelling reason not to.
Ask authors and illustrators. What does visibility mean to them? Not every contribution fits a template.
Challenge the idea that “branding” requires anonymity.
It doesn’t.
But this is not just about internal policy.
It’s also about what readers, teachers, librarians and booksellers are allowed to know.
If you’re spending your time, attention, or school budget on a book, don’t be afraid to ask:
Who illustrated this?
Who came up with the concept?
Why isn’t their name on the cover or on the website?
What’s their story?
This isn’t nosiness - it’s care. It’s connection. It’s trust.
We spend so much time marketing “authentic voices” and “inspiring stories”—and then quietly strip away the people behind them.
Let’s stop pretending that names don’t matter.
We talk often in publishing about building a better future. But let’s not do that by erasing the past.
Let’s make sure that when the next generation walks through the door, they can see who came before them - and know their names are safe in the future index.
When publishing executives forgets its makers, it won’t be long before it pretends they were never there at all.
David Salariya has spent over forty five years years working in publishing as a writer, illustrator, and mischief-making independent. Founder of the imprint Scribblers, Book House and Scribo, he’s now a free agent with opinions, a pencil, and a long memory. If you're looking for a ghost in your metadata, it might be him.
Read more at www.davidsalariya.com
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