The African American Writer's Handbook: How to Get in Print and Stay in Print

The subtitle to The African American Writers Handbook: How to Get in Print and Stay in Print is misleading. Yes, there are chapters on writing queries and synopses, finding agents, dealing with editors, and promoting one's work. But plenty of books cover the same ground with greater depth and clarity. It is when author Robert Fleming turns his attention to the experience of the African American in the "almost lily-white" world of publishing that his book comes into its own. Should an African American author choose an agent based on racial solidarity? How does having a white (or black) editor affect the quality of the author's work? What kinds of inroads are black writers making in genre writing?

There is a kitchen-sink feeling to The African American Writers Handbook, which is published by Ballantine's multicultural One World imprint. A chapter on self-publishing is followed by one on tax tips; a list of authors and their day jobs comes directly after a section on award-winning black-authored books. Fleming's accounts of African American publishing history and his profiles of African American writers somehow lack the drama of their compelling subjects. Still, despite its lack of coherence and its workmanlike prose, this handbook is full of information that African American (and, for that matter, non-African American) writers will want to know. There are profiles of authors, lists of classic works, interviews with small-press African American publishers, discussions about African American distributors and bookstores, and a generous smattering of anecdotes about black authors. Despite the inherent difficulties, "there has never been a better time for African American writers in the history of American publishing," says Fleming. Maybe so. But it is tough indeed to ignore the words of novelist John Oliver Killens (Youngblood), quoted here: "Writing was the damnedest, hardest, and loneliest buck a man could make, especially if that man was black." --Jane Steinberg