Once again, the lack of diversity in BookCon’s line up has many furious on Twitter today. The guest list is up with 30 Caucasians, 1 cat and 0 persons of color which has many scratching their heads wondering how ReedPOP, the organization producing BookCon, could have messed up so severely in the representation department. As I’ve mentioned before, this isn’t the first time this issue and outrage was brought up. According to a Publisher’s Weekly piece published this past April 11th, “The group promises to add one or more additional panelists that “reflect the community and make a great panel even better,” Lance Fensterman, ReedPOP’s global v-p, said.”
It’s been almost two week’s since then with no visible changes. There have also been responses to this from BookExpo of America who tweeted:
BookCon is produced by our colleagues at ReedPop, they're committed to diversity & continue to curate content. Share feedback @thebookcon.
— BookExpo (@BookExpoAmerica) April 23, 2014
As they say, talk is cheap and if your words don’t match up with your actions then they mean absolutely nothing. The only upside to this list is the number of women represented: twelve out of thirty. And no. It’s not called diversity if you’ve included a cat.
