ABSTRACT
To many people, black women writers are everywhere on the cover of Newsweek, the New York Times Magazine, on talk shows, on speaking circuits. This chapter discusses that publishing quotas exist that determine the number of black women who will publish books of fiction yearly. Such quotas are not consciously negotiated and decided upon but are the outcomes of institutionalized racism, sexism, and classism. These systems of domination operate in such a way as to ensure that only a very few fiction books by black women will be published at any given time. Published black women writers, even those who are famous, are well aware that their successes do not ensure that their books will be on bookstore shelves years from now. Black women and other people who are interested in the future development of black writers should establish more writing competitions where prizes could be as low as $25 to stimulate interest in writing.
