Casa Luna Unshelved is the podcast companion to Casa Luna Books — a home for the stories, voices, and fights that don't always make it to the front table. Each episode, we dig into the world of Latine, BIPOC, and indie literature: the newest releases worth your time, the quiet gems getting passed over, and the real conversations happening around book bans and the fight to keep these stories on the shelf.
You'll hear honest reviews and recommendations, chats with indie authors, and spotlights on the small bookish businesses keeping community-first storytelling alive — all from someone who reads (and sells) this stuff for a living.
Pull up a chair under the moon. Let's talk about what we're reading, why it matters, and who's being left out of the conversation.
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Did you know that only 5% of widely read novels from major publishers between 1950 and 2018 were written by BIPOC authors?
Grab your cafecito and sit down for this one, because in this week's episode, we explore what it truly looks like for BIPOC authors in the publishing industry, how Indie Bookstores support them, and how you can make a difference in these statistics with minimal effort and more conscientious choices.
What are you willing to give up in the name of representation?
Additional Show Notes: Reflect sources for factual data presented in this episode.
**Primary source:** Richard Jean So & Gus Wezerek, *"Just How White Is the Book Industry?"* — *The New York Times*, Dec. 11, 2020. Based on a dataset of ~8,000 fiction books by ~4,100 authors published by major U.S. houses between 1950–2018. - The study found **95% of these books were by white authors**, meaning BIPOC authors accounted for the remaining ~5%. - Independently confirmed by PEN America's *"Reading Between the Lines"* report, which cites the same 95%/5% figure. - Penguin Random House released internal survey data showing **23.5% of authors published 2019–2021 identified as people of color.** - Hachette Book Group's 2022 diversity update reported **34% of 2021 book acquisitions were with self-identified BIPOC authors/illustrators**, up from 29% (2020) and 22% (2019). Source: Hachette Book Group, *"An Update on HBG's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Efforts,"* March 2022. - PEN America's report confirms that, as of August 2022, the other three of the Big Five had not made comparable author diversity data public. Cristina Rivera Garza — awards named in the episode - **Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize** — won twice (one of only two authors to do so). - **MacArthur Fellowship** — awarded 2020. - Confirmed via Wikipedia, University of Houston faculty page, and multiple news outlets (Houston Chronicle, Houston Public Media, CultureMap Houston). - Rivera Garza also won the **2024 Pulitzer Prize for Memoir or Autobiography** for *Liliana's Invincible Summer*
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Representation and change happen with small, intentional actions!
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Hey there, book lover. Welcome back to Casaluna on Shelf, where we pull the stories off the shelves and into the light. Grab your reading light, get comfy, and let's talk books, bands, and everything else in between. Today I wanna talk to you about something that's been sitting with me for a long time. But first of all, welcome to our very first full episode of Casa Luna Unshelved. We're gonna dive into representation and literature, the numbers behind it, and why it's so personal for me. So let's get into it. In 1950, only 5% of widely read novels from major publishers were written by BIPOC authors. Fast forward to 2022, and 89% of all books acquired by the big five publishers still went to white authors. Only two of those five publishers, Penguin Random House and Hashette, have ever made their author diversity numbers public. The other three have simply chosen not to. My name is Melix. And that's not a Maxima Mexican, and it's not a single Spanish. That is a China woman. And the person behind Casaluna Books, an indie shop built around Latina, BIPOC, and indie voices. I didn't start digging into these numbers because I wanted statistics for a caption. I started digging because I kept noticing that brilliant Latin authors, writers like Cristina Rivera Garza, who's won the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize, and a MacArthur Fellowship doing extraordinary award caliber work was still getting a fraction of the spotlight in comparison to their white counterparts. And I'm gonna say this plainly because I think it matters. Yes, I own a bookshop, and yes, I need it to succeed. That's my passion project, that's my livelihood. However, that has never been the mission behind Casaluna, and it's not the mission behind this show. I'm genuinely personally immersed in this fight. As a Mexican woman who grew up straddling two languages and rarely saw either of them fully reflected on a bookshelf, this is not a sales pitch wearing an activism costume. This is just who I am and the things that matter to me. So with that said, here's the twist that really got me. You would think that, okay, maybe those stories just live in Spanish instead. But less than 1% of books published in the United States are translated works at all. And a huge amount of the Spanish language books that do reach our shelves aren't even written by Latino authors for a Latino audience here. They're imported from Spain or Latin America. So the gap isn't about readership. There are millions of Spanish-speaking and bilingual readers in this country hungry for these stories. The gap is about access, about who gets picked up and who gets left to be found only if you go digging for it. That's the world Casaluna exists inside. Not a lack of talent, not a lack of readers, a lack of doors being opened for these authors and these stories. And here's what this gap looked like for me in my own life. I was born in 1986. I'm 40 years old now, and it took me becoming a full grown woman, opening my own bookshop to actually go looking to find Latino authors writing across every genre you can imagine. Genres like mystery, romance, fantasy, literary fiction, all of it. And where did I find them? It wasn't on the front table of a big chain bookstore. It was on TikTok, on social media, on Instagram. Because that is definitely not where the big publishing houses were putting them. Most of what I carry on my shelves right now is self-published work from small presses. Not because the writing isn't good enough for a major deal. These authors are producing work at the same caliber as their traditionally published counterparts. Honestly, sometimes sharper and braver in the same exact genres. But caliber was never really the barrier. Access was. And that has a real cost behind just visibility. These writers aren't getting the same advances, they're not getting the same marketing budgets, the same royalty structures as authors who look like the industry's idea of quote unquote safe bet. So it's not only that they're overlooked, but they're also quite literally underpaid for the same work. Sit with that for a second. An entire generation of readers, my generation, kids who are Latino or black or Asian or Indigenous right now went or are still going through childhood, never seeing themselves on a page unless someone goes digging for it on an app built for 15 second videos, not in a bookstore built to hold their stories. That is not a small gap. That's a generation raised believing that their stories are somehow less worthy of being told. And there's one more piece to this puzzle, and anyone who knows me knows that this is the bane of my existence. And it's Amazon. Publishing industry leaders have gone on record about this. Amazon has built its dominance in online book sales partly through what's called a loss leader pricing. This means that it's gonna sell books below what it actually costs, sometimes taking a loss on every single copy, specifically to undercut competition and drive traffic to its platform. Think about what that means for a self-published author or a small press, right? They don't have Amazon's balance sheet behind them, just like I don't. They have to price their book at what it actually costs to print, ship, and still make a living. So next to a mega bestseller that Amazon is selling at a loss, an indie author's book looks expensive by comparison, even though it's the honestly priced one. And readers also understandably gravitate towards convenience and lower prices. I get it, but it means indie authors and disproportionately BIPOC and Latin A authors already shut out of traditional publishing, end up looking overpriced for simply trying to earn a fair wage from their own work. Amazon's goal has never been about getting books into readers' hands. It's always been about controlling the market. And the people who pay for that the most are exactly the writers this show exists to spotlight. Now, I want to be clear about something before I close this out, because it's important. Casa Luna still carries traditionally published books by white authors, because every story, in my opinion, has value, and I never want a reader to feel like they can't find their favorite book on my shelves. What I am careful about is who I choose to stock beyond the big, obvious names. I look at whether an author's values and ethics actually align with what this show and this shop stand for. And that carries over to in the authors as well. Not every in the author fighting Amazon and the traditional publishing gatekeepers is BIPOC. Plenty of white indie authors are up against their own version of this same fight, just not in the same way. And they're not carrying the same historical weight that we are. So as long as a book is written ethically and the author's values line up with what we're building here, there is room for them at Casaluna. This was never about exclusion. It's about making sure that the door swings open for the people who've been kept out of it the longest. And here's where all of that leaves us. We need to keep talking about representation in literature loudly, consistently, not just during heritage months, hey, I see you September, or after a controversy makes headlines. We need to keep supporting indie bookshops and indie authors and put them in the spotlight every chance we get because nobody else is gonna hand them that platform. And maybe the hardest part, we need to stop shopping for convenience and start shopping for impact. That means occasionally paying a little more, waiting a little longer, seeking out the small press or the self-published title instead of just clicking the cheapest option in front of us. Because the only way any of this changes is if we choose it consciously and hold ourselves and each other accountable to that choice. It has to be intentional. So here's what I'm asking of you directly. Go find an indie bookshop. Mine, of course, is always on the table. Or one in your own neighborhood and give them your business before you give it to the giant with the fastest shipping. Seek out BIPOC and Latin authors on purpose. Follow them. Buy their books. Tell a friend about them. Every single purchase is a vote for who gets to keep telling these stories. That's what Casaluna is built on. Not convenience, impact. Not the easiest shelf, the right one. And that's exactly the work this show is going to keep doing. Episode after episode until the shelf looks just like us. So, in closing, thank you so much for hanging out under the moon with me. I hope that my words resonated with you in some way. Stay curious, stay in the know, and keep the light on for stories that need it most. Until next time, bye.
