I trust book buyers to read beyond their immediate experience, beyond their census box. This is what readers have done since literacy became commonplace, so I don’t know why that’s a great leap for our industry today. But I still hear it all the time: “Does this group buy books?” “Is this group enough of an audience?” I hear real fear in that question.

Lee and Low Books, an independent publisher, just released a Diversity Baseline Survey of the publishing industry for 2015, and it's well worth reading.