Racial diversity has been an on-going battle within the publishing industry over the last several decades, but only until the very last few years has diversification truly been recognized as a significant issue within romantic fiction especially, becoming increasingly mediatized by publishers’ authors and readers.

With publishers finally placing some acknowledgment in the importance of diversity through schemes and initiatives like the BAME short story award, giving more opportunities with people of colour. Yet these intiatives are extremely underfunded and can only be offered to individuals who can afford to move or commute to london, which means that it truly decreases the chances of helping provide opportunities for people of colour.The progression of diversity in the romantic fiction is very much lacking, with an extremely prominent lack of racial diversity, within this industry both through the authors writing it and the representation of ethnicity in the narratives themselves.

The romance genre has a very little amount of multicultural romance fiction, with a primarily white percentage of authors and publishers, it demonstrates, where the core issue lies, that simply publishers are not commissioning enough authors of colour, to truly diversify,  this industry for the better. In 2020 the Ripped Bodice announced that 78% of major publishers, still have less than 10% of books published by people of colour, truly demonstrating just how narrow-minded publishers have become for change, with a small majority of publishers decreasing in diversity, it shows just how unadaptable romance publishers are in the current age. This needs to change now!