sourcebooks fire

Indie publisher Sourcebooks has teamed up with Ebony Magazine Publishing of the renowned Black media brand to produce adult fiction and nonfiction books.

Together, Sourcebooks and Ebony plan to publish four to eight books a year, first starting with Black Hollywood: Reimagining Iconic Movie Moments by photographer Carell Augustus. The photography book will come out in October and feature images of Black actors from Vanessa L. Williams as Cleopatra to Vivica A. Fox as Veronica Lake. Upcoming fiction includes the first book in the crime thriller Martyr Maker series originally self-published by actor Eriq La Salle.

“It’s wonderful to partner with the forward-thinking team at Sourcebooks,” said Lavaille Lavette, president and publisher of Ebony Magazine Publishing, in a statement. “This collaboration with our flagship imprint Ebony Magazine Publishing will celebrate the broad spectrum of Black voices through powerful fiction and nonfiction stories with authors who represent and speak to the full spectrum of our culture.”

Ebony’s publishing arm focuses on stories in the genres of fiction, nonfiction, culture, and children’s literature through its imprints Ebony Classics, Ebony 2.0., Ebony Voices, and Ebony Jr. It’s also home to the Ebony Book Club.

Helmed by CEO and publisher Dominique Raccah, Sourcebooks is one of the largest woman-owned publishers based in the Chicago area that specializes in young adult, fantasy, mystery and crime, thriller and suspense, diverse literature, LGBTQ+ literature, and children’s literature.

“We are thrilled to be partnering with EBONY to showcase the extraordinary work of Black authors and celebrate Black stories,” Dominique said in the statement. “Books change lives, and Ebony Magazine Publishing will be life-changing for authors and readers alike.”

In summer 2020, author Kimberly Jones was known for her young adult novel, I’m Not Dying with You Tonight, co-authored with Gilly Segal. At a protest in Atlanta in the aftermath of George Floyd‘s murder, she broke down the racial inequities plaguing Black communities in a six-minute viral video that has now inspired a new book.

How We Can Win: Race, History and Changing the Money Game That’s Rigged, out this week, explores systemic racism and the economic disparities holding back Black Americans. Henry Holt and Co. is the publisher.

In the video that was viewed by millions across social media platforms, a quote about comparing the socioeconomic factors at play with the game of Monopoly resonated with viewers and contributed to the book’s title, she revealed in a CBS Mornings interview with Gayle King, Nate Burleson, and Tony Dokoupil.

So if I played four hundred rounds of Monopoly with you and I had to play and give you every dime that I made, and then for fifty years, every time that I played, if you didn’t like what I did, you got to burn it like they did in Tulsa and like they did in Rosewood, how can you win? How can you win?
Kimberly Jones

Though some viewers stereotyped her as an angry Black woman for how she delivered her speech on camera in 2020, Kimberly called it “righteous anger.”

“I think sometimes in righteous anger you get to express to people your pain, and I think that’s what people saw,” she said on the news show. “Even though they saw an angry woman, they saw a hurt woman, so they felt that and they were like, ‘Omigod, the pain is visible.'”

She also explained that viewers had reached out to her and said her delivery in the video enlivened the argument well enough to the point they forwarded it to their loved ones in hopes they better understand systemic racism.

“There’s no way to nurture empathy in people if they don’t know the full story,” she said. I think one of the greatest mistakes that we have made is we talk a lot about the miseducation of the Black child, but it’s really the miseducation of the American child that has allowed us to live in a way that we don’t have empathy for each other because it’s in that education, it’s in that knowledge that you can empathize.”

Kimberly teamed up with Gilly Segal a second time for the YA novel Why We Fly that came out last October from indie publisher Sourcebooks Fire.