James Patterson said white men face 'racism' in publishing. What do book sales say?

You know who's really got it rough in this country? White men.

If you had trouble reading that sentence with a straight face, so did the thousands of people who criticized author James Patterson on social media last week when he kicked a culture war hornet's nest.

In an interview about his new memoir "James Patterson by James Patterson: The Stories of My Life" with The Sunday Times that published this month, Patterson, 75, lamented the perceived plight of white men in the entertainment industry, calling their struggle to find writing jobs in film, theater, TV and publishing industries "just another form of racism."

"What’s that all about?" he continued. "Can you get a job? Yes. Is it harder? Yes. It’s even harder for older writers. You don’t meet many 52-year-old white males."

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The backlash was loud and swift, with fellow authors – including Roxane Gay, Jason Pinter, Rebecca Makkai and Daniel José Older, among many – criticizing Patterson's comments. Writer Gina Denny responded with a Twitter thread of all the many white male authors currently on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list. It was a pileup so bruising, Patterson issued an apology via Twitter last Tuesday.

"I apologize for saying white male writers having trouble finding work is a form of racism," Patterson wrote. "I absolutely do not believe that racism is practiced against white writers. Please know that I strongly support a diversity of voices being heard – in literature, in Hollywood, everywhere."

Patterson's comments echo an increasingly common refrain in the escalating culture war: that increased attention given to diverse voices is robbing white people of opportunities, and that whiteness itself has become a liability in the entertainment industry and elsewhere.

But at least as far as publishing is concerned, Patterson's point of view isn't just unfashionable, it's objectively incorrect.

There's little in the way of definitive industrywide data about diversity in publishing. But bestsellers lists are reflections of publishing as a whole. By analyzing our sales data through a diversity lens, we can start to piece together a picture of the publishing landscape.

Taking inspiration from Denny's thread, we went back into USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list archives to to see whether there's been a noticeable shift from white authors in recent years. We looked at figures from 2021, the most recent full year of data, and 2016, which was before the end of Barack Obama's presidency and the Black Lives Matter protests that rocked the country.

Here's what the numbers say.

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White authors, and especially men, still dominate the best sellers list

Patterson is no stranger to bestsellers lists – he's long be a staple of the USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list, with 271 of his books making an appearance and 53 hitting No. 1.

He's joined by many white authors. A look back at the book list archives shows that the vast majority of bestsellers are written by white authors, and a majority of those authors are men. In the past five years, those numbers have not substantially improved for women or people of color.

A breakdown of our Top 50 best selling books from 2016 reveals 45 of them, or 90%, were written by white authors. The top-selling book by a nonwhite author was "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up," by Marie Kondo. She was joined by Indian American author Paul Kalanithi, Indian Canadian poet Rupi Kaur, Latino playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda and Black Pulitzer Prize winner Colson Whitehead.

That's it. Five.

The list is dominated with familiar white faces, including elder literary statesmen and women like J.K. Rowling, who took the top spot with "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Parts One and Two," Bill O'Reilly, John Grisham, David Baldacci, Nicholas Sparks and, yes, Patterson.

If it's getting harder for white people to succeed in the publishing industry, surely that would be reflected in our most recent numbers. But book list data from 2021 shows the opposite. Only four of the Top 50 bestselling books of the year were written by non-white authors.

Again, the list is littered with familiar white faces, with children's author and illustrator Dav Pilkey claiming the top spot with "Dog Man: Mothering Heights." The top-performing books for adults were Kristin Hannah's novel "The Four Winds" and Mark R. Levin's conservative polemic "American Marxism."

Men in general don't seem to be suffering much, either. In 2016, 33 books in the Top 50 were written by men. In 2021, it was 31, or 62%.

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Bridging the diversity gap starts with facing reality

Books diversity data outside of the USA TODAY bestsellers list also doesn't support Patterson's claim. In 2020, the New York Times compiled its own data to determine just how white the publishing industry is and in their sample, 89% of the books written in 2018 were by white authors. A 2019 survey also found that 85% of the people who acquire and edit books are white.

Major publisher Penguin Random House conducted a 2019-2021 diversity self-audit and found that 74.9% of its contributors in that period were white; only 6% were Black, while 5% were Hispanic or Latinx. The publisher's employees also skewed heavily white, making up 74.2% of its workforce.

It's good that Patterson unequivocally apologized for his comments. But it's also important to prove those comments were rooted in feelings, not facts. The irrefutable numbers show publishing is still far from equitable for nonwhite and women authors. That gap will not bridge itself, and powerful authors like Patterson can help close the distance if they see it.

Contributing: Mary Cadden and Hannah Yasharoff, USA TODAY.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: James Patterson said white authors have it hard. We checked book sales