Chances are, your bookshelf at home is overwhelmingly white. While about one in four Australians have a non-European background, our publishing industry has a way to go to reflect that. It’s what led friends Marina Sano and Jing Xuan Teo to open Amplify Bookstore.
In the middle of the pandemic and 2020’s Black Lives Matter movement, the two students, studying for an MA in publishing and communications, channelled their frustration at publishing’s lack of diversity into something tangible. After toying with the idea of starting a diversity-focused publishing house (but quickly realising they lacked the skills to do so), they settled on an online bookstore selling books written solely by Black, Indigenous and people of colour (BIPOC) authors.
“We said, ‘Instead of publishing new voices, what if we just highlighted the voices that already existed?’” Teo tells Broadsheet. “It was the audacity that you only have at 21 when you’re like, ‘I can do anything’.”
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SIGN UPThe duo are now in their fifth year of operation. Since November, they’ve called West Melbourne home, with a pop-up across the road from Queen Victoria Market. Prior to having a storefront, the pair housed their stock wherever Sano was living. Picture piles of books slowly taking over her sharehouses and you have the idea. While the lease on the pop-up was scheduled to end in February, they’ve decided to extend it to October.
Since opening a physical location, they have heard all the opinions there are about what they do. In a now-deleted video, Teo filmed an encounter with a man who spent 15 minutes criticising the store’s purpose, calling it a form of segregation.
“People get really uppity about race,” Teo says. “Does he get upset every time he goes to a Thai restaurant and he can’t get Chinese food [or a] parma? You understand it’s a Thai restaurant and therefore you can only get Thai food.”
The concept of only stocking BIPOC authors is controversial for some. Teo defends their choice, saying that niche, specialist stores aren’t anything new. (It’s worth noting that Books for Cooks, a 42-year-old bookstore that only stocks books about food and drink, sits just around the corner from Amplify Bookstore.)
While sceptics, industry veterans and potential mentors have told the co-founders that limiting author selection will hinder their bottom line, Teo and Sano have found a community that embraces them. Amplify’s customer base is predominantly white and Teo estimates the split is about 60/40.
In 2018, the New York Times found that only 11 per cent of books published that year were written by a person of colour. In the same year, it was found that 7 per cent of books published in Australia were by an author of colour, and 3 per cent by a First Nations author (about 3.8 per cent of Australians identify as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander). Amplify Bookstore’s mission is to well, amplify, these voices.
This commitment aside, the bookshop is like any other – there’s a range of genres that fall in and out of vogue. Contemporary fiction and literary fiction are highly sought after right now, but sci-fi, fantasy and young-adult fiction have been bestsellers before. Korean- and Japanese-translated books are popular too.
From the current stock, Teo recommends Santilla Chingaipe’s Black Convicts, Octavia E Butler’s Patternist series, Aube Rey Lescure’s River East, River West, Adib Khorram’s Darius the Great Is Not Okay and Wisam Rafeedie’s The Trinity of Fundamentals.
Nine out of 10 of Amplify’s 2024 bestsellers were by Palestinian authors (and in just over three months, Amplify Bookstore donated over $3400 to Palestine Australia Relief and Action). Books are inherently political, and who we read matters. Sano and Teo know this better than most.
Amplify Bookstore
55 Peel Street, West Melbourne
No phone
Hours
Fri 3pm–8pm
Sat & Sun 10am–6pm