We all know that getting a book published by a mainstream publishing house isn’t easy, but is it possible that it could be more difficult to people from different cultural backgrounds or race groups? A lot of people are inclined to think that the complaints of racial bias that we hear are exaggerated, but are they really? Multi-cultural authors say that they believe their cultural background plays a role in publication rejections.

That’s not to say that the bias is even conscious. Science Daily reports that a recent study on unconscious cultural bias produced alarming results. The Implicit Association Test produced a finding indicating that 70% of people experience some form of unconscious racial bias. This includes people who will declare their belief for inter-cultural equality and who intellectually subscribe to this ideal. However, their subconscious mind contradicts their intellect. Harvard professor, Dr David Williams agrees. Unconscious racial bias is real and affects people from a variety of cultures.

This controversial finding certainly seems to lend credence to claims that multi-cultural authors find it much more difficult to get a book published. Since the bias against them is unconscious, it becomes all the more difficult to overcome.

Toronto is the most multi-cultural city in the world bar none and it is therefore fitting that AgoraPublishing, a Canadian-based self-publishing organisation is aware of the added obstacles for multi-cultural authors and is not only striving to overcome them, but succeeding in doing so.

There’s a lot more to successful self-publishing than most of us believe and in the past, writers that self-published were on their own when it came to marketing, distribution, promotion and so on. Small wonder that most self-published books remained obscure. AgoraPublishing removes these obstacles by using a professional team who have all the know-how and contacts to get the multi-cultural author’s book noticed.

Aspiring authors from multi-cultural backgrounds no longer have to face potential discrimination and marginalisation by mainstream publishers. They can self-publish and the entire process that transforms the manuscript into a book and gets it into bookstores and onto readers’ bookshelves is no longer their problem. Self-publication for the diverse Toronto writing community gives aspiring authors the opportunity to be promoted as thoroughly as mainstream authors. The published work has as good a chance of becoming a bestseller as any other book and multi-cultural authors are finally able to achieve exposure for their work.

It’s not only new authors who are increasingly turning to the self-publishing option. The power of the large and cumbersome publishing houses is being undermined by the decreasing costs of publication and the increased accessibility of services to self-publishing authors. Whereas a large print run that most new authors couldn’t afford was required for self-publication in the past, books can now be printed on demand. This significantly reduces the input cost required to self-publish and promotes accessibility of this option. Access to promotional and marketing services means that a self-published book is not a ‘vanity publication’ any longer – it really can make it big, regardless of the author’s cultural background.