Image: Xuan and Marina, founders of Amplify Bookstore (supplied).
‘So not just authors with anything wrong with them?’ the book rep said.
I stopped in my tracks and did a few slow blinks to process what I’d just been asked. I was on the phone, and this was one of my first communications with a major publisher. I’d been trying to explain the concept of my new bookshop, which was going to exclusively sell books by authors who are BIPOC—Black, Indigenous and/or people of colour. Initially, the rep had offered a book by a marginalised white writer. Baffled by the relevance of this, I asked them if the author was a person of colour. They weren’t. Once I’d re-established what I was after, we quickly crossed out similar books outside of our remit (a recurring habit of book reps to this day!).
As soon as I hung up, I called my friend-turned-business partner, Xuan, to rant about the call. ‘It’s 2020! How can they still not understand?’
Xuan and I had met a year prior, working on our university magazine. We were in the department for BIPOC. It was the first time that I had been in a space unapologetically run by and for racially diverse readers, and the experience was surprisingly cathartic. I had applied for the mag still unsure whether, as a white and East Asian biracial person, I ‘counted’ as a POC. Writing and publishing work that reflected my life and interests affirmed my sense of my identity (and I even contributed a reading list of books by or about multiracial people).
Working on this mag first got me thinking more widely about the lack of diversity in my reading. I spent my whole life a voracious reader, growing up with books as company in place of siblings. And yet, I was twenty before I first read a book about a character who shared my racial background (shout out to Starfish author Akemi Dawn Bowman). I was already two years deep into studying tertiary literature! Of the more than thirty-five books from my assigned reading across those three years, only about a fifth were by authors of colour—and I had taken a class on global and postcolonial literature!
I was twenty when I first read a book about a character who shared my racial background.
It was powerful to find a character who had struggled with their racial identity like I had, who had parents from different cultures, who walked through life with a constantly shifting sense of identity enforced by the perception of strangers. Every story I had ever read had been a window instead of a mirror. When I was finally shown my reflection, I was stunned to realise that I’d simply never believed—or expected—that it could exist. As the main character explains in Adib Khorram’s Darius the Great is Not Okay, ‘Sometimes, being half feels like being none at all.’ But finding books that explored sentiments like this, informed by lived experience, suddenly afforded me the thought that I wasn’t as alone as I had often felt. That my experiences were not so singularly isolating. From that point, I began to expand my reading, almost obsessively.
About a year later, in May 2020, I wrote an essay for my Masters degree about the need for racially diverse representation. My research led me to understand that my lack of exposure wasn’t because of my reading tastes but because only around ten per cent of books published are by people of colour (an American statistic; a smaller local study found that it was even fewer in Australia).
Simultaneously, the Black Lives Matter movement was gaining traction online. It looked so promising. Seeing such widespread support for a social issue (against racism, no less), I was suddenly full of hope. The thing that stuck with me was the surge in anti-racist reading lists. They offered such a simple, actionable way to practise better allyship, to support underrepresented writers and to learn about systemic issues. Publishers raced to fill the demand.
By even this level of outrage wasn’t enough—the momentum fizzled out. The ‘trend’ started to fade away. It became apparent that so much of the support was purely performative. Something just sort of cracked in me. I had to do something.
It was the middle of one of Melbourne’s early Covid lockdowns, and I could hardly think about anything else. The BLM surge sparked extensive conversations globally. Australia, with its colonial legacy and endemic mistreatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, suffers from the same structural racism. Just like in the US, our nation still has a long way to go to stop deaths in custody, human rights abuses and racial vilification. There was also a huge spike in anti-Asian hate following pandemic fearmongering.
I was trapped in the house, watching people pretend to care about what was going on, and I turned to Xuan as an ally who would understand my rage.
My lack of exposure wasn’t because of my reading tastes.
During our frustrated discussions about the state of the world, we started spit-balling ideas about how we could make things better. They escalated quickly: ‘We’ll start a publishing house!’ (‘No, we don’t know how.’). Then it became: ‘We’ll start a bookshop and it’ll be cute and cosy and have coffee and snacks and couches and racists aren’t allowed in.’ (‘We don’t know how to do that either!’)
We kept chatting and scaled down to something realistic. It was mid-lockdown, we were studying and we had few resources but ourselves. We figured that the internet was free and we knew how to use it. We wouldn’t need money for marketing if we focused on social media, and we knew how to use that. If we only sold books by BIPOC, the whole operation would be easier because of its specificity (how wrong we were!). We realised somewhere along the way that we’d become quite serious about it and Amplify snowballed into existence. With a loan from my family (an immense privilege) and a lot of behind-the-scenes admin by me and Xuan, my share house dining room became a makeshift warehouse and head of operations.
Images: Amplify Bookstore’s operation headquarters in Marina’s house (supplied).
Starting a bookshop from scratch was daunting. We were on the hunt for a guide. Potential mentors (all white) told us that it was a terrible idea: ‘Without normal books, you won’t be able stay afloat.’ (We heard ‘normal’ used as a stand-in for ‘white’ more than once, always as a poor euphemism.) So we powered on alone, which turned out to be quite difficult. (We found out about TitlePage, the industry site for book records, months into me googling every book I needed to list on the shop).
After Amplify opened for business, we were adopted by new unofficial ‘mentors’ who were enthusiastic about what we were trying to do. Liminal, the influential anti-racist online literary magazine, was an early supporter. Founder Leah Jing McIntosh has provided us with much guidance and support (all the way down to tote bag design). From there, our network grew. We had help from uni tutors and other BIPOC publishing professionals and writers who helped open doors. In an overwhelmingly white industry, having this network has provided immeasurable emotional support and encouragement. Growing out of lockdown and into the physical world, Xuan and I also started doing pop-up bookshop events, meaning we could reach new readers offline.
Image: Amplify Bookstore selling books at a literary event (supplied).
Aside from these vital connections, the crux of Amplify has always been the friendship between Xuan and me. After starting a business almost entirely over Zoom and then experiencing the growing pains of something brand new, times were tough. We’re very different people, and about a year into the store (and many months of lockdowns), we were clashing endlessly. We worked through it, because when you both believe so strongly in your project, it’s easy to centre your attention on keeping it afloat. It’s been much smoother sailing once we figured out how to separate the store and our friendship (including separating work discussions from social chatting, as well as spending time together in ‘friendship mode’).
The crux of Amplify has always been the friendship between Xuan and me.
And it hasn’t all been so grim! From those first initial orders to the community we’ve created, I’m beyond proud of the space that we have carved out with Amplify. People often shop with a clear focus, checking out with a cart full of books from one country. My very favourite thing is that our shop is helping people feel seen. We know from the comments on orders, DMs and face-to-face conversations that people are grateful for what we do and that they find comfort in it. That enthusiasm offers such welcome sparks of hope in what is often a bleak job when I look at the catalogues and see lists that are largely unsuitable for us.
Still, running Amplify has never been about trying to build an empire. (Both of us have day jobs in publishing now, our presence part of important changes in representation behind the scenes.) We just want people to actually be able to find the books that we sell, and for the publishing industry to see the value in making that a reality. As Munanjahli and South Sea Islander writer Chelsea Watego writes in Another Day in the Colony: ‘We need stories that are written by us and for us, that challenge us and nourish us—exclusively.’ And that us is specific—minorities aren’t a monolith. Xuan and I can’t speak for everyone, nor are we ever trying to. We’ve created Amplify as a hub to serve every BIPOC reader that we can, but I can’t wait for the day that the need for it becomes obsolete.
