As a young book blogger in 2011, I was frustrated & discouraged by massive international publishers' 'inability' to provide physical ARCs of Caribbean books to the Caribbean. It never occurred to me to challenge that system like @BookOfCinz, @akilamantado and others are now.

I think I believed I was being diligent and responsible, but it was to an archaic system governed by the frequently racist hierarchy surrounding book rights as they relate to Caribbean space. That hierarchy still exists, but younger voices than mine are working to fight it.

Let me say it plainly.

Caribbean book reviewers & Caribbean booksellers should not have to fight as much as we do to receive ARCs & shipments of Caribbean books. If a big publisher is unconcerned about this struggle, it signifies they care little about their Caribbean authors.

That is, such publishers care that their Caribbean authors make them money, win them prizes, and strengthen their stable. But they cannot be said to care about the Caribbean booksellers fighting up to stock these books, the Caribbean reviewers only given e-copies *after* begging.

"We have no rights to ship to the Caribbean".

"We have no rights to ship to the Caribbean."

"We have no rights to ship to the Caribbean."

As a Caribbean bookseller, I've heard this for ten years. My boss has heard it for thirty.

Who has the rights, then?

"We can't help."

There is something especially cruel about the impersonal nature of this: it's not like the big publishers are *trying* to hurt us. It's that they haven't considered us lucrative enough to care about, to factor in protocols around, to include in conversations about several rights.

I used to think we could prevail in this decades-long slap in the face through a certain respectability politics, and I played my part in it. Toe the line, be exceptional, so they have no choice but to send ARCs, no choice but to supply you with books.

It works, but painfully.

Because you then find yourself the 'exceptional' reviewer or bookseller, the one where the rules can be broken/bent just this once. This one ARC, this one shipment. And that leaves your Caribbean colleagues out in the cold.

Some might say it's the price of doing business. But.

It's not. It's a tiring, long game in which you end up exhausted and the giant publishers are unfazed. In this game you teach the superstructure how to focus on just you, and we have been teaching them all wrong. I understand *why*, but we hurt only ourselves for such small gain.

So today I find myself extraordinarily grateful for the fresh blood in the fight. Grateful for the age that offers us an IG Story-length callout of Publishers S&S, LB, PRH, et al.

I have been a student of diplomacy & well-written letters in this scrapdown.

Time for a new way.