#DisabilityFiction Amazon Success!

Penny along with fellow author Victoria Scott’s campaign for Amazon to add a disability fiction category in adult books has been a great success.

Penny and Victoria discovered Amazon’s oversight when their debut novels - Patience and My Perfect Sister, both of which feature disabled characters - were published. To their astonishment, they found that Amazon’s adult fiction categories, which are highly prized among authors due to the “bestseller” status they bestow, did not contain a disability fiction category. They did, however, include fiction categories such as: coming of age, aviation, fertility, animal fostering and contemporary urban. Victoria and Penny asked - why not disability? They feel that disability is often marginalised and overlooked, and they believe that representation in culture is an extremely important part of building an accepting and diverse society.

After their initial direct approach to Amazon failed to bring about change, Penny and Victoria embarked on their campaign, which included social media posts with the hashtag #disabilityfiction, an appeal via the Society of Authors and also included a post by Penny for her column in The Bookseller.

Both Victoria and Penny have personal connections to the disability world - Penny was born with Osteogenesis Imperfecta, more commonly known as brittle bones, and Victoria’s sister Clare has Rett syndrome and is profoundly disabled.

On Wednesday, Amazon UK contacted the pair via The Society of Authors to let them know that they had decided to introduce the new category after all.

Responding to the news, Penny said: “It’s estimated that around ten per cent of the world’s population are disabled, and yet this is a group which is severely under-represented in fiction. We believe that this chart will bring positive change, and certainly increase the visibility of novels which feature the joys and challenges of living with a disability.”

Victoria added: “This is such an important step forward in the battle for visibility and understanding for disabled people and their allies, because fiction is a brilliant way of spreading the word without lecturing people.”