DENVER — Conservative leaders in Colorado are urging criminal prosecutions of librarians and school leaders who won't ban books, often books involving LGBTQ characters. Despite that, LGBTQ+ book sales are up.
According to data provided to NBC News by Circana BookScan, a data provider for the publishing industry, LGBTQ book sales are up 7% from last year and up 200% from 2019.
This comes as the American Library Association (ALA) said there were 695 attempts to censor books across the country this year - the most since they started tracking in 2001. The ALA said most of the books challenged this year are written about or by people of color or those who identify as LGBTQ.
Dylah Ray is the owner of Petals and Pages a bookstore in the Santa Fe Arts District.
"We are queer owned, and managed, and in our shop," Ray said. "Our banned book table is one of our most popular tables in the store. People are wanting to read those books. I think if we write them, if we sell them, people will come. They're interested in buying them."
The challenge now is continuing to write them. In a previous interview with NBC News, LGBTQ+ author Mark Oshiro said that after he made a banned list, multiple teachers cancelled class visits and sales never spiked.
Another banned author, Maia Kobabe, found a lot of success. Kobabe worries for other LGBTQ+ authors who may not be as lucky.
"Please don't let the threat of censorship silence your voice before you've even spoken," Kobabe said in an interview with NBC News.
Rae said she will continue to put the books often buried in other stores on full display.
"As a lesbian woman myself, if I had these books when I was a teenager or in college it would have been enormously transformative and helpful, and a way for me to connect with literature, for me to connect with the arts, to connect with community and my identity. I think this is something our community has been waiting for, for a long time," Ray said. "I think if these books were not popular, and if society was not asking for them, and they didn’t have the transformative potential to bring about change and more open mindedness and awareness, the books wouldn’t be banned."
Despite LGBTQ+ book sales being up, total fiction sales are down. Some in the industry said it really speaks to the movement LGBTQ+ authors are in right now. They're writing LGBTQ+ characters into storylines they've never been in before.
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