MISSION Sistah Scifi is the first Black-owned bookstore focused on Science Fiction and Fantasy in the United States validated by the American Booksellers Association. Our vision is to double the number of Science Fiction & Fantasy titles by Black and Indigenous authors on the New York Times Best Sellers list by launching a national network of book vending machines. This would make the discovery of Afrofuturism & Indigenous Futurism books as easy as buying a candy bar.
PROBLEM 98% of authors on bestseller lists, who are the beneficiaries of promotion, marketing, media attention, and book tours are White.* Diving deeper, in the fifty years between 1970 and 2020, less than ten speculative fiction titles by Black and Indigenous authors made the New York Times Best Sellers list. **
As a result, many avid readers of Black literature and Science Fiction believe that there is a lack of diverse writers in genre. For example, how many Black women Science Fiction and Fantasy authors can you name? How many Indigenous women authors? Don't worry, Sistah Scifi is here to help!
SOLUTION Sistah Scifi is a technology company leveraging ecommerce and social commerce:
- Our highly optimized online bookstore is in the top 3% of Shopify stores,
- Facebook and Instagram traffic account 13% of our sales,
- In the past 12 months, our social media reach has exceeded 2.5M views,
- Our email open rate is 37% versus the industry of 16%, with a click thru rate of 4.6%!,
- We held 67 virtual events in 2021 with over 1.4K attendees and 225 of them attending at least two events.
This allows us to have a national footprint versus a regional focus. Our community spans 35K+ highly engaged readers from LA to DC growing at a rate of 1K a month.
As a result, Sistah Scifi has been featured in:
Our biggest accomplishment to date is being a part of the promotional team that ensured that The Memory Librarian by Janelle Monae debuted the New York Times best sellers list.
USE OF FUNDS
We are raising funds to launch four book vending machines from in Black-owned cafes in Seattle, Oakland, Denver.
THANK YOU
Join us in building the Black-owned bookstore of the future by supporting our IFundWomen crowdfunding campaign. We have lots of amazing perks from curated Black and Indigenous speculative fiction playlists and watchlists to marketing packages for Black and Indigenous indie Science Fiction and Fantasy writers.
Remember, claim our magic; create our future. And we all say ashe.
SOURCES