Everyone's having a Halle Berry moment

Even without notes - which she had left in her handbag - Andrea Levy accepted her Orange prize this week for her novel Small Island with a speech that was gracious and funny. Yet along with the comment that "parents are all very well, but we should all be allocated an agent at birth" came another: "I don't get tearful, but I've just had my own Halle Berry moment." The British publishing industry as a whole seems to be having a Halle Berry moment - what with Zadie Smith, Hari Kunzru and Monica Ali storming the prize lists - and you can't help but celebrate.

Yet, as always, there is another side. I have found that, if you are a "multicultural" writer mulling over the possibility of a book, there are two things of particular interest to a publisher or agent: a multicultural, preferably urban novel, or another Jung Chang juggernaut. If that isn't what you want to do at the moment - if you're more interested in a literary biography, for example, or something more conceptual - it's a lot harder to get a hearing.

I don't know if this is generally the case, though I suspect it might be; I certainly have no wish to perpetuate casual, catch-all "ethnic" bracketings; or to suggest that such stories should not be written. You write what you know, with all the talent you can muster, and if your viewpoint is slightly different from the usual, slightly more individual, so much the better.

But book publishing is a business. If people can't see how to market the thing, can't see the headlines, or how it worked before, it's a risk to take it on. (There is a similar ageist argument, of course - that you have to be young and photogenic to be considered, and some publishers and agents have proudly begun to buck this trend.) Yet it is tempting to feel that, for all the visible strides in the right direction, this is still a small island.

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