Earlier this year, after having seen books like “Heroine Complex,” “Trade Me” and “Forbidden” fly off shelves at the Ripped Bodice, their Culver City, Calif., bookstore that specializes in romance fiction, Bea and Leah Koch got curious.

Seven of the 10 best-selling novels from the time of the store’s opening in March 2016 through the end of that year were written by nonwhite women. So why was the overall percentage of books that were written by nonwhite women and released by the major romance publishing imprints, like Avon Romance, at HarperCollins, and Berkley, at Penguin Random House, so low?

With its fainting-couch décor, the Ripped Bodice is an informal meeting place for romance readers, writers and publishers who linger at the store as they peruse titles, work on manuscripts and discuss industry trends.

Racial diversity — or the lack of it — in books by authors writing for big publishing houses, has been a frequent anecdotal topic. It is one that has become even more vexing to people in the romance book business since 2014, when a Pew study indicated that one of the most significant book-buying demographics is college-educated black women.