BIBLIOPHOBIA

There's nothing Steven Schragis likes more than a good controversy. He's the publisher responsible for, among other things, C. David Heymann's gossip fest, A Woman Named Jackie. But the uproar over Darius James' first novel, Negrophobia, is more than the head of Carol Publishing bargained for. The story of Bubbles Brazil, a white teenager whose worst racist hallucinations come to life when she goes under a voodoo spell, Negrophobia is one of only three original works purchased for Carol's Citadel Underground line (which was launched in 1990 to publish out-of-print cult classics). Before the novel even reached bookstores last month, some black employees at Carol objected to its startling cover image of a white woman cowering beneath a shadowy black apparition. Now James says Schragis isn't promoting it, and he accuses an African-American in Carol's sales department of sabotaging the book with bookstore owners. (The employee denies it.) Negrophobia ''slipped through without anyone at Carol actually reading it,'' James contends. Counters Schragis, ''I have read it because of the controversy. I can't really relate to it, but we wanted to do something original for the Underground line and the buzz was that James was it.'' Regardless of Carol's alleged lack of promotional efforts, the 7,000-copy printing is selling, and stores have requested more, according to Gary Fitzgerald, Carol's vice president of sales and marketing. ''But I did notice,'' he adds, ''that there were more skips (bookstores that decline to place orders) than usual, and that the stores not ordering it were black bookstores.'' Ironically, the conflict may signal the end of new acquisitions for Citadel Underground. ''We've cut it back,'' says Schragis, who is no longer on speaking terms with James.