Yes Black Folks should be paid, by you, not other broke Black folks. Thank you.

So yeah – I probably don’t need to comment on the recent controversies about small press publishers not paying people or not paying enough, but I can. so why not? Everyone knows I’m very opinionated and have edited by now, four anthologies or collections of writing by multiple authors. One is on a reputable small press publishing imprint let’s leave them out of this.

The other three – Scry of Lust, Black Celebration, & Wickedly Abled, are self-published with Iconoclast Productions – the non-profit that puts on the African American Multimedia Conference. My mom and I started Iconoclast, and it’s a grassroots community nonprofit. It runs on a shoestring budget. I could have crowd source funded the books but I did not. I am really poor and on Social Security. i am paying people $10 out of my SSDI check for Wickedly Abled.

I get free food from pantries and give zero fucks about your respectability politics. I don’t care about the awards you aren’t going to give me because there are still typos or because I am a hoodrat and some dumb shit transphobe I blocked for accusing the trans community of bullying Daphne Dorman to death in his convoluted defense of Dave Chappelle is dumb enough to try to get other black folk to come at me.

I see you, Tim. I thought you didn’t even believe in people publishing books of Black-only authors just to get Black writing in the world and thought I should do blind submissions to make sure my writers “deserve” publication instead of preferencing the marginalized.

People who have white, economic, and other kinds of privilege shouldn’t complain about me paying my broke ass fellow authors $0 to $10 and offering them a cut of the Smashwords royalties and some at-or-near cost paperbacks to hustle.

Instead, you should affirm your commitment to Black writers and Disabled authors by DMing me asking for the Paypals and Venmos of all my authors so you can go into your damned pocket and send them the $25 or $50 you think they deserve personally. Then I can list you as a sponsor. Maybe you should hire me a staff of proofreaders while you are at it. Consider it reparations.

Sumiko Saulson