How to Sell Out: The (Hidden) Cost of Being a Black Writer

A timely, vulnerable, and cutting-edge exploration of the pressures and pitfalls of writing while Black in America in this urgently needed addition to the national conversation of race, money, and art.

In the summer of 2020, when the nation was erupting in protest over the murder of George Floyd, Chad Sanders was quietly celebrating for selfish reasons. Why? After years of struggling to get his footing as a writer, he’d finally landed a New York Times op-ed. He wrote an essay about the hollow messages of concern he’d been receiving from white friends and colleagues. It went viral, and in the years that followed, he built a solid career as a creator--of books, podcasts, TV shows, and films--by mining his most painful experiences of being Black in America.

Black pain for white money. For Sanders, this was a lucrative trade. One he thought he could work for the rest of his life. But it didn’t take long for him to realize he, like so many other writers, was getting the short end of the stick.

In How to Sell Out, Sanders draws on his personal experiences to offer a wry, darkly comic look at the invisible realities of making a living as a Black writer who writes about race. He relays stories of his time in the tech business, his experiences in TV writers’ rooms, his childhood participation in Jack and Jill, his family and relationships, and the struggles of sharing his racial trauma in exchange for cash. Combining meditations on historical and current events and the intersection of race and class with short creative essays, Sanders sculpts a freewheeling arc that is as funny as it is moving and thought-provoking.

Chad Sanders is the author of Black Magic: What Black Leaders Learned from Trauma and Triumph. He is the host of the Yearbook podcast on the Armchair Expert network and the Audible Originals podcast, Direct Deposit. Chad’s work has been featured in TheNew York Times, Time, Fortune, Forbes, Deadline, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and other publications. Chad has also written for TV series on Max and Freeform. Chad was raised in Silver Spring, Maryland, and earned his BA in English at Morehouse College. He lives in New York City.