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Chad Sanders thought he was finally safe.
He had left the corporate world. He had a book deal, a growing platform, and the momentum that gets you invited into rooms that once felt closed off. He had, by many visible measures, made it.
But what looks like safety and freedom can be a new kind of scrutiny. That tension drives Sander's recent book "How to Sell Out: The (Hidden) Cost of Being a Black Writer."
In conversation with Loyalty Bookstore Owner Hannah Oliver Depp, Sanders explores what it means to build a creative life by turning lived trauma into marketable work—and what it takes to reclaim that life on his terms.
He traces that shift back to his first book, "Black Magic: What Black Leaders Learned from Trauma and Triumph," which he describes as "about overcoming trauma and using trauma to be successful in America." "How to Sell Out: The (Hidden) Cost of Being a Black Writer" moves in a new direction. "This book is meant to not even answer, but to ask the question—what's outside the ladder? How did the ladder even get there? Am I allowed to live outside of that particular chase—of status and hierarchy and capitalism and race?"
That climb accelerated in 2020 after Sanders wrote a viral column in the New York Times about the hollow messages he received from white colleagues following George Floyd's murder. "One of the greatest feelings of joy I've ever had was writing that piece," he says. "Because this piece went viral about a horrible atrocity ... all of a sudden, I had leverage at my publisher." The momentum was real, and it collided with a hard truth. "That did something weird to me."
The attention was intense and short-lived. The spotlight brought visibility, along with heavy expectations and fast-approaching expiration dates. Sanders describes the cycle with brutal clarity: white guilt opens doors, but it rarely keeps them open. "White tears are very expensive," he says. "They are very expensive for us long term."
Sanders is transparent about his ambitions. "I do want to be rich," he says. "I do have those impulses to be a capitalist." But the traditional path—elite degrees, corporate titles, gated communities—never offered the security it promised. "We are still sold the idea that there's safety in that. And then you get there, and it's still not there."
Even when he moved into a resource-rich neighborhood to escape the volatility of Crown Heights, new forms of tension emerged. "I live somewhere right now where I pay the highest rent of anybody in my building, and I am the most scrutinized … I moved there to get a little bit out of the fray … and I'm reminded constantly that it's not mine."
The stress, he says, is about survival and the exhausting calculations of how to safely move through the world as a Black man in America. "It's the constant frenetic trying to find that one little safe lily pad to live on that takes so much away from free thought … from hanging out with your friends … from playing ball with your nephews."
"How to Sell Out: The (Hidden) Cost of Being a Black Writer" marks a clear turning point. "I don't want to make the same album over and over again. I have said it. It's here. This is how I feel. Maybe 10 years from now, I'll come back to it—but not now."
Part of that decision is deeply personal. "When I'm writing? Recently, I now recognize they're going to be able to read what I write soon," he says, referring to his young nephews. "What I want them to understand is there are as many different ways to live as there are people."
Sanders is also thinking strategically. He's shifted his focus to creative independence, building a direct relationship with his audience and stepping away from systems that offer visibility without long-term support. "I know there's 60,000 people out there who I can tell that the book exists, whether Simon and Schuster doesn't give me a simple dollar of marketing budget," he says.
That pressure to perform—to be a representative of all things Black for both white and Black audiences—can be suffocating. "It seems sometimes that the worst thing you can do as a Black person is go backwards," he says. "But it's exhausting. And it's not even interesting enough. It's just not enough for a life."
Still, the conversation never loses sight of possibility. For Sanders, the way forward lies in ownership—of the audience, message, and platform. "You gain tremendous leverage to have your own. Your own communication directly with your audience. No matter what business you're in."
And while he's made peace with what it took to get here, he's clear about what it costs. In the book's closing lines—read aloud by Oliver Depp—Sanders writes, "I lose too much sleep. I absorb too much pain. I carry too much anger. It costs too much, and it pays too little. That's a bad trade. I don't want to sell pain for money anymore."
"Unless I need the money again."
To view the program, click below.