Tag: blogging

Are People Still Surprised that Self-Published Books Have Value?

*This post has spoilers.*

The Polygamist, Netflix’s new series about a South African man with three wives and a side chick, is snatching everybody’s edges. Social media can’t stop talking about the drama.

The story follows wealthy businessman Jonasi Gomora and the drama between his wives and his mistress.

Jonasi is a hot mess. As one reviewer put it: “He’s misogynistic, and abusive and every terrible stereotype of badly behaved men you can think of.”

And the women are just as foolish as they are glamorous.

Joyce is the first wife. Together, they have three children.

Essie is the second wife Jonasi kept hidden from Joyce and everybody else. They also have a daughter together. While he has known Essie the longest (since they were kids), he visits them in secret, and the daughter cannot openly be loved by her father.

To keep Essie hidden, Jonasi’s brother pretends to be her husband the entire time. He basically puts his life on hold to keep up the facade.

Matipa is the side chick, turned third wife, who thought she was the second wife (cause remember, nobody knows Jonasi is married to Essie). Together, they have twin girls.

Also, it was Joyce who recommended Matipa’s upgrade to the status of a wife, hoping it would stop Jonasi from cheating.

Jonasi is not done. He eventually starts dating and having sex with his daughter’s friend, Lindani. It’s the same girl his son has a crush on.

And this is just a basic overview of the story that’s got everybody’s attention.

It’s like an African, more toxic version of Waiting to Exhale.

Author Sue Nyathi (left) wrote The Polygamist, which was adapted into a Netflix supernovela. Jonasi Gomora (right) is the lead character. © Collage/TAR

What people aren’t talking much about is that the book from which The Polygamist was adapted was first self-published.

Sukoluhle “Sue” Nyathi was born in Bulawayo, a city in southwest Zimbabwe, and self-published her debut novel in 2012 after being rejected by mainstream publishers.

While it took many years to reach your screen, the idea to turn it into a film came as early as 2013, just one year after the book was in print.

It was republished by Pan Macmillan South Africa in 2020, produced by Stained Glass Productions, and acquired by Netflix.

It became one of Netflix’s most-watched non-English series within weeks of its June release, trending across Africa, the Caribbean, and parts of Europe. The story has also started online debates about poly relationships, multiple wives in the Bible, and whether or not Jonasi Gomora was a victim or villain. The author says:

“I just wanted to write a story that would get people talking about the uncomfortable things that, as a society, we tend to shove under the rug,” she said. “People are saying their fathers are like Jonasi, or they could see their moms in some of the women in the story. It just goes to show that, as a society, there is a lot of brokenness and we need healing.”

-Nyathi

Are People Still Surprised Self-Published Books Have Value?

Whenever a self-published book has a breakout moment, people act like it’s an animal they’ve never seen before, and major publishers rush in to claim the title as their own.

That a self-published book (messy as the storyline is) can do so well that it becomes a TV show is not surprising to those of us who already read, write, and enjoy independently published books.

I hope that self-published and Independent authors are encouraged to know that their work is valuable, with or without the validation of larger, mainstream publishers and platforms.

I am interested in reading the book to understand what the original storyline was like and how much, or how little, the adaptation drew from it.

The author notes that the changes didn’t take away from the original storyline.

We shall see…

1 Million Black Readers

I’ve always loved to read, and it was magnified in High School, when my auntie would make us check out no less than two books from the local library every two weeks, or however long we had before we had to return them.

And she wasn’t done there.

She also brought ALDI bags to fill with books, checking out tens of books at a time.

We were the only kids who looked like we had just gone grocery shopping as we came out of the library.

This is why I will always be an advocate for reading. In the words of Malcolm X:

“My alma mater was books, a good library…. I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.”

Which is why I teamed up for an amazing challenge.


The 1 Million Reading Black Books Summer Reading Club aims to encourage a million people to read at least one book written by a Black author this summer!

Joining is easy.

Pledge to read and finish reading a book by a Black author by the end of the summer.

Repost the graphic and tag a friend.

Follow the host @melanatedreader on Instagram for the next steps.

If you are not on Instagram, I still encourage you to participate just by reading at least one book by a Black author this summer.

Let’s read something other than captions and comments!


What I’m currently reading: 
Black Titan: A.G. Gaston and the Making of a Black American Millionaire by Carol Jenkins and Elizabeth Gardner Hines.

Born Worthy

You do not always have to be doing something. You were born worthy.

On Tuesday, May 26, 2026, I turned 39.

And unlike previous years, I didn’t post much about it.

Aside from my stories, I didn’t post the usual cute pic.

It wasn’t because I was sad or ungrateful. I just didn’t feel like it this year.

Where I am usually super excited and bubbly, my mood on my birthday this year was that of Proverbs 27:2, “Let another man praise you, and not your own mouth–a stranger and not your own lips.”

This year, I didn’t feel like broadcasting the day of my birth. As much as I want people to remember me, I also want to let go of the need to control it.

If I were to be remembered, I want it to be a natural, organic occurrence, not a social media notification.

Strangely, I’ve had people say, “I didn’t get a notification.”

I thought it was weird their need to tell me they didn’t know because Facebook didn’t remind them. Just say you forgot, lol.

This further solidified for me why I was not motivated to post about it.

I like surprises and random acts of kindness I didn’t see coming. I don’t want to have to keep repeating the basics.

It reminded me of the quote floating around somewhere that says, “let people do what they want to do, so you can see what they’d rather do,” or some variation.

I prolly butchered that, but the overall point is to let people be themselves and allow their actions, not just their words, to reveal their true character.

I chose to let go of the need to control people’s remembering me, without holding it against those who did not.

In whatever circumstance, I have learned to be content.

These are the thoughts I am still mulling over, praying over, and meditating on in this final year of my 30s.

My key takeaway during these musings was to remember that whether I hosted a grand gesture or sat home in my pajamas eating my favorite snacks (and did), I am worthy regardless.

And so are you.

We do not have to be doing something to earn the title. We have inherit value and inherit dignity.

The 30s have been especially challenging, but I look forward to seeing what this year has to offer as I prepare for my ascension into the next phase of my life.

I cannot believe I will be 40 next year.

Do it hurt, ya’ll?

Writers Who Shrink

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-holding-red-pencil-writing-on-notebook-6860850/

There comes a time when fear doesn’t just paralyze, but acts as its own form of superiority. How dare we grace the world with our brilliance? Someone might come and take what is ours. How dare we venture to use our words to save a soul? Isn’t healing ourselves enough? Why, then, must we risk pouring poetry onto the concrete for the world to see? Wouldn’t someone come and take it? Won’t it get soaked into the soil? Won’t the birds eat it? What will happen to our brilliance once it’s exposed? Will it wither up and die like Langston’s dream deferred? We are much too wise to let these words go out into the world.

This is not enlightenment. We shrink to keep from shining, so we avoid the light. We avoid the truth: Fear is not growth, and hiding behind the superiority of the pen is not salvation.

AI is Watering Down Your Voice

It’s been a minute since I’ve talked about publishing on this blog. Mostly, I was just tired of giving advice. Still am.

Most of the work is doing the thing. Failing at it. Succeeding at it, and failing again until you find your groove.

Buttttt… our latest viral sensations have brought me out of hiding.

Enter AI and Dr. Cheyenne Bryant

These seem like unrelated, separate topics, but stay with me.

Lately, I’ve been noticing tons of creators with social media captions that use the same “It’s not x, it’s y” ChatGPT cadence, including authors.

Why are people who write books using AI to write their social captions? Isn’t being creative like, our literal job?

The “it’s not x, it’s y” cadence sounds like: “It’s not just a meal, it’s an experience.”

The words are also structured a certain way, and it is noticeable for those who know what to look for.

For me, it’s mostly noticeable when someone drastically changes how they write. Since I’m a poet, I compare it to suddenly sounding like a poetic professor. You’ve once been an emperor of typos, and now the words flow neatly on top of one another.

The phrases are very well-written, too well-written for a person who has never written in such a way.

It seems to mimic how professional writers write, except now everyone is doing it.

Suddenly, everyone’s Insta captions and Facebook posts are grammatically correct, inspirational, and profoundly poetic.

It is also profoundly fake.

While it might read pretty, it waters down the writer’s authentic voice.

I’d be remiss not to mention that this is not everyone. There are some fantastic, extraordinary writers out there, and for the record, AI is mimicking the genius of the real brain.

The most tell-tale sign is whether I can sense your personality in your writing, or if instead you just sound like an English teacher when you are not one.

The twist in all of this is that typos will become the new normal. They will signal that the person who wrote the piece is a human who makes mistakes and uses their own mind.

You Sound Just Like Everybody Else

What should be most disturbing is that using chat to write will have you sounding like everyone else in the same way that all those AI flyers look the same.

These flyers are always way too cluttered. There is too much information on them, and they end up drawing attention away from the core message, which is drowned out by so many colors and images.

This leads me to question if people are even trying to make changes to the prompts, templates, or whatever they are using.

As a reminder, Canva still exists and has some great free and paid templates from real graphic artists. For my poetry contest, I hired someone on Fiverr to handle the initial design, then paid for the source file. The source file allows me to go in and edit it into as many versions as I want without paying for them. So far, I have turned two graphics into seven to promote my sponsors and judges. It was the best $20 I’d ever spent.

Ya’ll are watering down your voice and image.

I’ve also been seeing a ton of new self-published books with AI/ChatGPT-generated book covers. I cannot emphasize how strongly I recommend not doing this.

You are likely damaging your author brand and marketing strategy before they even begin.

And this isn’t just my opinion. It’s what readers are saying.

An arts digital marketer and historical fiction/romance author conducted a survey asking readers whether they were interested in reading books with AI-generated art.

84% of the people who took her survey said NO.

Additionally, I have been monitoring the bookish community on Threads, and many readers say they don’t trust books with AI-generated covers.

If your book cover is AI-generated, it’s hard not to wonder if your book was written by ChatGPT, Gemini, or any other artificial intelligence software.

It’s hard not to wonder if you’ve put the hard work in to write or if the computer has done the writing for you.

Consequently, even if you did write the book, it’s challenging for readers to see you as an authentic voice.

The book cover is your first impression. Lose readers there, and they are not reading your book.

Speaking of authenticity, enter Dr. Cheyenne Bryant, the woman currently under fire for the legitimacy of her doctorate and the location of her dissertation.

Dr. Bryant also just published a book that people are saying sounds like it was written by AI.

With twelve 1-2-star Amazon reviews, it is littered with claims of fraud stemming from her latest allegations that she is not a real therapist or psychologist.

More of this in part 2…

Why Many Black History Accounts on Social Media Are Wrong

We are living in an era where Black history is being erased every day, so I understand the excitement over discovering all the amazing things our people have done.

However, while I love me a good fun fact, I cannot help but notice that many of the Black history memes floating around social media are often grossly inaccurate or lacking context.

And some are flat-out wrong altogether.

And I am not talking about small pages either. Many of your favorite Black history accounts with millions of followers put out false information every day in the name of Black history.

Yes, this includes those on Substack… not really sure why ya’ll think this isn’t also a social media platform.

With a culture so rich and expansive as ours, we really do not need to embellish what we’ve done. The work is already powerful on its own.

Here are just a few things I wish we would explain more deeply. I am starting with this one because someone told me to “Shut up” on Instagram for pointing it out.

Mary Beatrice Kenner invented the maxi pad.

Context:

What Kenner invented was called the sanitary belt and moisture-resistant pocket, which is not exactly the same as our modern disposable menstrual pad.

Kenner’s patent eventually expired, leading people to take credit for her invention. A company also expressed interest but pulled back after learning she was Black.1

If Kenner had not been rejected, it is highly likely that she would have also invented the disposable pad, likely based on her original idea. However, what she invented was not the same as today’s adhesive pad, as many of these posts insinuate without proper context.

Here is a timeline from a website on A short history of modern menstrual products:

  • 1880s–1890s: Early disposable pads were made of cotton and gauze, often marketed to women traveling by land or sea.
  • 1896: Johnson & Johnson marketed “Lister’s Towels: Sanitary Towels for Ladies,” which were a notable early commercial attempt but failed due to social stigma.
  • 1918–1921: Nurses in WWI used high-absorbency wood-pulp bandages, leading to the creation of Kotex, the first successfully marketed disposable pad.
  • 1926: Johnson & Johnson introduced Modess Sanitary Napkins.
  • 1956/1957: Mary Kenner patented an improved adjustable sanitary belt with a moisture-resistant pocket.

What I would change on this timeline, though, is that Kenner’s invention was in the 1920s, but because of racism, the sanitary belt did not come out until the late 1950s.

This is what I mean by adding context or looking deeper into what we read.

Let’s look at another one.

Claudette Colvin was the first to give up her seat before Rosa Parks.

Context:

She was not the first, but one of many. Irene Morgan did it in 19442, and Ida B. Wells did it in 1884.3

There was also Aurelia S. Browder, who did it in April 1955, almost eight months before Rosa Parks’s arrest and a month after Claudette Colvin’s.

History is not the linear event we think it is. There is so much that happened, and so many people it happened to, we might never know about.

What Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks represent is the culmination of many years of work and sacrifice by many different Black women.

And one more.

Lewis Howard Latimer invented the light bulb.

Context:

What Lewis Howard Latimer invented was an improved process for manufacturing carbon filaments for electric light bulbs.

In simpler terms, his invention made using light bulbs in homes and businesses more practical. His filaments could be heated to high temperatures without breaking, resulting in longer-lasting, more efficient, and affordable light bulbs.

These are a few easy ones I thought of because I see them a lot, but there are many more.

Before you sit in the Amen corner of anybody’s Black history post (including mine), make sure the information they are sharing is correct. Google (and Google Scholar) is right there.

  1. Sluby, Patricia C. “BLACK WOMEN AND INVENTIONS.” Women’s History Network News, no. 37, 1993, pp. 4.. ↩︎
  2. Lang, Martin. “Irene Morgan and her Impact on Freedom Riders.” ↩︎
  3. Orr, Nicole. Famous Women in History: Ida B. Wells: Crusader for Justice. Curious Fox Books, 2025. ↩︎

In Joseph’s Shadow Part Two

People knew his father and what he had contributed to the movement. They still spoke Joseph’s name with a kind of reverence, as though saying it might conjure the courage of another time. His photograph—creased at the corners, and yellowed with time, hung in barbershops and church foyers, beside posters for fish fries and gospel concerts.

Every February, Joseph’s face reappeared on classroom walls, a reminder of marches and megaphones, of a generation that refused to bow. For the community, Joseph was history come to life.

For Michael, he was just Dad.

Michael and his friends walked past the bulletin board in the school hallway. There it was again: his father’s face, eyes sharp, mouth set like a promise. Michael paused, thinking about his first days at Lindbloom.

“Ey, Mike! Mike!” a classmate had called. “Yo man, so how is it being famous? What was it like?”

Today, he would tell the person to go to hell, but back then, he just shook his head, a small, polite refusal that spoke louder than words.

Michael kept walking, shoulders tight, mind elsewhere, like the chess match he had lost last night. If he had not been hungover, his opponent would not have stood a chance. He didn’t particularly enjoy the taste of liquor, but it got his mind off thinking about walking in a legend’s shadow.

Tanya carried the legacy easily, quoting speeches and smiling at cameras as if born for the stage. But Michael kept to the edges. He wanted to be noticed for his own quiet triumphs—for the way his mind worked over a chessboard, or how the basketball arced perfectly from his fingertips.

Instead, people only ever asked about “The Movement,” their eyes expectant, as if he held some sacred story he refused to tell.

His father’s name was everywhere, in every conversation, every display, every “remember when” retold by people who seemed to think history lived only in him. Not in Michael. Not in the quiet hours he spent imagining, planning, thinking. They acted like he was Martin Luther King’s son.

So what, his father took part in the Freedom Rides? What did that have to do with him? Michael didn’t care about no Barack Obama either. He wasn’t his Savior. He was just another politician. He swallowed hard, tasting the bitterness of being overlooked for the wrong reasons.

History had chosen him without asking, which is why he couldn’t admit to his friends or himself that he had a crush on a white girl.