I’ve been thinking about this in regard to the members-only stories I’ve been posting on Medium, some of which contain highly personal content. After posting about being stalked by a trans-antagonistic sociopath for six months and seeing that it hasn’t even earned enough money to cover more than a couple of months of my membership fee, I am wondering how I can put a price on my pain.

Of course, here on Medium earnings are determined primarily by claps from our readers, rather than a fee offered by the publishers. But that requires the authors to do even more self-promotion to get noticed and paid, something I’ve never been particularly good at.

Before I joined the Medium partnership program I was considering submitting the above story to Black Girl Dangerous, as it’s run by and for QTPoC, and they offered what I considered a fair price. But I balked at their requirement of exclusivity for a full year. While I was still debating whether or not to submit, they announced they were ending their blog and starting a mentorship program instead, so that was that.