Payment processors are turning out to be one of the largest and most powerful enforcers of queer censorship, especially the censorship of artistic endeavors by trans creators. Platform after platform is being coerced into removing “adult content” or risk losing access to the means of taking payments.

Adult content has always been and always will be the euphemistic term used to go after queer art, especially art by trans creatives. It doesn't matter if the art or book or movie is about two ace women in a queer-platonic relationship going to adopt a cat or if it's seven men having a twenty-four hour orgy doing some of the most taboo acts known to humanity. It's the same thing to these Christofascists. And they want it gone. Any expression of queer people being unapologetically ourselves outside of the allo-cis-het-patriarchy is verboten and must be squashed. 

In 2024, trans women were leading the way in finding ways to get their art and stories into the world by putting their works on Itchio while other retailers were cracking down on queer content at the behest of investors and politicians. Following them, many other queer authors began using Itchio, finding great success in being able to authentically advertise their works and provide content notes and trigger warnings–something which often got people in trouble on Amazon and other retailers.

But in the last twenty four hours, the beautiful queer refuge that had been built fell apart. Collective Shout, an Australian “feminist” (TERF) organization, lobbied Mastercard to crack down on Itch and Steam over games it considered questionable. Beth at the Transfeminine Review has more details on how this all came to be and how it's shaking out, and I highly suggest you read everything else Beth has put together about preserving trans and queer literature in the face of mass censorship. 

Now, our works are shadow-banned, de-indexed, and even suspended and removed. We had built a wonderful haven and many of us were thriving in it, especially with themed bundles and generous tippers. 

Where do we go from here? I don't have a platform I can point to and say, “This one will work next.” Itch won't be the last place to cave to the Christofascists. As long as Visa and Mastercard get a say in what content you can purchase or sell on the internet, there won't really be a safe place we can say “This book is unapologetically queer and contains two trans ladies tying each other up and eating each other out after they are done slaying the dragon.”

But we can find ways to fly under the radar. A lot of creators got caught up in the de-indexing because they put content warnings on their listings. Content warnings are great ways to ensure readers know what they are getting, but they are usually also indexed in the metadata for a book and can therefore trigger automatic moderation. Removing the content notes and putting them on your own website, providing a link in the description saying “please see my site for a full list of content notes” is one way to go about it, but it's a stop-gap. Not a solution.

The long-term solution is to remove the censorial powers that Mastercard and Visa currently wield. I do not see that happening quickly enough for people affected by Itch's knee-bending to pay August's rent. We do need stop-gap solutions while we wait for the slow-gears of policy to happen. If they happen.

The solution I propose is direct stores. It does not have the discovery power of Itch and other retailers. You will have to figure out at least a little bit of information on collecting and remitting sales tax. There is some overhead. Itch was, in my opinion, a perfect mix of the pros of both direct sales and retailers–discovery, while giving you freedom to customize your listing pages and provide DRM-free files.

Direct sales may not be for everyone—I'm not proposing this as the solution, just one among many. If you think you might be interested in making your own store to sell your art, here are some of the ways you can do so while staying under the radar enough to not arouse the suspicions of Master Carde and Lady Visa. 

Major Options for Handling The Goods and Transactions

If you want to sell digital products, there are three that I have experience with and can provide details on. This list is not exhaustive; it's just the ones I have experience with. 

Brief tangent before we really get going. That is, sales tax and VAT. Sales tax and VAT aren’t as complicated as they sound, especially for smaller businesses making less than $100,000/mo. Many jurisdictions will not require businesses to collect and remit tax and VAT until they have a certain number of sales per month or make a certain monetary amount in sales per month. This means you would have to keep track of how many sales you have in each jurisdiction and track whether you've met “nexus” for that month. I know this is going to be a barrier to some people. I know that the cognitive load might be too much and might be overwhelming. Some of the payment solutions I will list here offer ways of handling it automatically for you, however. 

Lemonsqueezy

Stripe recently purchased Lemonsqueezy, but they are, for now, their own separate thing. They act as a Merchant of Record. Merchants of Record are the ones who are responsible for the purchase–it is their name that shows up on the credit card transaction. This means Lemonsqueezy is responsible for collecting sales tax and VAT, and remitting sales tax and VAT to the proper authorities / governments. You can basically act as if Lemonsqueezy is just another retailer but you have more power over your products and get a larger percentage of the revenue.

They are available in 130ish countries as of today; not everywhere, but they are in many places. They offer multiple types of payment and have a Pay What You Want Option, allowing you to set a minimum price but allowing customers to leave a tip, essentially.

Lemonsqueezy does not currently allow for the sale of physical products. So if you just want to sell ebooks and don't want to deal with the headache of VAT and tax, Lemonsqueezy might be your best option.

Lemonsqueezy does not have a subscription cost, instead, they take a percentage of the money from every transaction. There are no premium features hidden behind a paywall.

PayHip

Based in the EU, Payhip will handle VAT for you and has an option to track your sales tax if you need to remit taxes to somewhere in the US or elsewhere in the world. It won't remit the tax for you; you will still have to file taxes with the jurisdictions where you meet nexus, but it's not something you will have to track yourself.

PayHip allows digital and physical goods. If you're in the EU and wanting to sell signed copies as well as ebooks, PayHip will likely be the best option for you. Bonus: They integrate with BookVault if you want to sell physical copies direct.

PayHip has a free tier that has every feature available but a higher percentage of each transaction will be collected by PayHip. At the free tier, PayHip will take a 5% transaction fee. By subscribing to PayHip, your transaction fee is lowered. Until you make a certain volume of sales, I wouldn't suggest paying monthly.

Shopify

Shopify is a lot. It can be a bit overwhelming with all the bells and whistles and apps it has. It is considered “the” store to use if you are a “serious” business person. It can also be pricey, but it does have a “starter” plan that is $5/mo and will get you access to the “Buy Button” sales channel which is all you need to make a nice store for yourself. 

Shopify allows you to sell digital and physical goods (and has an integration with BookVault for selling physical books direct). You can access “Shopify Markets” which will handle VAT for you. It has a built-in tax feature that will collect taxes, but you will be responsible for figuring out if you meet nexus and then submitting the taxes yourself. There are apps you can install in your Shopify store that will handle collecting and remitting taxes for you. Many of them have monthly subscription fees, but it would take the load off of you.

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None of these options are perfect. Again, they are dealing with Master Carde and Lady Visa and therefore subject to the puritanical bullshit. They've also all had at least one or two controversies or kerfuffles. There is no perfect solution here. There is no ethical selling of queer art in capitalism. Pick the one that you feel best meets your needs, make your money and survive.

Once you've chosen, you will want to set up your books. Set them up as products, but only provide the price, the cover (that is safe for work) and the title (that is also safe for work). Please note, that these store will ask you want you plan to sell. You do not need to tell them you plan to sell queer fiction, erotica, etc. You can simply say “works of fiction in the fantasy/scifi/horror/literary/mystery genre authored by me.”

We aren't actually going to be using the built-in store fronts that Shopify, PayHip, and Lemonsqueezy offer. This is so there is less information available to these platforms that can be used against you. We are doing it this way for the purposes of staying under the radar. You can use those storefronts if you want, but the strategy I am choosing to take here should mitigate a lot of the risk. It won't eliminate the risk, but it will lessen it.

Delivery of the Goods

All of these potential storefronts offer ways for you to host your files for your books on their servers and have them delivered to the user via email or via a download page after payment is complete. Hosting your queer works here is a potential way to get flagged, however. If it is a risk you want to take, one way you can further mitigate it is to put your epub/mobi/pdf into a zip folder first, and then host that. It's not perfect, but it is one more source of friction for the payment processors to determine if you are in violation of their policies by virtue of being queer. 

The method I am proposing involves hosting the files themselves on external sites / in external sources. The fewer bits of data about your offerings you provide the storefronts, the less they have to use against you. 

One of the easiest integrations is either BookFunnel or StoryOrigin. Both of these platforms were designed for secure and simple delivery of ebooks. These services do cost money for certain features, and I know that is a barrier for many authors. I am giving you the information on them so you can make the best decision about them for you and your situation.

BookFunnel 

BookFunnel has a $20/year (yes, per year) option that allows you to make a secure download page for your books. You store the files on BookFunnel and create a download landing page. In the “thank you” emails for Shopify/PayHip/Lemonsqueezy, you will link to this download page. This is not the most secure option—but it's better than putting the files directly on the store where the payment processors can find them.

BookFunnel has a $10/mo (or $100/year) plan that allows you to directly integrate with PayHip, Lemonsqueezy, and Shopify (as well as a few others). They have extensive documentation on how to set up these integrations. It will involve a little bit of legwork on your part, but once it is set up, BookFunnel will automatically send an email to the customer with a secure download link that only works for that buyer and you can even set it to watermark the pdfs and epubs with the buyers email address. The only way a payment processor could get ahold of your files to double check you aren't violating their ‘no queers’ policy would be to buy your books themselves and download them. 

StoryOrigin

Currently, StoryOrigin only integrates directly with Lemonsqueezy. On their $10/mo plan, they will also automatically email buyers and provide them with secure download links. They don't do watermarking or stamping, however. You can, however, use their FREE plan to create direct download links. Again, you would link to the direct download page in your “thank you for your purchase” email. If you have no cash to spare, Lemonsqueezy or PayHip with StoryOrigin direct download links is free.

Once more, just in case you missed it: if you cannot afford monthly fees and just want something set up quickly and don't want to worry about the headache of VAT: Lemonsqueezy and/or PayHip plus StoryOrigin will cost you $0/mo.

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Another option is to set up a password protected box in something like ProtonDrive/OneDrive/DropBox if you already have those and linking to it and providing the password in the “thank you” email to the customers. But be aware of the ToS of those platforms. Google Drive has suspended the accounts of Romance authors for writing their Romance books in Google Docs and storing the epubs in Google Drive.

Promoting of the Goods

I said at the start of this that we won't be using the storefronts provided by these retailers. We will be building our own. We will be taking advantage of PayHip, Lemonsqueezy, and Shopify all having ways to embed code directly in other websites and put the checkout experience in a light box / overlay.

We will build our own sites where we will have the full description, content notes, and any other details about the book. And on that same page, we will be putting the embed codes. This will make it look like and act like a store but the actual incriminating details of the books are not directly touching the payment processors. This makes it easier for you to fly under the radar. 

You can set up your website on any platform that allows you to add your own code snippets or just build your own website (I build my website directly and host it for free on Netlify, but you can also use something like GitHub pages if you want to code your own website). Carrd Pro allows code embeds if you have a premium plan (which costs $19.99/year). Carrd might be the easiest way to go if you don't know how to code and want easy drag and drop stuff. I do not currently suggest WordPress due to some of the things the founder/owner has said in the past and the fact that the UI to make a website is just an utter mess. Ghost allows embeds and if you want to also create a Patreon-like experience with subscriptions, you can do that on Ghost, too. Ghost does cost money but their starter plan is $9/mo and if you have technical know-how, you can host your own Ghost instance much cheaper than that (or even for free on your own home server if you have one).

Once you've set up your site with all your books and their metadata, it's time to Add the Buttons.

For Lemonsqueezy

Go to the product you want to list on your website and in the sidebar at the top, there will be a button that says “share.” Click that button and then select the option “Checkout Overly.” Once you have done that, you will get a piece of html code. Copy it. Paste it into your site wherever you want the “Buy Now” button to show up on your website. 

Screenshot from Lemonsqueezy’s side panel for a product. In the upper right hand corner is a gray button that says “Share”

Screenshot from Lemonsqueezy showing the Share Product Options. The toggle is set to “Checkout Overlay” and shows options for showing the store logo, media, description, and discount code as well as a snippet of html code that can be added to any website.

For PayHip

Go to your Products listing. Each product should have a button that says “Share / Embed.” You will get a pop up with several options. Select “Embed Button.” This will let you customize the button and choose whether you want the book to be added to a cart or just purchase it directly. If you have the coding know-how and want to style the button with your own css, select “none” for the color. Once you've customized your button, you will get the bit of code that you need to add to your site for it to work!

Screenshot of the products page for PayHip. Several buttons are shown next to each product, including a large button that reads “Share / Embed.”


Screenshot of PayHip settings after one clicks on “Share / Embed.” At the top are three toggle options, this screenshot showing the second option: Embed button. There are options for changing button text, button theme, and button type.

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Screenshot from PayHip showing the pop up displayed after clicking “Get Your Embed Code.” There are two lines of code you need to copy and paste to get the buttons to work, one going in the tag and one in the web page wherever you desire.

For Shopify

This one is a bit more complicated, but it has the greatest amount of customization. Under “Sales Channels” in your Shopify dashboard, select “Buy Button.” If “Buy Button” is not there, check the Shopify App Store, search for “Buy Button” and install it. Once you've opened it, it will ask you which product you want to make a buy button for. Choose the product you wish to do so for. It might give you a warning that the product isn't yet set up with the Buy Button channel. You can just click through and Shopify will do what it needs to do. 

If it asks you if you want to create a product buy button or collection buy button, you want to select “Product.”

You will end up on a page where you can now customize your button. I suggest either choosing “Direct to Checkout” or “Add to cart” for the “Action when people click” since you aren't having any details stored in Shopify. But this page will let you choose everything from the font to the color for your button so you can make it match everything else in your website. 

Once you have the button the way you want it, it will give you several hundred lines of HTML code to embed. This is annoying, I know. I deal with it on my own site (made with a static site generator) using partials. But Carrd and other platforms won’t get angry with you if you past in the hundreds of lines of code into their embeds section.

Screenshot from Shopify. On the left is the dashboard menu. At the bottom of the “Sales Channel” section is “Buy Button.” Create a Buy Button by clicking “Create a Buy Button.”

Screenshot of the Buy Button Customization page. You can style your button by picking fonts, colors, and more. 

Screenshot of the Buy Button copy code page. Here you will get several hundreds of lines of code, but just copy it.

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I’ve set up a demo site on Carrd with the embeds, starting with Lemonsqueezy on the left, PayHip in the middle, and Shopify on the right. I did some basic styling with the LemonSqueezy button by wrapping it in a in the “code” box for the embed, otherwise, it usually just looks like a link and you are left to style it yourself.

The element in the code here was not originally there. I added it after pasting in the lemonsqueezy code. The span element wraps around the lemonsqueezy button so that I can apply custom styling.

To add an embed in Carrd, just copy the code you get from PayHip, Lemonsqueezy, or Shopify into the “Code” section of the embed.

You can see the demo site live here: Revolutionary Fantasy (copy)

Wrap Up

By keeping as much metadata about your books (or other creative endeavors) out of the hands of the storefronts and payment processors, you can more successfully fly under the radar. If you do, for some reason, end up getting suspended from PayHip/LemonSqueezy/Shopify, your buy buttons won't work but you will still have your site and you can choose another processor (or create another account with a new email address on the one you were using...) and just add new buy buttons. Your site itself still works. Your info is still there. Your domain name, if you have one, is still there and people will still land on the page if they click your link.

The ultimate long-term solution is to have payment processors but out of what adults decide to buy and sell. This is just a stopgap, and not one that will work for everyone. Keep creating.