This summer, I sat down with Tamira Chapman, an intellectual property attorney turned founder and publishing executive, and viral creator Tareasa Johnson at NASDAQ MarketSite Studios to tape a conversation about a belief they share: Black storytellers who don't own their own work are missing a real path to generational wealth.Chapman spent the first part of her career as an intellectual property lawyer, then as an entrepreneur and CEO, before founding Storehouse Voices, a Crown Publishing imprint built to close the equity gap for Black authors, a gap she watched the industry ignore for years. Creating what she calls her "always-on" model, Chapman and her team, who accept submissions around the clock with no agent required, have read submissions from more than 1,000 authors and signed roughly 50 new authors of color since Storehouse Voices launched in 2025. By comparison, a typical imprint publishes 12 to 15 new books each year.On closing the equity gap in publishing, she told me, "Publishers already know Black, college-educated readers over-index on reading. What's missing isn't financial risk tolerance, it's an understanding of the cultural nuance required to actually build an audience," for authors telling stories about the Black experience.Tareasa Johnson, known to millions as Reesa Teesa, is exactly the kind of author that model was built to find. In February 2024, Johnson, then an executive assistant from Marietta, Georgia, posted a TikTok series called "Who TF Did I Marry," 304 days chronicling what may be the most chaotic marriage ever documented online. It went viral, then went viral again, and CAA called soon after. Johnson knew she wanted to take her story to a publisher. Chapman was ready for her. This year, Reesa Teesa landed a book deal with Storehouse Voices.Chapman sees this path from creator to author as the new playbook: a way for creators to expand their reach, capitalize on their stories, and build generational wealth. "There's no reason we can't build our own version of Disney," she told me, "imagined in one generation, and reimagined in every generation after." It's shorthand, but the point lands: if Disney had stopped at its first iteration, there wouldn't be an empire today. Chapman wants Black creators and storytellers building the same way, work each generation picks up and reimagines rather than a single moment that ends when the attention does.Johnson agrees, and put it more simply. "Social media was just how you met me," she said. Her book and podcast are the next step.Key Takeaway: Chapman is betting that ownership, not flash-in-the-pan attention, is what actually builds wealth for her authors.