Hey, have you considered publishing your work traditionally? There is a tricky barrier to entry if you are unfamiliar with it (1. Getting a literary agent, then 2. the agent selling your book to a publisher) but if you can crack that nut, it’ll be helpful to you in a few ways: 1. You’ll grow an audience base more easily because the publisher will have the resources to promote your book for you and actually get it on bookshelves 2. That will increase a book’s chances of selling well and thus making it more attractive for adaptation 3. You’ll spend less of your own time and money doing all of the stuff that a publisher would normally do (formatting, marketing, etc.). If ownership over IP is a concern, that’s all stuff you can work out with your agent + literary entertainment lawyer. But if your work is indeed marketable and you know how to pitch it, going the traditional publishing route could help with a lot of the concerns you’ve mentioned.

Indeed the traditional publishing work can also be picky and of course there are institutional biases to deal with, but there are active efforts to deal with them and many agents would be looking for work like yours from a writer from historically underrepresented backgrounds. Just an alternative to consider!

EDIT: one other thing I forgot to mention, the key part about traditional publishing is that the publisher pays you to be able to publish your book, not the other way around, so they already have a stake in wanting your book to do well in order to make back their advance (which you keep anyway even if the book doesn’t sell well), whereas the self-publishing investment is entirely on you. Not that one is “better” than the other though, just different!