First of all, apologies if posting this is against the forum rules. Due to all of the information I've been seeing about this publisher, and how it seems the awareness of the allegations are still relatively unknown, I felt it would be best to share with you all here in case there's anyone considering working with this publisher, and thus could make their own decision about it moving forward.
If you're not familiar with Saturday AM, they are a digital publishing company with a focus on diverse manga, they've been around since 2013, and are known for publishing monthly magazines. There were paid subscriptions readers could buy and had an app where the series could be read. (I never used the app, but I'm assuming there were some series that were free, and maybe recent updates were paid) The company has also recently secured some book deals with a publishing imprint “Rockport Publishers”, and a few of the series (Apple Black, Hammer, Saigami, Clock Striker, Yellow Stringer were the first to get book deals around last year). The books have been distributed through major retailers and libraries, at least in the US as far as I know. This is kind of why the recent information has really came as a huge shock to me personally, because to the outsider it really seems like the company has been growing and I have been really excited seeing the success they've worked on come to fruition. However, it truly seems like there's more that meets the eye when it comes to how the company is actually organized.
After doing some research into the recent allegations coming out from multiple artists who have worked with them, Saturday AM seems to have been making themselves look like a legitimate, reputable publisher, they would field submissions from talented artists (either a pitch or through their “summer of manga” short story manga contest) accept them, but never actually pay them. As far as I know, there were some comics that were on a “webcomic” branch of the site, although they didn't know this and they were promised they would get paid eventually. However, according to the testimony from the wife of Seny, the artist of Saigami, even the artists with the more notable series (the paid magazines) were not even paid until they saw those recent publishing advances last year. (the whole thread here) so basically all the artists were promised payment and just...pushed to keep working on their comics? Essentially, it was just a webcomics collective—which is absolutely fine, I mean, we need MORE webcomic collectives, but why did the company not make that clear within the submission requirements?
A company using webcomic artists and unpaid labor from artists to build themselves up seems to be a reoccurring thing among comic platforms—the thing is, it's easy to pull out from a webcomic platform at any time. It seems like the creators at Saturday AM found it incredibly difficult to leave for a multitude of reasons: They were a part of a close-knit group and encouraged to be on long meetings and calls, and even though working for free, they were pushed to get chapters out. There are accounts from artists who were promised “equity” in the company, some were told to rewrite their series over and over again, with the promises of eventual payment. Another thing though, from what I'm hearing, the comics at Saturday AM seemed to be exclusive--they couldn't post them anywhere else. I'm not sure if any of the artists signed any contracts, (according to those in the webcomic branch, they didn't sign any contract) so there's still a whole lot of information we still don't know regarding all the details of that aspect.
Most of the information and testimonies are coming from a youtuber, Monitor Comics, and his twitter thread. The artists are coming to him with their anonymous testimonies. It's a HUGE twitter thread, and there's a lot more issues covered than just payment (particularly questionable handling of LGBT issues despite having an LGBT magazine). It's also still ongoing. If someone doesn't have twitter and wishes to read it all through images, let me know and I'll be willing to post it up later today.
There's also a few artists who are speaking out and their comics are getting deleted from the site, one of which who spoke out about this is Ricardo Antonio, his comic “Boneyard” was deleted off the site, and he made a youtube video in response to the situation. He also says that there was the promise of payment that never came.
The only statement the CEO has made to this entire situation is this: (his statement)
Hopefully the CEO will actually address these concerns and make some sort of statement about it, and actually change the way they are handling their company. And I also hope the artists who are currently there can be treated better. For starters, they are having their own convention next month (YES, their OWN convention! at the Durham Convention Center in NC!!!) so they must have the money to pay their team right??? 
Anyway, if anyone has any thoughts, or had any experiences, feel free to chime in? Sorry for the length of this, haha. :'D
