Going Rogue

I had it in my mind that if the book wasn’t published through traditional publishing routes, it meant it wasn’t a valid publication. If you are interested in telling your story, I encourage you to do it! However, there’s some things you should know before delving into the traditional publishing process.

First off, once you have a clean manuscript, and you will need to hire an editor to go over and redline your work. This process is excruciating, and you must have an open mind that they know what they are doing. For me, whole chapters were redlined, or removed. I wrote a chapter about my spiritual experience which literally transformed and enriched me in ways I never thought possible. This chapter was removed, the thought process was that it would alienate certain readers. That it would be offensive. I took it out, feeling like a total hypocrite for doing so. There were sentences that needed to be restructured, words taken out or rearranged, commentaries that were brutal. If you are sensitive to criticism you’re simply not going to have a great book. I followed direction, and made change after change. I felt as though some of the most important and impactful pieces of the story were removed. In the end, she was right. The finished product flowed and made a good story really great. This was not a free service. In fact, it cost a great deal of money, and worth every cent.

Next came preparing a proposal. A proposal is a very professional 20 or so page document which outlines each chapter of your book into a “Cliffs Notes” version of your work. It goes over who your prospective audience is, comparative titles that are successful and on the market, and is a wordy academic document that was way over my head. I had to farm this out to a professional who specializes in writing successful proposals. This was not cheap, but if you are going the traditional publishing route its a necessary tool.

Then theres the authors bio, which I also farmed out. More money.

Okay, so I was ready to find an agent. An agent is your liaison to get your work to publishers, who do NOT accept submissions from authors themselves. What I did not know before stepping into this process, is that agents are the gatekeepers. Only 4% of manuscripts sent in are picked up by an agent. If you aren’t good with rejection ( and I’m not) then this is going to be hard to stomach. Your proposal is what they read, and if your proposal isn’t up to par, you are deleted into the ether where all the other dead submissions go. Somewhere in the Universe, there are hundreds of thousands of dead submissions gathered together, telling their tales of woe. After about 6 weeks, the rejections came rolling in. Sometimes, I would get an immediate rejection by a gatekeeper who sent an automated response of “hard pass” without even taking a look at it. It was defeating. This was for my original non-fiction manuscript, and the liabilities of a non-fiction memoir were something nobody wanted to take on. Yet, 4 months into my querying, I received a phone call from an agent who offered me representation, but there were tremendous legal hoops to jump through which were required in order to take this to present publishers. This included police reports, (which I spent 7-8 months waiting for) and obtaining proper insurance which protected me from lawsuits. By the time I had all my ducks in a row, my agent was ready to submit my work to publishers. Agents typically only send out 10-20 of your proposals and manuscripts out at a time. I had a month left in my contract, and my then agent became gravely ill. I was also having at this point internal conflict with exposing real people. Despite what was done to me, I was no longer a victim. I was growing from this process, and because of this growth I learned that I had to come to a place of forgiveness in order to become whole, and move on with my life. Forgiveness is an act of self-love. It’s not for the monsters who inflicted insufferable pain upon you. It’s about letting go of that pain so you can continue to grow. And I did just that. At the 11th hour, I asked my agent to cease submissions.

What came after was a total re-do of the manuscript and proposal. I fictionalized everything, from characters, places and names. I dug in deep, and what emerged was a story that was still true, but in which nobody gets hurt. If I were to let the story in its original form go public, how would that differentiate me from the monsters? If I truly came to a place of forgiveness, I had to let go of the rage, the resentments. The pain. I see it as rising above the ashes rather than be a smoldering coal within the ashes. What came of it was a new book, and it was eons better than the original.

I began the process of finding a new agent, bracing myself for the bombardment of “not for me” letters. I began my querying with 20 agents. To my shock it turned out that the very first agent on my list was the one who picked up the book and signed me. We were off to the races!

To my dismay, what I found out was that the publishers timelines didn’t work for me. They have their line ups for the books they release a year in advance, meaning if I were to be picked up by a publisher, the book wouldn’t be released for what could end up being one to two years.

No. Nope. That didn’t sit well with me. I wasn’t willing to wait or work with their timelines. I just couldn’t see living two years waiting for their readiness. I needed to let go of this process and have it in the hands of those it could potentially help, and now was the moment to strike while the iron was hot. Headlines of sex trafficking were making the news for the first time ever. I had to move, and do it quickly. I asked my agent to let me out of our contract. My agent is an amazing, busy, and empathetic to my needs, and gracefully-remarkably, let me out of my contract with him.

I decided I was going to self-publish. I have a remarkable, real, and worthy book thanks to the team of people I had working for me. Theres no way I could have done this solo, and my gratitude runs deep for those who helped me along the way, but I cannot stress this enough: you will need a large amount of funding to get your book where it needs to be. For future authors, you can find help with this by crowd sourcing, angel investors who believe in your story, or good old fashioned elbow grease.

Theres also another upside to self-publishing. Your agent will take their cut of the profits, your publisher will take theirs. Typically, this leaves you with a fraction of the price the book was sold for, and then theres Uncle Sam, who in my tax bracket, will take half of that meager amount allotted for me. First time authors are typically screwed. Many are just so happy to have been the 2% that made it this far, that they will sign a contract that leaves them with less money than the agent and publisher reap. You also will have to sign your creative rights away, meaning if its made into screenplay and lets say Netflix wants to do something with it, your cut would be possibly zero. Self publishing affords you creative license, meaning you have a say in what gets sold and where.

One aspect of importance are the amount of scammers out there. Watch out for them. Agents do not ask for money from you. If you are asked to pay an agent-run. This is not how it works. Agents collect their cut from book sales, not from the author. Watch out for hybrid publishing. This is basically self-publishing, (which is free on Amazon). They will charge you exorbitant amounts of money to self-publish your book. They make it sound great- the heavy-hitters they will provide you, a grand release party which will catapult you into top sales rankings, the promises are many. Where many of them get you is in the high printing costs, which come out of your cut, and their cut plus printing costs, turns out to be less than ethical.

There are some really great writers out there who have been trying to pick up agents for years. The agony. The same goes for actors. Theres so much talent that goes unnoticed, and never get seen. Musicians who blow away the bubblegum crap out there now, who will remain unheard. It’s a game of luck, who you know, how you look and sometimes just being in the right place at the right time. Nepotism plays a big part in the entertainment industry as well.

So here I am now. My book is scheduled for release in 2 weeks. I have been blessed in the unwavering support coming from those who support my cause. I now have 25k Facebook followers who support ending sex trafficking, and who relate on a very personal level. I have a community of survivors, and I encourage them (you) to tell your own stories and release them to the world. The world needs to hear these stories. Only then can we make giant leaps forward into changing how we look at and deal with those who live with their traumas on a daily basis. My story is but a drop in the ocean.

Lastly, if you aren’t a hustler, a pitbull who doest give up, chances are you’re not going to get very far. Okay, I’m going to tell you a secret. I hustled my second agent. He showed a mild interest in the non-fiction version of my story, and I remembered that. I made myself memorable to him after that. Without being a pest (they hate that) I hustled my way into his memory. I wrote telling him about the fictionalization of “Voices Carry”, and when it was ready for submission, I sent him a powerful, heartfelt video of why he should: A) Look at the proposal B) Read the manuscript C) an elevator pitch: one sentence which sums up why this book is of importance.

This short video showed him I was a real person with a real cause. Charismatic and marketable, and ballsy enough to do the unthinkable. Sending videos to agents is a no-no and will likely backfire on you, or send you to the dreaded ether. I hustled my way into that contract. You HAVE to be a hustler. Take chances. The biggest chances I have taken have paid off in spades, and gotten me through doors I never dreamed possible.

Now, all my hard work is about to come to a head. I have already made great strides in the Survivor Community, and that alone has been worth all the toil of the past years of this journey of mine. Whether or not the book does well, I have my work on the political forefront, on the RAINN agendas, and serving my local survivor community. That alone has been worth every bit of blood, sweat and tears that have gone into the book project. I consider this to be equally, if not  more important than the book itself. I am transformed. In turn, I want to give that away to the next victim and encourage them to become survivors, and help the next one. Changing the world sometimes means changing one person at a time.

2 weeks until release.

I won’t be reading ANY reviews. People like me can read 100 really great reviews, and when that one shitty one comes along, what do I remember? Not the great 100, but the shitty 1.

This is just one persons experience in the wonderful world of publishing. Despite all I have said here, I encourage you to tell your story. Self publishing is freedom. Freedom from the incessant waiting, freedom from finding agents who think they are tiny little gods who can silence you with the delete key, freedom from publishers who have hundreds of submissions and out of those hundreds- even thousands, pick up 5 books for green lighting, and freedom from the publishers timelines which may devalue your book sales due to an audience who tire quickly from one hot topic to the next.

While Amazon is free, you will still have to invest money. You DO need an editor, and that can be costly. You need someone to format your book, which also can be costly. I paid a lot for this service, and it was worth it. It is beautifully set up with flourishes within a chapter where the scene changes. Amazon provides cover art services, but I can spot an Amazon cover from a mile away. They are oversimplified, which can work for you, or against you. You can hire an artist on the cheap on Fiverr, and get some really great work. I did the artwork on “Voices Carry” myself. It was a personal labor. It is a woman leaping, breaking the chains of her traumas. Behind her sits the Santa Monica Pier as seen from the Venice Beach side, where Carry lived through her years of sex trafficking.

I am having events surrounding the release of the book. Here in Houston, I have partnered up “All Things Love Event Planning” for a launch/signing event, which will include a reading from the book. Invited are notable and respected members of the Survivor Community, speakers, and invited press. I got all of this at cost because there are so many of us. 

In Los Angeles, someone from our community has stepped up- an event planner, and offered her services. I’m planning another event in New York. Half my followers are there. There is so much more good in this world than bad. I believe people are inherently good. Even after all I have experienced in this life.

And there it is. We are at the precipice of something very special here.

I love my life. I never thought I would say that. 

It’s all God.