"My life would make one HELL of a book!" said every sex worker ever. And you absolutely should tell your story if you’re so inclined! The real question is — how?
There are two primary ways to get your story to the masses: self-publishing and conventional publishing. There are pros and cons to both, which I’ll touch on here.
But first, lemme tell you how we did it with the ever-unconventional, Modern Whore.
It started with a sex work memoir/hybrid art book proposal: a melange of short stories, from memoir to fairy-tale, based on the two years I spent working as an escort, plus the artistic vision and high quality photography of Nicole Bazuin.
We shopped this wild idea ‘round to a handful of agents and publishers with no traction — the book was “too much” this or “too little” that. “I don’t know about that title,” said one leading Toronto agent. After much waiting, it started to become clear that for Modern Whore to be the artistic, bold, unfiltered, and thoroughly authentic product we’d envisioned — and published while we were still in our twenties — we had to do it NOW and on our terms.
Nicole and I established our own company to publish the book as Virgin Twins, in association with the boutique publishing house Impulse [b:]. As an art book publisher, Impulse [b:] “got” what we were up to and was able to provide invaluable support and expertise along the way.
After self-financing the production of the book, we crowdfunded more than $20,000 on Kickstarter to cover the cost of printing our first run.
Within a whirlwind year — having launched in Toronto, New York, Montreal, and Vancouver — Modern Whore sold out. Woohoo!
But the people wanted more Modern Whore! We were flooded with requests from bookstores and online shoppers for more stock, but...
When we approached conventional publishers to bankroll the expanded second edition of the book we felt was sure to be a hit, we found ourselves up against a few insurmountable obstacles. Canadian publishers rely on grants to fund their print runs, and those grants tend to only apply to previously unpublished works. Since we were pretty dead-set on publishing Modern Whore as a beautiful, richly coloured art book, it ensured the book would also be expensive to print. As well, we were told a couple thousand copies sold in one year with no formal marketing plan is not considered impressive enough to conventional publishers.
Call us when you’ve sold TEN thousand, they said.
We moved on to making the short film adaptation of Modern Whore. Directed by Nicole, the hybrid documentary short features an interview with me and dramatizations of my experiences in which I play myself. Excitingly, the film adaptation meant bringing our beloved book to life with the same authenticity we’ve always strived for. We formed a partnership with the brilliant iThentic to make it happen.
It seemed a darn shame that there wouldn't be books available for purchase once the Modern Whore movie hit the scene. With our film slated to premiere at SXSW in March 2020, we felt the itch to birth more copies into the world.
Besides, I was eager to share a whole slew of new strip club stories I’d amassed over the last three years workin’ as a dancer.
And so, it was decided: we'll just do it ourselves, again. We're now in the final hours of our Kickstarter campaign for the second edition of Modern Whore.
For this sex work art project, crowdfunding is an obvious preference and I'll explain why.
For one thing, self-publishing means telling your story on your own terms. At any point on the journey, we could have compromised on our dream, or waited around for the publishing world to change — but neither of us were born to wait. Hell, even if we'd gone the conventional route, old timey publishing takes forever. We'd be waiting regardless. In the end, we endeavored to make the book ourselves on our terms (and frankly, while we're still young — it's an illustrated memoir, after all!) by crowdfunding for the money to do it.
Crowdfunding means getting your project backed by the people who believe in you, your story, and your mission, by directly tapping into your social media following.
It turns out the same goes for conventional publishing: increasingly, risk-averse publishing houses rely on an author's pre-existing social media following to do the promotional heavy-lifting. So, if you want your sex work memoir published either way, you need to have a following.
In that sense, self-publishing removes the intermediary between you and your audience, which certainly has its advantages.
However! Just like the great Agency vs. Independent escort debate, going alone means doing SO MUCH MORE work. To successfully launch a book, you need to do more than simply write a memoir: book designing, event planning, PR, and book distribution are just a few of the administrative tasks of the self-published author. Yes, you'll have full creative control over your work, but you'll also be spending the majority of your time not writing. If signed, a conventional publisher would do all that work for you.
When you pitch your sex work memoir to either a publisher or to an agent to represent your work (recommended!), keep this in mind: your idea for a work of creative non-fiction (i.e., your memoir) requires only a PROPOSAL, whereas a fiction pitch requires a fully-polished manuscript ready for an editor's perusal. This means you can pitch your memoir before you've written it and get PAID to write your book.
Imagine getting paid to write your book! I am still imagining this!
I've heard it through the literary grapevine that the "auto-fiction" genre is all the rage — a blend of autobiography and fiction, with all the authority of someone who's actually "lived" the life they write about. That's a fancy way of saying sex work memoirs are really hot right now!
Modern Whore is an unconventional book that has demanded an unconventional approach. Though self-publishing comes with its own stigma — considered an "illegitimate" form of publishing to some — we've never had a problem getting press or selling books. In fact, we launched this second Kickstarter because we sold out of books!
So, my general advice is this: do your research on other successful sex work memoirs and depending on where you fall on the "creative control" spectrum, act accordingly. (A paperback memoir is conventional; an experimental art book with 70 high quality photos is not.) And don't write a book for the money because you WILL be disappointed.
Yes, I can't stress this general rule enough: there is no money in publishing! Write your book because you have a burning desire to share your story. Write like it's a matter of life or death. For many of us, it is.
To my aspiring sex work memoirists: don’t be discouraged if the conventional world rejects you. Fuck 'em! Stick to your guns and do it yourself. Never give up on telling your truth. The world needs to hear you.
Check out our Kickstarter for the expanded edition of Modern Whore here.