Having battled with and conquered her personal demons, Xlibris author Gwyneth Montenegro mustered up her courage to bare her life as a former escort. She then wrote and self-published through Xlibris her memoir titled 10,000 Men and Counting. Contrary to what the title may imply, her story doesn’t only underline her sexual encounters with over 10,000 men during her 15 years of escorting but her redemption from such an adversity and her transformation to becoming a respected businesswoman and an Xlibris author.
It is no surprise that in just a span of two weeks after its release, her story has drawn wide media attention, with over 200,000 views of her book video on YouTube and hundreds of features from celebrated newspapers, including the Daily Mail and The Australian. She also appeared on TV and magazine interviews in the US, the UK, Australia, and Hong Kong among many others.
Taking the big leap by writing her Xlibris-pubbed memoir
I remember the trepidation I felt when I decided to pen my title “10000 Men and Counting”. The thought of being a first time author was challenging enough, but the unknown ramifications of revealing a rather secret past terrified me.
It had, up until the release of the book, been a secret that I had kept for many years. My closest family and friends knew of my past, but to share my life story with the whole world was on a new level of nervousness altogether.
Self-publishing through Xlibris
One of the difficulties with traditional publishing is that you often need to sign away the rights to the story. I certainly wasn’t going to let that happen. It’s my life, it’s my story and I was sure as hell I wasn’t going to have myself presented to the world in a manner other than in a way I felt comfortable.
For me, self-publishing was the perfect way for me to dip my toe into the world of a publisher. It empowered me to maintain a degree of control over the creative process and left the door open to move on to a more traditional publishing house were it to be deemed desirable at a later date.
Now I wasn’t telling my story simply for the fun of it. If I were to reveal a past I would have rather kept secret, there would have to be some prerequisites:
a) It’d have to sell enough titles to make a decent financial contribution to my life.
b) It’d have to be written in a way that made a difference in the life of other people facing a similar life story to mine. This meant, and still means, ever so much to me.
In the second part of Gwyneth’s guest blog, she gives invaluable book marketing advice that helped her book gain traction.
Get to know more remarkable Xlibris authors on the Xlibris Blog and the Xlibris Indie Authors Roundup. Start your self-publishing journey with free writing, editing, and book marketing tips from the Xlibris Writer’s Workshop.