Blown for Good: Scientology Exposed
Marc Headley worked at Scientology’s secret desert compound, which houses all Scientology management, for 15 years. The 500-acre property is located deep in the California desert. The local townspeople were told lectures and films were made there. But is that all that was happening? It is the location of a multi-million dollar home for L. Ron Hubbard, built two decades after his death. It is the home of Scientology’s current leader, David Miscavige. So what really happens at the Int Base? Are the stories on the internet true? How does Scientology conduct management of its day-to-day operations? Could stories of armed guards, weapons, staff beatings, and razor wire fences be true? If so, how could a facility like this exist in modern-day America? Hundreds of staff tried to escape over the years. Some succeeded but were never seen or heard of again, and most failed. Why were people kept here? What really went on at the headquarters of Scientology? This is the story of what happened behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology.
Blown for Good: Scientology Exposed
Behind the Pages: Creating a Book That Scientology Couldn't Stop
Marc and Claire Headley share the behind-the-scenes story of how they self-published "Blown for Good," their exposé of Scientology's International Headquarters, despite the organization's history of blocking critical books.
• Marc started posting stories online in 2006-2007 under the handle "blown for good"
• Decided to self-publish in 2009 after learning how Scientology threatened publishers with costly litigation
• Created their own publishing company to protect themselves from legal threats
• Worked with former Scientology staff who had escaped, including editors and designers
• Balanced Scientology terminology with explanations to make the book accessible to all readers
• Created a 40-page glossary to explain Scientology's unique language
• Cut the manuscript from 800+ pages to under 400 pages
• Designed and included a detailed map of the International Headquarters
• Initially printed 5,000 hardcover copies
• Fulfilled orders from their living room while managing full-time jobs and raising young children
• Later added a paperback edition and included the police report documenting Marc's escape
• Book became a significant resource for understanding abuses at Scientology's secretive base
You can purchase signed copies of "Blown for Good" directly from blownforgood.com, or find the Kindle and Audible versions on Amazon.
BFG Store - http://blownforgood-shop.fourthwall.com/
Blown For Good on Audible - https://www.amazon.com/Blown-for-Good-Marc-Headley-audiobook/dp/B07GC6ZKGQ/ref=tmm_aud_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
Blown For Good Website: http://blownforgood.com/
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Hey guys, welcome back to the channel. Welcome to another episode of Blown for Good Scientology Exposed. I'm Mark Hedley and I'm joined by my lovely wife, claire, here today.
Speaker 2:Hey, hey, hey, thanks for being here.
Speaker 1:Today's episode is going to be something different, a little bit different. Back in 2000, let's say 2006 and 2007, I was posting a lot of stuff on the Internet under the handle of blown for good, which is basically in Scientology lingo that just means somebody who's escaped and who's not going to be able to get brought back, not going to be able to be recovered, and I posted tons of stories and incidents that had occurred at the Scientology International Headquarters in Gilman Hot Springs, california. At the Scientology International Headquarters in Gilman Hot Springs, california, and probably from 2006 to 2008, I got a ton of people writing to me saying, hey, you should put this into a book and release it and just basically tell all of the stories of what happened to you while you were at the property. And I was at the international headquarters from 1990 to 2005. So about 15 years. And then Claire was also there for about 12, 13 of those years 14.
Speaker 2:Yep, 14. 1991 until 2005.
Speaker 1:There you go. Okay, and we were together. That's probably what I. We were together about 13 of those years.
Speaker 2:Correct.
Speaker 1:Okay, good. Anyway, there was a lot, a lot of people requesting that I write this book, and then Claire and I started talking about it, probably in early 2009,. Right, yes, beginning of 2009,. We were like, hey, I think we could do this.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And one of the things that we did was we looked at who had written books in the past.
Speaker 2:Yes exactly?
Speaker 1:And had anybody from the Int base written a book that was in the Sea Org Scientology Sea Org at the actual international base? A Sea Org, a Scientology Sea Org at the actual international base? Because, to be honest, that's where about. At the time, during that period that was, about 95% of the nonsense was happening there, for sure. And whatever happened there kind of it was like a trickle down system.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:That kind of nonsense trickled down to all the other Scientology organizations and Sea Org units and all that kind of stuff, because a lot of times people from that property, if Canada the Continental Liaison Office in Canada was fluffing the duff, then they put together what was called a command team from the Ant Base and they'd send those people to go turn Canada around. And because those people had been being tortured and beat up and yelled at and screamed at by David Miscavige for decades, they thought that was how management should be occurring. So when they'd go there then some of that, depending on the people, would be more prevalent or not. But in most cases it worked at the AMP base. So they thought so it'll work in Canada, or it'll work in South Africa, or it'll work in England or whatever. So anyway, there were people that had written books prior Sea Org members or Scientologists that had written books, but we found that a lot of them were actually never making it out into the world.
Speaker 2:Right, exactly.
Speaker 1:And what Scientology was doing was they were basically threatening to sue the publishers so that they basically tell the publisher hey, you spent $150,000 on this book so far. We're going to make you spend $5 million in legal fees, so you're not going to make any money on this book. When we're done with you, this book's going to be a loser. No matter what happens. If you sell a million copies, it's still going to be a loser.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they had history of doing that with a number of books like Jot Tech's A Piece of Blue Sky, barefaced Messiah by Russell Mellor. There was a long history of very aggressive litigation to shut down books.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then we started poking around the community of ex-CORG members, ex-inn Bay staff members that kind of loosely were now starting to talk to each other yep and I think it was I want to say it was karen schless had written a book in 2008, I think, or somewhere around there 2007, 2008 this period before I had decided we were going to write this book.
Speaker 1:For sure, and basically she was paid by the publisher. She wrote the book, she turned in a manuscript and they said and then during that time, somewhere in there Scientology had made these threats and so they paid her, but then the book was never published. So Scientology, she made whatever she made, selling the book to them. I don't even know what that was I don't think it was $150,000. But whatever it was, she got paid and then never received any royalties because the book was never printed.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And usually that's how you make your money on a book. If you go through, a big publisher is from the royalties. Yeah, so we basically decided based on all that and we'd kind of already worked this out in our personal lives and in our business lives which is the only way we can't get messed with is if we're the ones that are doing everything. So if I work for this company, they can just threaten, they can dig up some dirt on the boss of the company, and then they can threaten him with the dirt they dug up on him. If he doesn't fire me, they're going to expose his whatever nonsense, any nonsense they can think of or just make up.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:So we we both started our own businesses because we're not going to fire ourselves after they dig up some nonsense on us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and, of course, we had young kids. We needed to have a reliable source of income to get back on our feet. I mean, we had just, in 2005, started over with absolutely nothing, literally nothing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and no family, no real family support from any of the family that were in Scientology.
Speaker 2:Right, we had no car, no resume, no clothes, no money no house, no mortgage either mind you, anyway.
Speaker 1:So it was obvious to us well, we have to self-publish the book, yes. And then there's different ways you can self-publish a book, and now this is back in 2009. Now there's a million ways you can get a book out yes, which didn't really exist back then. Correct. So we decided we were going to publish the book ourselves.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:And we started a company that would then be the company that would publish the book.
Speaker 2:Yep. And we did that very deliberately because that way the company would own the rights to the book and it was corporately established in such a way, by the recommendation of a number of people we consulted with, so that we were protected. And then, at the same time you were writing the book, I said, well, I'm fine with you writing the book if that's what you need to do, but let's get our wills done, let's have our you know, make sure we know we have everything sealed up and covered.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in case they get up to any nonsense, correct, just in case. Hopefully that doesn't happen, but just in case we're going to get all this.
Speaker 2:But you know, I mean historically, we expected a bunch of nonsense.
Speaker 1:We did. And then basically, what happened was I started writing the book. I want to say it was like April or February or April when I started writing the book. I want to say I want to say it was like April or February or April.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think February. Yeah, I mean you, you wrote that fast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I wrote it in like two months.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cause you would go to work, come home, and at the time we were living in the house, we were renting a house in Burbank that had a little back. The garage building had been converted into an office, so you and I both had offices, small little offices, in that building and you would go into your little cubby, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:But the office that was there was a studio Right. So my tiny little office was the control room with a big giant glass in it, and Claire's office was where they would set up the band and all the instruments and the singers and whatever, and that was the recording room. So the entire thing was covered with acoustic tiles my spot, my half and Claire's half, and it was all really really thick carpeted, and Claire's half and it was all really really thick carpeted so I could go in there and type or record things or do whatever, and and she could be in her office and I couldn't hear her and she couldn't hear me at all. So it was a very good setup. So if she's on the phone doing business stuff or I'm on the phone, we can. We were completely isolated from each other, which was kind of just a bonus the way it was.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, but yeah, so you would get home from work, we'd eat dinner, you'd spend some time with the kids, which, at the time, our kids were one and three.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They would go to bed. You would go back to that room.
Speaker 1:And crank out three or four kids.
Speaker 2:And sometimes I want to say you would work at it until three or four in the morning. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I would go in there, let's say, around nine or eight or nine, after they were in bed, yeah, and then I just jam out two or three chapters every night, just boom, go through them and the book right now is just under 400 pages yes when I finished writing it was 800 and something pages yeah so claire, okay, so let's say that so I'm writing the book and then claire's like well, I'm gonna figure out all the things we have to do to publish the book and to produce the book, and so I started going through.
Speaker 2:I got at least four or five books on how to self-publish and the best one was by. It was called how to self-publish a book. I think it was by Tom and Marilyn Ross, if I if I remember correctly. I should have looked that up, but either way, it covered everything. It was like a how-to guide, like a thick one-and-a-half-inch book that just covered everything. I read several other options as well.
Speaker 1:The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing.
Speaker 2:There you go.
Speaker 1:By Marilyn Ross.
Speaker 2:There you go, the Complete Guide to Self-Publishing. That's what I read, that thing cover to cover, and it talked all about because, because you remember, we had researched print on demand and you know all the different options.
Speaker 1:That's what I was going to say. So there's one of the ways you can make a book is you just you write the book. You get a word file or whatever. However, you write it whatever, whatever format they want it in.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And then you send that to the publishing company that you're working with and then they design it and they format it and they check it and they edit it. They do a ton of work that basically comes out of your money or they charge you a fee to do it. Depending on where you go, it's different, but in most cases you need to spend probably $10,000 or $15,000 to get the book to a form that can be produced, and how that deal is structured depends on the place or how you're doing it, but in the end usually they're selling your book and then you get a few bucks. You get a buck or two every time they sell a book. Right? That's like best case scenario. That's pretty much how it works.
Speaker 1:If you go to a publishing company, they give you an editor and they and these are all people that that's all they do is they make books. So they give you an editor to work with or a ghostwriter or however you want to do it, and then they design a cover and they do all this stuff and they also take all that out of the amount of money you're going to get paid. If you're a big, well-known person, they could give you anywhere from $50,000 to a million dollars, and then once the book is produced, then you get royalties. After they've sort of made their money back and they've got their nut covered, Then they give you a little taste of the action If you sell more than you know 25,000 copies or 50,000 copies or a hundred, whatever the deal is.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:And so then, what did you do? So then you read all that, and then, once you read that there was all these other things that you had to do, yes, exactly.
Speaker 2:So we went through the steps to pre-register the copyright for your book. There's very obviously get ISBNs.
Speaker 1:So that's that little barcode on the back of a book. You think we'd have a book after we're done.
Speaker 2:It's right on your other side. There you go yeah. So, there's a little thing on the back and that's basically the, and we have it on the slides too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's the barcode and the well we can show that in a little bit.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:But it's basically the barcode that all the libraries and the US system. It's actually international right and so it just keeps track of the number that's assigned to that book Right, and each book has a different number. So a paperback book has a different number than the hardback book Right, and the Audible has a different number than the Kindle Right, so I think we ended up getting like 10 ISBNs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, we got a block of 10 ISBN numbers because we knew we were going to use at least one or two for the hardback and the paperback. And I don't even think Audible. I think Audible was. Maybe Audible and Kindle were kind of newish or hadn't even come out yet.
Speaker 2:I don't remember.
Speaker 1:I think the Audible was, but I don't think a Kindle was out at that time.
Speaker 2:I don't even think Audible was. I mean, well, maybe it was, I don't know. But either way, we started with the hardback and actually you had put up the Blown for Good site and asked people who were following your posts on OCMB, which was Operation Clambake. Back in the good old days You'd ask people to say, hey, just shoot us an email, register your email if you're interested in getting a copy of the book when we release it. So we kind of already had built up a database.
Speaker 1:I think we had a thousand people that said when the book comes out, I'll buy it and I'll buy it. And we even did. I think we even asked what price they would pay for it yes because we said hey, would you?
Speaker 2:and would you prefer paperback or hardback? That's right, because that's when we decided, okay, let's just do the hardback, and we figured out how to cover the production costs ourselves in such a way that we would then make that money back, hopefully, if everything was basically we figured we needed about $25,000 to do everything and then if we sold a thousand copies at $25 each, then we'd make that Right.
Speaker 1:So we just need to sell a thousand copies to make it, so that we're not in the hole on the book.
Speaker 2:Right and and in order to get a bulk price on the printing of the of the hardback, we printed 5,000 copies.
Speaker 1:That's right. That was like, basically, the lower you make, the more expensive each copy is. So we needed to get the price down to like a few dollars a book, and so the only way we could do that was to print 5,000 of them, and we we kind of wondered if we were going to have 5,000 books, I think.
Speaker 2:I think I remember that the cost of the printing a hardback, by my recollection, ended up being around $8.
Speaker 1:For the prod cost yeah.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, not that didn't count the other associated costs.
Speaker 1:That was just the production of something like that. It's been a minute. I mean this was 2000. I have a spreadsheet somewhere.
Speaker 2:Cost that was just just the production of something like that. It's been a minute, I mean yeah, this was 2000. I have a spreadsheet somewhere it has it all like calculated for anyone wondering mark is a spreadsheet guru. Uh, I'm the quickbooks guru.
Speaker 1:He's the spreadsheet guru and you know actually who taught me that, who mitch brisker oh, there you go, mitch brisker used to have a software company that made a budget thing for um.
Speaker 1:I want to say it was commercial um like tv commercial productions yeah, I did not know had a, the director and the cast and the sets and the lights and the locations and you'd plug all that in and it would basically you could control your budget and see what all the costs were to be able to submit a budget for approval in the studio system or in Hollywood, in the industry.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 1:And so he knew how he knew all these shortcuts and commands and ways you could do really fancy stuff in Excel, yeah, microsoft Excel, yeah, and so, yeah. So I think that was like back in 1995. So since 1995, I've kind of been like a spreadsheet nerd, yeah, anyway. So, yes, we did, so we were paying about. Let's just say it's eight bucks each, yeah, something like that.
Speaker 2:Either way it was a lot, and especially given like we were just freshly out.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:We were four years into our real lives, in the real world, with a three-year-old and a one-year-old and both full-time jobs. Yeah, Both had full-time jobs and yeah, so it was. It was a lot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was a lot. I will agree with that. Okay, so then I'm right. So then I'm, I'm basically writing the book.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And Claire has to line up everything. So what did you have to line up? And there's some funny parts of this too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay. So first of all I obviously started reading it as you were going, because we kind of agreed that you know whatever we were working together on that piece. So then we had to find an editor and we ended up actually with two different editors one who had never been in Scientology, and you can tell the story of the other one.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, so we wanted to make sure that non-Scientologists or people that weren't familiar with Scientology would be able to get through it, because in Scientology they have a lot of lingo, they use abbreviations and they literally have their own language Scientologies. That is Scientology, and if two Scientologists are talking to each other in Scientologies, most anybody around them would not really be able to understand what they're talking about.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Depending on how heavy they use it, but between the abbreviations and the words, the made-up words, they don't mean anything outside of Scientology.
Speaker 2:Right, but conversely a Scientologist, if you say oh, I'm in Scientology if you don't know and use that lingo.
Speaker 1:Like if you call the auditing counseling, then they go oh, this person wasn't in Scientology because, you would never call auditing counseling, you would always just call it auditing or going in session.
Speaker 2:Correct, yeah, and the words are interchangeable in the outside world, but they are not used in scientology. Like you never call an auditor a counselor, ever, um, ever, ever I'm gonna adjust your camera all right, we're having an earthquake there you go um anyway.
Speaker 2:So so that was a a really significant editorial decision in relation to your book, because I think it's fair to say that your goal was to your target audience were those people in Scientology to let them know the true nature of the psychopath known as David Miscavige and what really goes on behind the scenes and that, and which they're supporting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so basically, yeah, it was two tiers. It needed to. Scientologists needed to be able to read it and go okay, that 100% happened.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And then a non-Scientologist or somebody who had somebody that that worked in the Sea Org or worked at the Int Base. They could see what was happening to their loved one or their the person that they knew, yep, and then just the general public to see, to expose the abuses and what was happening. So it had to hit, it had to be able to be read by all three of those groups of people and make some sense and and and have enough lingo that you can see that it's crazy and have enough normal translations so that you'd understand what was happening.
Speaker 2:Right, and that was a very difficult task.
Speaker 1:Well, because she wanted us to take out most of the lingo. She said there's no way it's hard to get through this because there's so much lingo. And so we kind of weingo. She said there's no way it's hard to get through this because there's so much lingo. And so we kind of we took out a bit. We kind of we kind of softened that a little bit. But I really did feel that to be a true representation we had to use a bunch of the lingo, and we had to. So Scientologists would know that this 100% is something that's real, because if we don't use the right lingo, it doesn't it when a Scientologist hears somebody talk about Scientology and they they don't know things or they say weird things that they don't understand.
Speaker 1:A lot of times they go well, that person was never in Scientology because they're not using the language that we use in Scientology, so it must be weird. And also there is a weird thing about like body thetan and thetan. In Scientology they talk about thetans all the time, just a human thetan, but when you get onto the upper levels they talk about body Thetans, which are separate from a Thetan, because a body Thetan is oddly an alien that doesn't have a body and that's sort of like their soul. It's just the Thetan from an alien body.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would. I would say that probably the reason they're called body Thetans is because the concept that Hubbard first envisioned is that they're, you know, stuck to one's body.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, I get it.
Speaker 2:Anyway, it is a contradiction.
Speaker 1:It's a weird thing. So when you say to a sign, if you it's one of thousands of conversations, to be fair.
Speaker 1:But even when I heard, when I watched the South park thing and they started talking about body things, I'm like, oh, this is not real, because that's not a thing. But the more you go, you go. Oh no, that is a thing. I just never knew about that thing, so anyway. So she wanted us to take out a bunch of the lingo, of the lingo we then had. We took out a little bit of the wing lingo and then we had the same guy who, who edited all of scientology's books. Yeah, be the editor of my book, and he could.
Speaker 2:He had escaped. Yeah, just recently. Yes, so he escaped.
Speaker 1:I think, like, uh, two or three years before we did yeah, and that was a gentleman by the name of Dan Kuhn which, if anybody was a Scientologist, he plays Joe Howard of the original film that shows you how to do training routines TRs in Scientology, and he worked in Ron's Technical Research and Compilations Division at the base or the Senior case supervisor unit international, so between those two he was very highly technically trained in the scientology processes and auditing and counseling and all that. Yeah, but he also was personally trained by l ron hubbard, and l ron hubbard directed the film on how you do TRS training routines, which is like really, really, that's where you stare at the wall and you stare at a person and you they yell at you and you're not supposed to react and all that good stuff. He essentially was the model of how to do that for all Scientologists.
Speaker 2:Right, he and Lyman's uh, no, him and Bob.
Speaker 1:Bob Waldman. Bob Waldman Waldo.
Speaker 2:Were the main actors.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in that film.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And then he went on to edit a lot of Scientology books. Most of the ones that are out today like official Scientology versions of L Ron Hubbard's books.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:Dan Kuhn is the one who edited a lot of those, if not all of them, Anyway. So he edited the book and he didn't take out a lot of lingo at all.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:I think he really just kind of made it like fixed my grammatical inefficiencies.
Speaker 2:we'll say I was going to use the word gymnastics.
Speaker 1:Gymnastics, Anyway. So yeah. So he fixed a lot of that up and um and then when claire's reading this book she finds out it can't be over 400 pages if it's a first, like a. It's sort of like a weird general rule yeah, it is.
Speaker 2:It's just the recommendation for a memoir. I mean, you know it's.
Speaker 1:Don't make it more than 400 pages, Right exactly.
Speaker 2:So I just kind of laid that down for you as a law. It's not exactly a law, of course there are longer ones, but especially for a subject so complex and involved, for a for a subject so complex, yeah, um, and involved, you know it. Just, I think that it it just needed to get to the point and and be something that people were able to consume and we didn't need blown for good the ben-hur edition, yeah we didn't want people blown for good from reading blown for good anyway, so.
Speaker 1:so the book, as I wrote it, was 800 and something pages. Yeah, by the time it made it into the book it got cut, basically in half.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:And we really what we did was we took out any stories that kind of already happened or like if there was some sort of physical abuse or torture yeah well, we took out three of those and left the one we thought was the most demonstrable of how that occurred yeah, but we also.
Speaker 2:The other thing we did is because we were expecting nonsense from Scientology, anything that you weren't directly involved in right. That was like you knew about it, but you weren't physically there. You heard about, about it from someone else, so it was purely your experiences and what you saw, what you witnessed. You know all of that. That was the primary focus of what we, how we decided what would stay and what would go.
Speaker 1:That's right, and if we'd already kind of covered it between those two things we were like, well, we already talked about this kind of nonsense here and also it might've even involved the same people, just a different story of the same group, like meetings, or, you know, musical chairs, like of the whole. The whole kind of started just the last few years we were there.
Speaker 2:It did Like the last year and a half and it originally was the SP room in those trailers and even that was just psychotic and insane at the time, even to us, even in that world we're like what? On earth is going on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so there were probably a year or two of whole stories and it was like, well, what's the most crazy? Like, what did we think when we were there was the most crazy? And the musical chairs thing was sort of that were gone to.
Speaker 2:yeah, to make all those people believe that they were getting shipped off like the tickets were printed. Air plane tickets, everything, yeah, um and it took. It took hours and hours, and hours to go.
Speaker 1:I mean, I want to say it started midday and it went all day, all night and into the wheat, like I think we, I, when the end of the story is done and I'm leaving the hole. I want to say it was like two or three in the morning.
Speaker 2:I yeah, that's that matches what I remember too so. I wasn't in that meeting, yeah, but you were kind of, I think you had come in a few times or no.
Speaker 2:Nobody was allowed in, oh not during the musical tears, but at that time is when I was internal exec in Religious Technology Center, so I was over the internal stuff. But the person who worked under me, Liz Rossi, is the person who was printing off all those airline tickets. So I knew something bizarre was afoot, but nobody was allowed to talk to it, talk about it. Nobody was allowed to go in or out of that meeting.
Speaker 1:It was it was crazy.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Anyway. So. So there is somewhere, I don't even know where we have all that. There might just be an 800 page version of all this nonsense. And then, okay, so that's happening. Okay, then we have to design the actual book, so we have to design the cover and the map of the international headquarters, and all that stuff has to be made by somebody. And so, again, we don't live in the book publishing world. So we found out that the guy who designed all the Scientology books had also escaped.
Speaker 2:Yeah, really really great guy.
Speaker 1:Amazing dude.
Speaker 2:Super amazing designer, also Very talented.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like kind of like a prodigy in terms of design. He was in the Sea Org when he learned all of this.
Speaker 2:Right and he. I don't know what his back. I've never actually asked him what his backstory was, but I know he's. What was he from? What country is he from? I can't remember Finland, or Sweden, or I always mix these up.
Speaker 1:I want to say a Scandinavian area.
Speaker 2:There you go. Sorry if he ever watches this. Sorry, Callie.
Speaker 1:Anyway. So this guy, callie, he actually was the one who designed all of the covers, the spines, the interior text, the glossary everything and he did such an amazing job. And um and so when the book was done we sent him a copy and it was all done. We said here you go we. We had kind of talked to him when the manuscript was done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but we had talked to him beforehand on how he would want to get it and what type of files and formats and how he would get the whole thing. And then he said, yes, I'm going to, I'm going to do a cover. I'm going to do it's called like front matter, back matter, all of the things that make up the cover, the inside of the cover, the beginning parts of the book, the preface, the author's note, the beginning parts of the book, the preface, the author's note, the table of contents, all that stuff, yeah. And then at the end of the book there's stuff. And then in this book there's photos or maps on the insides of the book so you can see all of the places that we're talking about. In the book there's an entire map of the. I'll put it on this camera. There's an entire map of the. I'll put it on this camera. There's an entire map of the international headquarters. That's numbered and it lists out all of the individual buildings and what their names are and all that good stuff.
Speaker 2:Yep, and also I wanted to say too so in the.
Speaker 1:I'll put this up and see if that yeah.
Speaker 2:Also in the front cover, next to the contents. So you have to have all of this text generated. Yeah, also in the front cover next to the contents. So you have to have all of this text generated. Yeah, this text here, perfect. Yeah, which says this you have to. It has to be very, very precise to comply with the library rules.
Speaker 1:Yes, it can go into library. It has who wrote it, the Library of Congress number, the ISBN, the address, all of that stuff has to be in there and so, yeah, so we had to do that and then you know, like a title page contents. The other thing we had to do for this book is we had to make a glossary, for sure, because there's so much Scientologies. The other thing we had to do for this book is we had to make a glossary for sure because there's so much Scientology's.
Speaker 1:I think the glossary is like 30 or 40 pages. It's not, it's not nothing, I don't know. Actually, I have to look. I'm sorry guys, I'm just excited about this Glossary 343 to, yeah, 383. So it is literally the glossary in this book is 40 pages long.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:And so that was important that we have that Also. We put an index in there so we could see. If you just wanted to look up a specific person or something that happened, you could go there and then the police report.
Speaker 2:So let's talk about that for a minute, because we didn't have the police report when we printed the book.
Speaker 1:It was when the paperback came out that we entered. We put the police report in, which is basically the very beginning of the book, and the very end of the book is me escaping on my motorcycle and them running me off the road, and then the police coming and then the police helping me get away, and that was all in the book in the hardback.
Speaker 2:But you did not even know that there was a police report.
Speaker 1:That's right and also that's. Another crazy thing is that I tell the story, but that's it Just my side of it. So I think it was about a year or two after the hardback came out. There was a gentleman by the name of Anon Orange Anonymous Orange it was a protester, scientology protester First.
Speaker 2:Second, I thought you were going to say his name. I was like, don't say it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, his name was Anon Orange and he was a.
Speaker 1:Scientology protester that was part of Anonymous and he would protest at the base. And he went to Riverside County and filed a Freedom of Information Act request to see if there were any documents related to a Mark Headley around this date. And he got a ping. They wouldn't let him get the document because he wasn't involved in the incident, right. But he was able to alert me that there was a document and then I could just file my own request and for like $8, they'd send me a copy of it. And so because they'd already dug it up and he already got exactly, he asked him what do I need to give to the guy that this is related to so he can get the report? So I had everything. I just filled it out and sent it in and then they sent me a copy of the report and the fact that the report it 100% matches the story I tell.
Speaker 2:It's crazy.
Speaker 1:But then it fills in the entire police part of it and the sheriffs and what they're doing. And then also, I suspected who was in the cars that were following us from the property, even when the police were tailing me. Police were tailing me, but I didn't 100% know that it was Bruce Wagner and there wasn't anybody else in the vehicle, or that it was Muriel, but there wasn't anybody else, or that there were three.
Speaker 2:how many three security guards?
Speaker 1:In the vehicle. That's right, that was another thing. I didn't know is I didn't know that who was in the security vehicle that didn't get out. I only knew Danny because he was messing with me, right.
Speaker 2:Danny Dunnigan.
Speaker 1:Danny Dunnigan. Yeah, danny Dunnigan. Anyway, so it's a very the police report is kind of amazing. Yeah, it is. And then, regarding the glossary, the glossary that's in my book is actually on the Blown for Good website, because we talk about a lot.
Speaker 2:Oh it't, I didn't remember that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm pretty sure it is because we do so many, we talk about so much lingo in the videos that we were like, well, we should probably, um, we should probably put them, the glossary, somewhere besides our um, besides the book, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm. You can look? Yeah, look for sure, because I remember that we put it up there when we originally redid the site.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I definitely remember that we talked about it.
Speaker 1:Here's the guy guys. This is going to see if my memory is correct or not. I haven't been to the website in years. I think I'd go there to check if it's working when somebody says it got hacked or whatever.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm not seeing it right now. Don't back up YouTube blown for good, podcast, other appearances, books and merch. It's in there, okay, all right. Well, if it's not?
Speaker 1:then resources go to resource.
Speaker 2:I went there.
Speaker 1:Dang it, Janet.
Speaker 2:I know either way.
Speaker 1:We'll find it. We'll put a link in the description If it's still up there. It was up there Anyway it's all good Either way. It up there. Anyway, it's all good. Either way, it's a good idea to have it on the BFG site, it is. That's why it was there, anyway. So what else do we do? We got okay, so so all this is happening, the guy's designing the book. Oh, then we got to print the book, so Callie Hickey does the design.
Speaker 2:Yep, and for anyone who's wondering or has maybe thought about it, yes, we rigorously research things, wouldn't you agree with that?
Speaker 1:Well, just on dates. No, but I mean like on this process, like we pretty much oh, to make the book yes, oh, yeah, I'd say we over plan and average, execute Like we try to. We try to figure out as many obstacles that will come up and how to avoid them in the early process so that we can dodge that.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:So we had to print the book now.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Who are we going to get to print the book, babe?
Speaker 2:Right. So little old me starts, you know, searching up publishers and just calling around and getting quotes and it's like, okay, here we go, we've got a book we want to print, and how long is it going to take? And all this Because meanwhile we're also trying to finalize the release date and we wanted it to coincide with a significant date. Yeah, so, yeah. So we eventually, actually, the publisher we used, or the printer I should say that we used for the hardback was a company that I found in Michigan.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And so they walked me through exactly what we needed to provide and what the timeline would look like, like, and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then they made the books and I think we had them in like October, I think is when we got them.
Speaker 2:Yes, and we got, we got. So we got the galley first. That's right. And we had which?
Speaker 1:is like the proof of the book it's printed but it's not bound, and all the final everything, but it's just bound.
Speaker 2:And all the final everything, but it's just like okay, this is what it's going to look like yeah, so you can check to make sure that all the text is correctly on the page and that the map looked good and that the type setting looked good and and all of that. It's kind of like your last hail mary before you just say, okay, go for it, you're gonna have 5 000 of these you know, once sign that anything that's wrong, that's on you. Exactly, you have to sign on the dotted line.
Speaker 1:Last chance for romance baby. And then okay, so we print the books, we get all the books, and now we're living in a house in Burbank by this time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, not a big house.
Speaker 1:Like a 1,600-square-foot house.
Speaker 2:Yeah, not a big house, like a 1600 square foot house. Yeah, if that yeah.
Speaker 1:Anyway, and we have the kids have rooms, and we have a room and those giant living room right as you walk in and it just has pallets and pallets.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, I remember the day that those pallets showed up. It was so overwhelming because you think like it's just a number until you actually receive them, and it was 32 books per box.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:So yeah, 32 copies of the hardback book.
Speaker 1:You're right, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm definitely right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know the paperback has a larger amount, it's 44. Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2:I ship all the books I should know.
Speaker 1:Yes, has a large, has a larger 44. Yeah, there you ship all the books. I should know.
Speaker 2:Yes, anyway, so we get all these, yeah, and all these. So for anyone watching, you can do the math 5 000 divided by 32 is how many?
Speaker 2:boxes we had at our small little house in burbank. And, of course again, because, like you, uh, you worked in the manufacturing division of Golden Era Productions, so you were all about creating a production line and, like, what boxes are we going to use and how are we going to print the shipping labels, and all of that? Yeah, so, and you wanted to have it all in place and ready to go before we announced, before we sent out the emails.
Speaker 1:That's right, I wasn't going to. I wasn't going to say, uh, order the book Like we did the pre order, like kind of suss out like how many people will buy it. And then I said, okay, well, in order to make it so we can sell all those, we need to at least basically prep 1000 books, Correct? And so we boxed up all the books that we could and I think we signed like the first 500 books or something like that. The first everybody who did a pre-order got a signed book at first.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and my favorite part of that story it's a little bit of a side story, but so, yeah, we, you signed the first 500 copies and we found out several years later, uh, during our lawsuit, when we were in deposition they had a signed copy they did. They had one of those, those that first Office of Special Affairs handed you your book and I remember you saying you looked and you're like look at you.
Speaker 1:You guys bought a signed copy. You bought a signed copy Free order signed copy. Good for you. Thanks for the 25 bucks you got.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and, by the way, scientology entered Mark's book as evidence in our lawsuit because of one sentence in there where he says where Mark says he probably possibly would have left much earlier had it not been for me still being there. Yes, doesn't matter, all the abuse all the but the but.
Speaker 1:When they did that they sort of made it. So they're in, they're entering the book in their favor as fact Right, so they can't then dispute the book and say that it's not fact Exactly. Because they're using it in their favor, anyway, okay. So we box up all those books, we get everything ready, we say everybody okay, good, it's going to come out on November 9th. I think it was the date right it? Was november 5th oh yeah, uh remember, remember the 5th of november gum powder trees and then plot yes, so anonymous has.
Speaker 1:There's a day where they would kind of like the guy fox thing comes from november. November, the 5th of November Remember remember, remember 5th of November, anyway. So he said, okay, we'll have it come out on that day, and by this time anonymous had been protesting Scientology for um almost two years. Yeah, it was, they were. They were going wild for a bit there and um. So there was a lot of eyes on the subject of the abuse based on all these posts that I'd done on the Internet.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:People were finding out more about it and that this was the flush out of all of those stories and more all in one place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, not to be the bearer of bad news, but we might want to make a part two on this to go through the rest.
Speaker 1:We've got 15 minutes. We'll jam it up. This video is going to redirect into the aftermath. Yes, the Aftermath Foundation feed, episode two. Yes, that Claire and Phil will be doing.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And Claire will magically transport from this studio to another studio between the end of this video and the start of that video yeah, I'm just going to jump through that little portal that you set up with your technological genius and boom bob's your uncle okay, we're almost there. Okay, fair enough, it's the making of the book. It's printed. We're like on the tail end I understand, I understand okay, so, um, we send all those people pre-orders, the people that pre-ordered. We basically said okay, good, here's your thing, you can order them.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:You'll be the first to get them, and the first 500 copies are signed by me. Yep, and here we go.
Speaker 2:Yep, and originally we were just doing that all through the BFG website, so the orders would come through that platform. Amazon was just starting out.
Speaker 1:It was in the baby days at that Well of you being able to sell your own stuff on there and how to get it to be a seller. And we had basically set that up and the idea was if we could sell enough of the paper, the hardbacks, to pay for the cost of printing it and and people, and it was well received and everybody didn't just say, oh, this is a, paint this thing green and throw it in the drink. It's no good that. We would then do a paperback and then a Kindle and then an audible and so on and so forth. Yeah, and I want to say in the first week we sold a thousand copies. We did In the first week we sold a thousand copies.
Speaker 2:And again, this is all happening out of our living room with our, you know, in between our day jobs and our three-year-old and our one-year-old. And so it was ironic to us at the time that you sent out that announcement email for everyone who had pre-ordered or not. They didn't pre-order, they had said they would.
Speaker 1:They basically committed to buying a copy if it came out.
Speaker 2:They hadn't paid. But anyway, the point being that Mark and I they pledged support. Yes, there you go. Mark and I laughed about the fact that the first time we had to stay up all night since escaping was for a book about staying up all night.
Speaker 1:We were like we got to pull an all nighter to get all these things out. We didn't think we we thought we'd get maybe a hundred or maybe a couple hundred orders, but we didn't think we're going to get thousands of orders right away.
Speaker 2:No, maybe a couple hundred orders, but we didn't think we were going to get thousands of orders right away, no, so yeah, our packaging days from, you know, slaving away at the base definitely came in handy. And um, we got it all done. And we had to make several trips to the post office, you know each day.
Speaker 1:And um, yeah, sometimes we go twice a day.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:We were going in the morning and we were going at the end of the day, yeah, exactly um, okay, good, so then we ship all those out. Meanwhile, claire's getting all the amazon stuff set up, so as soon as everybody that got it through the website um wants it and gets it. There was a lot of people that said if you put it on amazon, I'll buy it on amazon yes so then we were like because when you sell it through Amazon, Amazon wants to take a big cut of it.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:At least 30%.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:At least 30%.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And then it's been different over the years. But they charge you warehouse fees and then a fulfillment fee. And so there's if you sell it on Amazon and you fulfill it, you get a little bit more money. But as soon as you're sending boxes and boxes of books to Amazon to have at their warehouses, it goes from you giving them 30% to them giving you 30%. So it basically goes from around 30% to 70% is the Amazon fee. So you sell more books because they have more reach, but you get a third of what you were getting when you were selling them yourself and fulfilling them yourself. Yeah, so we did it on Amazon as well. And then, immediately when they started selling on Amazon, people started buying them and selling them for like $300. And there's still copies on there today for $300.
Speaker 1:Don't buy those, don't buy them on Amazon.
Speaker 2:We stopped selling them on Amazon and now just sell them directly through the Blown for Good website for retail cost.
Speaker 1:It's basically a giant waste of time for us to sell them on Amazon. It's not that hard to get them from our website. It's just a regular store. You can use all the same payment methods and all that, and you get the book within two or three days. We send it out the same day, almost the same day we get an order. We send it out. In almost all cases, you'll get it within a week, no matter where you are, unless you're like, sometimes they get lost in transit if you're going to like Australia or New Zealand or something like that.
Speaker 2:Sometimes it takes a little bit longer, and that's happened, I can count on one hand, since 2009. How many times we've had to ship a replacement and we do that and then, six months later, the first shipment will come back to us?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's all good. And then once, oh, and then that was another thing that happened. So, once it was, it got accepted into the Amazon store and all that, um, we were, we filled all the other orders. This is all still in the first week. Yeah, we filled all the the website orders that we got from the blown for goodcom website, Yep, and then we weren't getting any Amazon orders and it was like what's the deal? It's been live for like a week.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, so hold on. So it happened to be the timing of it, was that? So we sent out the, the pre-order email, or you know, the, to the email to everyone who said they wanted to buy a copy. Then, mark, they wanted to buy a copy. Then, mark, you started reaching out to any and all media contacts. We had. Oh, that's right, and you started doing-.
Speaker 1:I went on Coast to Coast AM, which is like a nightly kind of like space alien radio show.
Speaker 2:But before that you did so, Tony Ortega put it up on the Village Voice. Yes, there were all these things. And then so, right around that, it was like we were getting ready to go visit your family for Thanksgiving and you had a two-hour interview on Coast to Coast.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And that was the first time and the first platform where you said okay, you can buy it on Amazon. That's right, that was the first time.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:Because we had just gotten it all up and running. Yeah, and it was ready and time. And because we had just gotten it all up and running and it was ready and we were like, okay, great, let's do it. So now, because we knew from people oh well, when you get it on Amazon, you will, I'll buy it there.
Speaker 1:So we figured on this big radio show. It would make way more sense to just say you can go to our website too.
Speaker 2:I think we did say if or you can go to our website. Yeah, so we got a few orders in on our website. But there were even people because that interview you did was two hours long and it was very entertaining for many reasons which we won't get into here but there were also people who commented during the show like oh, I bought it on Amazon, I just bought it on Amazon, I just bought it on Amazon. So we go to Amazon and there's no orders and we're like what is happening, so, and then we're supposed to leave the next morning with our kids for Thanksgiving road trip.
Speaker 2:So, I call Amazon, I'm like, hey, we know for sure. We've had people tell us they ordered the book and they're like, oh yeah, you go to this little box here and you change approved to pending.
Speaker 1:And then it was like Well, but at first they said they flagged it.
Speaker 2:Yes, they did, because nobody launches an Amazon shop and then all of a sudden has tons and tons and tons of orders within a two hour period, at one o'clock in the morning, little sus.
Speaker 1:Well, because the show starts at like 10 o'clock and goes to 1 am.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1:Anyway. So we sold a ton of copies. When we figured out where it was, Then we had to stay up all night.
Speaker 2:Again.
Speaker 1:Getting all of these books processed and going through the Amazon and printing out the label, and it's a lot of work too. It is. When you, it was more work than the way we were doing it just through our website.
Speaker 2:Yes, it was.
Speaker 1:Because all we did was put a packing slip in there and a label.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then you have to, you have to make sure to confirm the order and add in the tracking, and then Amazon, yeah, put the shipping info into the Amazon website.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, it was a lot. But so we ended up selling a ton of books and then after that we did the paperback. Which how much time we got. We got to hurry, we got about five minutes. We did the paperback. And when we did the paperback we got the woman who worked in religious technology center and was in charge of printing all of Scientology's publications, who had escaped by this time. And we knew, and we were, we were talking with her.
Speaker 2:And she had a printing company at the time.
Speaker 1:And she had a printing company and the paperback was actually printed at a place called Hill and Noten right Wasn't it Hill and Noten no, it was RR Donnelly, rr Donnelly, rr Donnelly.
Speaker 1:Yes, and RR Donnelly was printing Scientology things at that time and it's funny because in the story of Dianetics Hubbard talks about, when his publication was about to be printed, there was a psychiatry or psychology book that was coming off the line and as that went off the line, the next one coming was Dianetics. That is exactly what happened with this book when the girl, when the woman who was in charge of the printing, when she was at the printer to check how the book was coming on the printers, scientology was at the printer checking on how their magazine was printing at the exact same time. They have a broad sheet. At the time they produced it, it was called the International Scientology News, isn, and it was coming off the line on this press and Blown for Good was on the press next door coming off that line.
Speaker 2:Anyway, fun story.
Speaker 1:Anything else Should we do a giveaway? Next door coming off that line Anyway, fun story. Anything else Should we do a giveaway?
Speaker 2:Yep, let's do it.
Speaker 1:Anyway, if you guys want the book Blown for Good, you can get it on my website.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You can also, on Amazon, get the Kindle version or the Audible version, because those don't require us shipping anything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if we missed any questions that we ran through, we will. We can just go through and and if there's enough questions about what we've covered in today's episode, we can do a book Q and a episode as a follow-up.
Speaker 1:Okay, good, and then I will put a teaser in here, because we took so long on this. We didn't get to it, but we I posted on our community page on YouTube and then also over on X on the Blown for Good handle. On X there's a photo of David Miscavige and Tom Cruise on their cruise crotch rockets in a basement in California.
Speaker 2:They're missing your facial expressions.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, sorry about that. There's a picture of David Miscavige and Tom Cruise down in the basement of the celebrity center on their crotch rockets and I just wanted to see if anybody could take that photo and do a funny AI version of something or whatever. We have gotten in a lot of really hilarious submissions on that and whoever we, I think we'll do the top three, the top three best ones. We'll do a giveaway. It'll be a, it could be a Zinu, uh, zinu desk mat, like you see there, zinu and the body, thetans, um, it could be um, whatever you want from the SP store. Anyway, the three best submissions that we get in that that use that and manipulate that image with AI. Yep, you're going to win something.
Speaker 2:Yep. Um all right. So I'm going to say bye and jump over, jump through my portal, Bye everybody Jump through your portal. Please tune in to the Michael J Rinder Aftermath Foundation Foundation Feed Series number two with Phil Jones and I in two minutes. Awesome, See you, honey.
Speaker 1:Bye, bye. Okay, let's do a giveaway real quick. Can I do this? I can do this. I'm a big boy, I can do this. I'm going to do this. Okay, here we go.
Speaker 1:Oh, we almost got 100 people on the comments. That's good. Is that what it says? I can't tell. I'm not wearing my glasses, guys. I got contacts so I can see barely. Okay, here we go.
Speaker 1:Ohil came up a bunch of times and the winner is amy rubin. Congratulations, amy. Uh, email claire. Go or go to the website. Mark's talking too much. Thank you, love food kitchen. Um, I appreciate that. That's what I'm supposed to do.
Speaker 1:You didn't tune in to look at this ugly mug, did you? Um, hello from denmark. Thank you for that. Let's see what we got here. I got about 10 more seconds. Congratulations, amy. Send an email to Claire or go to the blownforgoodcom contact page and you can just tell her that you won and what you want, and she'll send you a link and you can just order it and it'll ship to you for free. That's pretty much it.
Speaker 1:I've got to get out of here because I've got to feed over to their feed. So thank you for joining us today, guys, if you want to get an update on what's happening with the Aftermath billboard campaign, then just stay right here and it's going to spit you right into the Aftermath Foundation feed episode two, over on the Aftermath Foundation YouTube channel. Thank you and until next time. Thanks for watching. If you'd like to help support the channel, feel free to check out the merch store link in the description.
Speaker 1:Zeno is my Homeboy and BFT branded mouse pads, shirts, mugs, all sorts of other stuff in there that helps us to bring you new content on a regular basis. You can also pick up a copy of my book Blown for Good Behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology in hardback, kindle and audible versions as well. There's also a link to our podcast and you can get that on Apple, spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts, and if you'd like to watch another video, you can click on this link right here, or you can click on this one here, or you can click on the subscribe button right here. Thanks a lot, until next time you.
