Thank you so much for all your kind comments and words of encouragement here and on social media.
Many people have asked if there will be an audiobook. I am recording it this week and next and it will be available on 27 Sept too. You can pre-order the Kindle version on Amazon now.
And special thanks to everyone who pre-ordered the book yesterday. Before the end of the day it was listed as “#1 Bestseller in Scientology” which is amazing. It’s in the same category as Dianetics and Fundamentals of Thought and all the other Hubbard books.
The publishers collected some of the media coverage from yesterday — the list is not complete and no doubt there will be more again today.
Associated Press: Ex-Scientologist Mike Rinder has memoir out in September
Nationally Syndicated:
Locally Syndicated:
Spectrum News 1 (New York, NY)
Independent Tribune (Concord, NC)
Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN)
Daily Independent (Scottsdale, AZ)
Manistee News Advocate (Manistee, MI)
The Kansas City Star (Kansas City, MO)
Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Columbus Telegram (Columbus, NE)
Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Midland Daily News (Midland, MI)
Laredo Morning Times (Laredo, TX)
Off to a great start. Thanks everyone!
Hi Mike, I’m a massive fan of your work would love to hear you reading the book, but I’m in the uk, do you know if it’s going to be available on audible in the uk?? I can’t find it on Amazon’s and I’m hoping it’s delayed….but I have a feeling I might need to move to the US to get an audio copy!!
I’m sorry. Apparently there is some problem with the audio rights for territories outside the US. The publisher is trying to sort it out.
I’ve ordered my Kindle copy. Can’t wait to read it!
Thank you
Just a few ideas for those that want to help in addition to ordering the book. I put in a formal request at our local library for Mike’s book to be purchased for the collection and hope others will at their own libraries. Most libraries have this option on their websites. Libraries often buy mulitple copies of one book which would add to sales as well as gain exposure to Mike’s story. Once the book is out, leave positive reviews on websites selling his book and on sites like Goodreads. If you have a blog, social media and/or youtube channel, create a post with a positive review. Can’t wait to read it. Congratulations!
Excellent news! Just pre-ordered the Kindle version and I will wait impatiently for it to arrive. Plan on reading next to my Mike Rinder bobblehead 😉
Thank you!
Thanks! (me too!)
You know… Our Rinder bobblehead street value just shot through the roof.
*smug smile
Book ordered. I’m sure it cannot disappoint, just knowing all that you’ve told over the years you experienced, it will put it hopefully in one place, for future researchers to easily find.
I like having a print copy and listen to audio book, and will get that also.
Congratulations and I hope it is well indexed. (Kindle version allows index searching which is why I will likely get Kindle edition also.)
QUESTION:
Who do you think in OSA and RTC will be allowed to read your book?
Will DSAs be allowed to read it?
Do you think Marty’s going to be prodded to do another video, LOL?
Chuck – Without additional reviews and excerpts it’s impossible to say what’s covered in the book. No doubt Simon & Schuster has its own way of promoting its publications and Mike is letting them do their thing. Maybe S & S will let Mike post a few snippets or an outline here on his blog or maybe not.
Someone on a blog once posted that some people in OSA are so “brainwashed” that they can read past ANYTHING negative about scn without it having any impact on them which seems hard to believe but probably true.
I suppose another possibility is that some of the execs in OSA are in on the scam and as long as they are safe and comfortable they realize some of the entheta is factual and don’t care. There are other possibilities which goes into the general discussion of how and why people get hooked in cults.
Mike’s busier than ever.
What I was hoping as an answer was a list:
Linda Hamel
Warren McShane
Lynn Farney
are starters who I pretty much know will be allowed to read it.
next who come to mind, would be
Fritz Kevenaar
Donatella Kevenaar
the internet guy and anyone in his dept, forget his name, he’s Italian
The late Paul Adams and other ex’s helped start up a WikiScienotlogy encyclopedia, and that is a project I was asked to help spur along, and truly a ScienoWiki would be good to keep uptodate staff of OSA there, so making outsiders, and outside officials aware of who will have the paperwork to request from Scientology in court cases, etc.
OSA and DSA offices worldwide always have some people manning up those positions.
The OSA and DSA people do have to read the critical books as they come out.
The names of those Scientologist staff of OSA and DSA offices are always important, as those people, (example Frank Oliver, example Mike himself), do become defectors someday, and tell their repeating stories of this whole Scientology mess that goes on and on.
Even though we all know there is the decline of interest, Scientology has this apparancy of declining into emptiness, the OSA and DSA staff have in the past been allowed to read, and are actually told to read, for prediction purposes and “defense” purposes, the critical books by ex’s.
Chuck – Thanks for the information. That clears it up for me.
Random thought – Soon after I blew scn in 1980 I hooked up with a woman who had been a member of a small cult called “The Center For Feeling Therapy” which was an offshoot (squirrel group, haha) of Primal (Scream) Therapy. We both agreed we had been in cults and compared notes.
Was one of the characteristics “information control” meaning censoring of the members from speaking about certain things about the group?
Have you read the Robert Jay Lifton set of criteria for a “totalistic group” and of those criteria of Lifton’s, which were present in both of your two’s groups?
Thinking back on it we didn’t go into a whole lot of details but mainly agreed that we had devoted a lot of our lives to progressing in our cults. The head of her group dictated a lot of the personal life of the members.
The main focus of “The Center” as she called it was that to know your own Truth you need to consult your Innermost Feelings. Something like that. I don’t know what specific “processes” they might have had to do so. Sometimes when she had a major decision to make I could tell she was checking her feelings and I might add my two cents from some still active beliefs in parts of “Scientology Tek” – Lol
Here are a couple of excerpts from the wikipedia article on “Center For Feeling Therapy”.
The Center for Feeling Therapy was a radical psychotherapy community that existed in Los Angeles between 1971 and 1980.
Patients had their lives controlled by their therapists in the minutest detail. The patients were told what to wear, what to do, which job to hold, whom to have sex with and how often, whom to date, whom to marry, whether to have children or not, how much they could weigh (for women), and, most importantly, whether or not they could leave. Almost all patients who expressed a desire to leave were informed by their therapists that they were still far too disordered mentally to succeed in the outside world.
………………………………………………………
P.S. My girlfriend wasn’t that far gone as the most extremes mentioned in the above excerpt! As a matter of fact she was smarter than me and could always beat me at Scrabble!
Richard, Primal Scream Therapy was based on the idea that past traumatic or painful incidents needed to be revisited and resolved, so it seems conceptually rather similar to Scientology. And it was a product of the same era as Hubbard’s “work”.
You might have found a lot of commonalities, had you gotten into it. But maybe it was better at that point to leave it behind you.
Hi Mike,
Congratulations on your book.
I’ve just started listening to your podcast with Leah and watching the series as well – truly fascinating and frightening stuff!!
Looking forward to the audible version.
Congratulations Mike ,
Your conviction and determination were acknowledged by main stream media, as crusader against human rights abuses by Cults.
Keep it up.
Looking forward kindle version of your book.
Congratulations Mike. I look forward to reading the copy I have pre-ordered.
Thank you GRaham
My obsession with Scientology and Hubbard waxes and wanes, and it’s admittedly been on a bit of a wane for the last 4 or 5 months. But like with a few other subjects, I think it’s been enough years to safely say this is a fascination I’ll hold at some level for the rest of my life. This is reflected by how I come here to check this blog, sometimes every day, but at least once a week. I’m subscribed to a few of the key ex-Scientologist YouTube channels, and will watch or listen to ALL of that content, even when I’m at an ebb in interested.
But despite all that, I DID NOT KNOW this book was imminent! I just pre-ordered the hardback on Amazon literally less than 60 seconds after seeing this. Mike, you’ll never meet me, but you’re an incredible storyteller and speaker, exceptionally charismatic. I hope you’ll accept my request that you not take this as creepy, and hope you’ll forgive me for saying so, but: you’ve made me a fan. And you’ve got a fascinating story to tell. I’m speaking from memory, so maybe I’m getting the location wrong, but there was a scenario you explained that took place in… the Maldives? Madeira? Sorry, an island holding of Portugal or Spain! I can’t remember what it was. Anyway, I remember hearing you tell what happened, and I was practically praying for you to write a book one day.
Well I don’t even believe in prayer, but it seems one of mine has been answered anyway! If this book is even half as well-written as you vocally talk about these things, it will be fantastic. I can’t wait! And THANK YOU! THANK YOU!
Now if only Pat Broeker would write a completely honest book about Hubbard’s last 2 years… but with your book, a really big player in Scientology who actually dates back to the Hubbard years is giving us a book. Much-needed, much-anticipated, and much-appreciated. (And much hyphens, apparently.)
Congratulations Mike, both on the book itself and what looks like the beginning of a very successful launch. My copy pre-ordered my friend.
Thanks so much Guy
Really interested to read your book.
Will it be a confessional of your actions on behalf of $ci.. that helps some of your victims gain a better understanding of what happened to them? Will it be a whitewash of “I was only following orders”? Will it skim over the personal responsibility part but still expose the corrupt $ci.. organization?
With your closeness to the core of the deceit and lies, while being indoctrinated into their acceptability and then becoming the orgs top hit-man I can see this going in a lot of different directions, while still exposing a lot of $ci.. secrets.
Hope you covered meetings leading up to the big events where you were the spokesman. Things like the smugness in the room. The disdain for the lesser beings – $ci.. or not. Things to highlight, topics to avoid because “they don’t need to know that”, the internal conflict of knowing you were lying and playing your part as one of the pied pipers. Which “Hollywood Tonight/Extra/Inside Edition” type reporter was the easiest to handle for good PR? Were Leah and others given talking points for on camera interviews? Lots of details that can be exposed.
Congrats on your accomplishment of getting the book written. Good luck.
PS I don’t mean any of this in a hateful way, just my understanding of how hard it can be to confess one’s low-down sins while still trying to be a positive to those we may influence.
Mike – congratulations. We are looking forward to reading the book and putting it in every library on the planet.
By the way, we are setting up fundraising so we can purchase the “SP BASICS”, which is every book written by ex scientologists about Scientology.
Our valuable product:
The “SP Basics” will be put in every library on the planet so that we can provide curious minds the truth about Scientology.
The truth will set you free – your blog and show on Netflix with Leah Remini set us free.
We are over Scientology and OUT.
Congratulations Mike. there is plans to get it in spanish lenguage?
After nearly a week away of being jammed up at work I just checked in and what to my wondering eyes should appear but Mike Rinder’s BOOK published by – be-still-my-heart Simon & Schuster, a MAJOR publisher!
Mike, what fabulous news – you DID it, big congrats!
YOUR writing + S&S’s publicity machine – wow, just wow!
And that cover picture of you is perfect – handsome devil 🙂
JUst pre-ordered; can’t wait to read!
Thanks so much!
I just checked and Amazon notes the book as “#1 Best Seller in Survival Biographies and Memoirs”
I don’t shop Amazon but about five years ago I bought a book and when I go to Amazon to research anything it still says, “Hello, Richard”. Lol
It looks like Amazon has 32 main categories of books with hundreds of sub categories covering all areas of human interest. Being #1 on a sub category seems pretty good for a book which won’t be released for two months.
The write up on “A Billion Years” says it’s 336 pages so I guess it’s pretty extensive.
Congratulations Mike. The first answers you are receiving already say a lot.
After the news of your book in DM’s office, the desk must have overturned by itself.
The last person he wanted to write a book on scn was you. So funny.
Out of necessity he probably ordered a few copies of the book for OSA and the lawyers which is good for the book sale stats.
He might enjoy reading the book and reminiscing about the good old days when he could travel around and not worry about getting served with a warrant. Depending on what’s covered in the book he might like remembering all the successful rip-offs he’s pulled over the years. It’s unlikely he would listen to the audiobook which would be rather irritating to him.
Yayy!! So happy you have done this Mike and a big CONGRATS to you.
THE COVER LOOKS GREAT! Tony Ortega and Paulette Cooper, sadly, put out books with terrible covers. Yours looks great and is well designed and professional. And the Neutra font is one of the best. It is the same font used on the Scientology sign on Sunset Boulevard that has the video sign. They always know what looks good 🙂
This makes Scientology look like the good people they clearly aren’t.
Exactly. All sizzle no steak just slick ads.
On Amazon, out of the 25 best-selling books on Scientology, only two are Scientology-issued, all other come from defectors, poor David Miscarriage, so much hype for so little truth.
To: Armando
From: David Miscavige COB RTC
Re: best sellers.
THE ONLY REASON THAT THINGS ARE AS YOU DESCRIBE IS THAT I HAVE NOT YET RELEASED MY BOOK! WRITTEN BY ME AND ALL ABOUT ME, IT WILL GIVE RINDER’S PATHETIC LITTLE MEMOIR A REAL RUN FOR THE MONEY! STAY TUNED!
ML,
Dave.
To: David Miscavige COB RTC
From: Alcoboy
Re: a run for the money.
Oh, really? What’s your game plan? Use IAS funds to buy up multiple copies of your book to propel it onto the best seller list?
Wouldn’t surprise me in the least.
No love at all,
Alcoboy.
I am slightly surprised that some TV stations are covering this. It appears that there is a thirst for info on $cientology. And I’m not talking about taking a personality test. Your publisher has put out an excellent press release that is being used all over the planet. Why, it will be cleared in no time. ‘No time’ as in never.
I was once approached by a recruiter for the Unification Church. I told her that I wasn’t interested in joining. She left me alone.
Fantastic!!! I love it! Making a big splash! May the ripples be ever spreading!
I would love to see a several part series of your story on Netflix.
That would require a lot of expensive re-enactments that neither GOING CLEAR nor AFTERMATH used much so I guess they could not afford them. Sadly AFTERMATH probably had to spend too much money on lawyers (just in case).
Yay! 👏🏻 👏🏻👏🏻
Congratulations Mike.
Such great news! I plan to order the audio version as soon as it is available.
Mike, do you plan on doing a book/PR tour? I’m sure there are many late night TV hosts, radio hosts, podcasts etc. that would love to have you on their show as well as many book locations.
I agree a book tour would be great. And it will kill DM to see you on national tv being interviewed by the greats about your new book. He will go to his mirror and say, “But you said I was the fairest of them all…”
DM could always punch out the mirror.
COB must be livid that you’re getting this much coverage
COB is probably still livid that Mike hasn’t curled up in a ball and died, but is still biting his little scam on the butt. The Twit™ can’t afford to lose what little he’s got.
Preordered the eBook, no room left on the shelves for a harddcopy, from kobo.com !
I want to remind people that when you go to Amazon to order the book or the audio book, use “smile.amazon.com” to order it. That way Smile.Amazon.com can help you set up a donations project where every time you buy something using that address, they will pay out a percentage of what you spent on your goods and it will go to the Aftermath Foundation that Aaron Smith Levin and others set up. It’s a way to make donations that don’t even come out of your pocket, but come out of Amazon’s pocket and it will be used to help SO members and church members escape from the cult.
Sounds like a good idea for anyone with a Kindle. I use Kobo for eBooks because I don’t want to get locked into anyone’s proprietary format for eBooks.
YES !
Hi Mike.. Congratulations on your upcoming book release. You have a lot of courage to do this – well, alongside all the other courageous things you have accomplished with Leah and others..!! Well done and here’s to continued health, happiness with your lovely family and continued abundance.
Cheers!
Thank you Judy. Miss seeing you!
Maybe we can meet up this summer somewhere in the middle! Would love to see you both again.
That’s a clever title that you have for today’s blog, Mike.
I’m blown away not just by the national press coverage of your book-to-be, but also to your publisher’s response to it: so very supportive.
I sincerely hope that it is released here in Australia. There are bugger-all people in the cult here now so, if the book is as disclosing as it seems it is then, that would dissuade a lot of people from even considering taking a look. It may even stir the ire of our politicians.
Definitely planned to be released in UK and Australia but not sure of timing yet.
Amazon UK list the hardback, but no ebook yet https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Billion-Years-Escape-Highest-Scientology/dp/1982185767/
Strange. All three versions are available here on amazone.de:
( https://www.amazon.de/s?k=a+billion+years%2C+Mike+Rinder&__mk_de_DE=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&crid=1SQJF6FL40O6A&sprefix=a+billion+years+mike+rinder%2Caps%2C79&ref=nb_sb_noss )
I ordered the hardback yesterday and got informed that the delivery date will be October, 13th.