Category Archives: Rudy Owens

My memoir is now ready for purchase in paperback and e-book

Rudy Owens holding his completed memoir.

Rudy Owens holds his completed memoir.

I am thrilled to announce that my memoir on the American adoption experience can now be purchased online, in the United States and internationally. For now I have placed it on Amazon and Smashwords. I will make it available for individual consumers on other book retailing sites soon.

Buy in paperback, on Amazon ($15.99 in the United States; pricing will vary internationally)
Buy for Kindle on Amazon ($7.99 in the United States, pricing will vary internationally)
Buy as an e-book (epub format) on Smashwords ($7.99 in the United States, pricing will vary internationally)

Though I reached out to more than 100 publishers and agents over six months, the topic of adoptee rights and adoption as system that still denies millions basic equal rights is not a popular one and likely not a best-selling theme. In the end, I self-published through my newly formed publishing company, BFD Press. I encourage all readers to write a review on Amazon and share what you think of my work. Reviews will help to draw more attention to the book from other interested readers and better visibility within Amazon. Please be honest with your views.

For Retailers, Libraries, Institutions, Bookstores, More

You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are also can be acquired from IngramSpark in paperback (ISBN: 978-0-692-82156-5) and e-book (ISBN: 978-0-692-12440-6). Please search for my title using the ISBN numbers, the title/subtitle (You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are: An Adoptee’s Journey Through the American Adoption Experience), or author name, Rudy Owens.

My book is ideal for many markets, including independent bookstores, online retailers, chain stores, e-book and niche retailers, public and university libraries, and universities and university programs (public health, law, health care, social work, and more). I am especially focussed on marketing this book to all libraries and many university programs.

How to Stay in Touch and Follow Rudy

To get regular updates about my book, speaking engagements, readings, and more, sign up for my newsletter and follow my blog updates (sign up on the navigation bar on any page or the home page).

You can also follow me and the updates on my book on Facebook and on Twitter (@RudyOwensMemoir).

I always look forward to hearing from my readers directly; let me know what you think.

It takes a team to write a book

My decision to self-publish my memoir followed months of writing cover letters and pitches to publishers and agents. All told, I sent more than 100 email queries, many with a detailed book proposal and marketing plan.

Unfortunately, my efforts failed to pitch my story of an adoptee seeking justice and equality. I knew it would be hard to draw interest in an adoption tale that did not celebrate “adoptee reunion,” while also giving a critical look at the American adoption system as a public health issue. As a new author, I also lacked a massive social media profile or celebrity/notoriety status that publishers demand of any author who wants a backer. If you are not famous, you will not stand out in a crowd, and you likely will not make a profit for a publisher.

So, in the fall of 2017, I decided to self-publish my story, You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are.

I quickly learned that self-publishing is a marathon, and an indie author can’t do it alone. An indie author/publisher will need other business partners to create a successful final product.

This is my way of saying thanks, with a smile, to the team I assembled for helping me put together my memoir. Thanks. (Photo taken in 2007, after a great trip to Australia.)

Luckily, I was able to find great collaborators to successfully finish my book with the highest-possible standards associated with respected publishing houses. It was not cheap, and it was worth every penny I spent.

Book Cover: I worked with a graphic designer I already knew, Darren Cools, after soliciting quotes nationally from graphic designers. Darren does great work and was a pleasure to work with. We settled on a simple design that used one of my childhood photos—something I wanted to generate empathy from potential readers.

Editing and Proofreading: I found a great copy editor and proofreader by posting an RFP on the Editorial Freelancer’s Association website. I received more than 100 replies to my query. From that pool of qualified applicants, I found my primary copy editor, Kathryn Hancox, owner of Hancox Editorial. I also found my proofreader, Julina Small, who owns Signet Editorial Services. Both provided great editorial work.

Indexing: Because my book covers a large number of issues concerning adoption, adoptee rights, public health, and related topics, I knew I needed a comprehensive index to make my work useful for all researchers, the media, and adoptee advocates. I used the American Society for Indexing to hire Cynthia Savage, owner of Savage Indexing and Online Librarian Services. She did a fabulous job creating an index with dozens of headings, totaling almost 30 pages. The index will be invaluable to any reader of my book.

I want to thank all of my collaborators for their quality work to ensure You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are is enjoyable and accessible to the general reader, the expert, and perhaps the policy-maker who is seeking information to help reform the country’s outdated laws that continue to deny millions of adoptees their basic human rights.

Memoir index done; launch coming very soon

I could not be more happy with the status of my public health memoir on the American adoption system: You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are.

The index for my forthcoming memoir will help all readers find research on the scores of topics my book covers to explain this significant American institution. Here is a sample of just some of the topics that will be addressed.

Everything is written, proofed, edited, and now indexed.

The book needs a few final touches behind the scenes as I finalize the product for Amazon and other platforms. It will be available in paperback and several ebook formats.

I’m especially pleased with the great work of my indexer, Cynthia Savage, who created more than 25 pages of searchable index listings that will help all readers understand the complex story of American adoption and the millions of people it has impacted since the mid-20^th century.

Scanning the finished index makes it clear just how many diverse topics my book touches: public health, abortion, human rights, discrimination, evolutionary biology, bastardy (the study how bastard-born humans have been treated inhumanely throughout history), mythology, women’s rights, women’s health, religion, politics, U.S. and Michigan history, and much more.

And all of that is on top of my hero’s journey that unfolded over five decades in my quest for my legal rights and my identity taken from me by this complex system. My goals remain reforming this system and ensuring that adoptees have their full legal rights restored.

My next update will include an offer for free books to my first readers, who I encourage to tell their friends about my forthcoming work. I am looking forward in the many months ahead to marketing and promoting this work to a wide audience, particularly to readers who know little about adoption or adoptee rights issues.

Be sure to follow me on Twitter for updates on my book and related adoptee-advocacy news and sign up for my newsletter.

Memoir release set for April

Rudy Owens’ memoir on the American adoption experience

At long last, I can see the finish line for the first major milestone of sharing my story about the U.S. adoption system with readers. In April, I expect to begin selling my forthcoming memoir and public-health and historic overview of the still-flawed U.S. adoption system on multiple book-selling platforms and hopefully in book and mortar stores. Promoting and marketing my work, and finding the proverbial “stage” to bring it to a wider audience, will be an ongoing effort that will continue for months afterward. For now, first things first.

I will publish my book in paperback and e-book versions. I will include a searchable index for the paperback edition. My indexer is finishing this task now. I will be including a range of keywords and subject areas that define the experience of being an adoptee in the United States, including the terms “bastard,” “illegitimate,” “illegitimacy,” and many more.

An index is a critical tool for anyone who wants to quickly find material to help understand the history of U.S. adoption and the ongoing treatment of U.S. adoptees by discriminatory laws and public-health bureaucracies in many states. Here are a few ways my index will call out my subject matter:

My work will include original research of how groups like the esteemed American Academy of Pediatrics openly encouraged single women to relinquish their infants without any peer-reviewed or medical evidence that showed adoption relinquishment provided any benefits to the child and mother.
I will highlight new information from the organizations (Florence Crittenton Mission and Florence Crittenton Association of America) that ran the hospital where I was born and the dozens of maternity homes nationwide where hundreds of thousands of women were put in hiding and encouraged to give up their children. That data will include a comprehensive study by the Crittenton organizations of “Crittenton moms” and their circumstances when they gave up their children.
I will provide a detailed accounting how the state of Michigan fails to treat Michigan-born adoptees fairly and has failed to do its job managing adoptee-records requests and original birth records.
It will support my commitment as a scholar and communications and public health professional to be trusted and strongly fact-based source of information that is rooted in evidence and unbiased analysis of data and the meaning of that data.

Please check back on my website to get the latest update on my book’s publishing date, sometime in April. Look for news about a possible Go-Fund-Me campaign too.

I also encourage followers of this website to tell your friends to bookmark my webpage, sign up for my newsletter, follow me on Twitter, and, I hope, purchase my work in the coming weeks.

Why adoption and the rights of adoptees must be seen as public health issues

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provide this model to explain how a public health approach addresses problems and promotes population health.

My memoir, You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are: An Adoptee’s Journey Through the American Adoption Experience, stands apart from most books and memoirs that focus on adoption and adoptees’ stories.

Unlike other works in this field, You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are describes the American adoption experience through a public health lens, and it is written as a “public health memoir.” Please see the CDC Foundation’s definition of public health if you are not sure what public health means or how it approaches health issues.

In terms of policy, You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are shows how the institution—past and present—and the status of being adopted both constitute legitimate public health areas of interest that can be improved by changing outdated and discriminatory laws and policies. This will require the active collaboration of health and public health groups. Both have a moral obligation to advocate for the well-being of all adopted Americans as a population. Both also have a responsibility to correct their past historic roles creating a system that denies adoptees rights and also health information that could potentially be life-saving for some.

These are some of the public health issues my memoir addresses:

It shows that being adopted can be measured in long-term health impacts (there are anywhere from 5 million to 9 million U.S. adoptees, and that imprecision is part of the larger problem of counting them, and thus ensuring they count in all public-health decision-making).
It shows how and why health and public health professionals need to be involved in policy changes that improve the health for this diverse but large group of Americans, including advocating for legal changes to harmful adoption-records-secrecy laws now used in most U.S. states. Giving more adoptees access to their records will allow them to know their health and family ancestry—something recommended by nearly every leading health and scientific expert.
It shows how public health professionals today, namely in state vital records offices, contribute to legal inequality in the treatment of adopted persons seeking equal treatment by law and their family ancestry and medical history.
It shows how implicit bias against illegitimately born people—adoptees are viewed that way, even if that is not acknowledged—is seen in longitudinal health outcomes. There are tragic and meticulous historic and current data on mortality and morbidity of those born outside of marriage, which should be of interest to anyone in public health and health who thinks that bias matters in the treatment of people/groups.
It shows how doctors and social work professionals from the late 1940s through the 1970s promoted practices that separated infants and their birth families without any peer-reviewed or demonstrable evidence documenting how this would provide a long-term benefit to millions of Americans, namely the relinquished infants and their mothers/birth families. Those impacted were usually vulnerable, young, and powerless women who had few advocates for maintaining family relationships.
It shows how the United States’ state-level adoption records laws promoting records secrecy are out of alignment with most developed nations that allow adoptees to access birth records, and all without any evidence of harm. This discussion also highlights how this represents another form of “American exceptionalism” in health issues, such as the United States’ lack universal health care, and how the GOP in promoting adoption as a Christian/moral “alternative to abortion” has promoted this exceptionalism that harms adoptees as a population.

(Published Jan. 16, 2018; updated July 27, 2019)