Sarah Edmondson, the Canadian actress-turned-cult-whistleblower, had a simple explanation for why she bypassed traditional publishing for her second book. After having spent years helping people escape situations where someone else controlled their choices, Edmondson was not about to replicate that experience with a publisher.
A Little Bit Culty: Navigating Cults, Control and Coercion, co-authored with her husband Anthony "Nippy" Ames, published this month. It draws on their experiences inside the NXIVM self-help sex cult, their appearances in HBO's docuseries The Vow, and hundreds of conversations on their podcast of the same name to offer readers a practical guide to recognizing coercive control in cults, workplaces, relationships, and wellness communities. The book was produced through Vancouver-based The Self-Publishing Agency (TSPA).
"Getting out of a cult means you want control," Edmondson said. "You've lost your individual agency, and here's a situation where you pretty much want to keep as much control as possible."
With her first book, the memoir Scarred, published by Chronicle in 2019, she said that control was taken out of her hands. "It was a great experience working with Chronicle," she said, but added that the publisher pushed up the pub date to coincide with NXIVM founder Keith Raniere's sentencing, leaving Edmondson feeling the manuscript was unfinished. She also felt the cover, which depicted an intimate branding she endured during her time with NXIVM, was more sensational than she would have liked. "I know now I wasn't ready to publish a book quite yet."
The experience was enough that she swore off ever writing another one. But years of fielding listener questions on the A Little Bit Culty podcast eventually changed her thinking, and when she began reconsidering, the decision. This time around, Edmondson said, she would retain full creative control.
For Scarred, Edmondson said, she initially wanted to write a resource guide for cult survivors, but was instead encouraged to write a memoir. In the new book, she was able to include exactly what she wanted, including information on navigating media as a whistleblower, as well as on memoir writing and publishing options. "I wanted this book so I can just hand it to someone and they will have everything they need in one place," she said.
Edmondson's decision to work with TSPA came through a conversation with CEO Megan Williams, to whom Edmondson had referred several of her podcast guests who wanted to write books. "Then I was like, 'wait, why aren't we self-publishing?'" Edmondson said. TSPA operates on a flat-fee model with no back-end royalties taken from authors. Projects typically range from $15,000 to $35,000 depending on editorial needs.
Williams started TSPA in 2017, after self-publishing the memoir Our Interrupted Fairy Tale, based on her fiancé's battle with multiple myeloma, and has worked on roughly 300 books across North America. She said authors with established platforms are increasingly choosing self-publishing not as a fallback, but as a deliberate strategic choice. "Often, they have offers from traditional publishers, but then they're like, 'I can make way more money if I do it myself, and have the same standards,'" she said. In the case of Edmondson's book, TSPA provided structure without overriding her decisions. "They made me accountable," Edmondson said. "And at the same time, because we were self-publishing, I could say, for example, 'we need more time with this part of the process' and get it."
A Little Bit Culty covers coercive tactics including love bombing, gaslighting, identity erosion, and trauma bonding, and applies them across contexts most readers don't initially connect to cult behavior. A fourth section addresses the recovery process, which Edmondson approaches with some wariness. "People leave a cult and then join some somatic healing community or something and end up in another shitty situation," she said.
The pattern reflects one of the book's central arguments: that coercive control can happen anywhere and does not require an isolated compound or a charismatic leader. A workplace, Edmondson said, often runs on the same template. "The boss is abusive, but it's your lifeline—it's your everything," she said. "The more seniority you have, the more buy-in, the harder it is to leave." The book asks readers to examine any situation in which a leader can do no wrong, where dissent invites punishment and leaving feels impossible, and then to recognize those dynamics for what they are.
"The most common emails we get are from people saying, 'I didn't think I was in a cult. And then I was listening to your episode about X, and realized it was much the same,'" Edmondson said.
Still, for all the advantages that self-publishing offered Edmondson, challenges of DIY persist. The most notable is how to access distribution and sales beyond their personal network. To date, the book has racked up several hundred pre-orders direct from their site, which entails signing and shipping books, and an equal number have already sold on Amazon. To promote the book, they are leaning on their network of fellow podcasters and are fielding requests for more than 50 podcast appearances, all of which is happening before the press hits. They have also hired an outside PR firm to drum up interest. Edmondson, a mother of two who is balancing book publicity with the demands of her own career as a podcaster and family life, remains pragmatic. "We're pacing ourselves," she admitted, "because, you know, life."
