The Foster Kid Who Built a Publishing Empire
Marcus Hale was born in Detroit, Michigan, abandoned by his mother at age 3 and shuffled through over 12 foster homes by the time he turned 16. He never had a room of his own, barely passed high school, and was labeled "unadoptable" by the system. The only thing that kept him grounded? Writing stories — he used cheap spiral notebooks and borrowed pens to create fantasy worlds where he wasn’t invisible. He’d leave his stories behind in every foster home, never thinking they’d matter. At 17, he aged out of the system with no family, no job, and no college admission. He was homeless for 8 months, living in shelters and public libraries. That’s where he typed his first book — on a public library computer, two hours per session, with a flash drive he guarded with his life. The book was raw. Rough. He self-published it on Amazon Kindle at 19, while sleeping in the back of an old Honda Civic. No one bought it. But he didn’t stop. He wrote two more, then learned digital marketing from free Coursera courses and Twitter threads. He taught himself how to build email lists, how to run Facebook ads, how to repackage his stories with better covers. And one day — it clicked. His third novel, “The Ones Who Were Left Behind”, went viral on TikTok after a single review from a book influencer. Within 6 months, he had sold 80,000 copies, got invited to speak on The Kelly Clarkson Show, and was signed by Penguin Random House for a 6-figure publishing deal. Now 28, Marcus owns his own indie publishing company — HaleHouse Press — where he signs new authors from foster care and other broken backgrounds, giving them everything he never had. His books have been translated into 14 languages. Oprah called him “a once-in-a-generation voice for the unheard.” When asked what kept him going through all the pain, Marcus said: “I never had a home. So I built one on paper. Then I invited the world in.”
