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Why I Dropped $6k On A Book I Didn’t Even Want

Two Life-Changing Lessons I Learned About Ghostwriting

Nicolas Cole
6 min readJan 10, 2025

In 2018, I dropped $6,000 on a book I didn’t even want.

Why?

Because I was trying to land my biggest ghostwriting client to date.

At the time, I had a ghostwriting client who was dead set on becoming a New York Times best-selling author.

He ran an events business. To boost his “credibility,” he decided to become a best-selling author. So he got a book deal, and a year away from launch, he told me was determined to pull out all the stops to make sure he hit the list.

What happened next taught me two extremely important lessons about ghostwriting — and why it’s one of the most exciting career paths as a writer or solopreneur.

The whole experience was a massive eye-opener for me as a writer — and helped me come to a shocking realization about the publishing industry (more on that in a second).

At the time, I spoke to my client every week as my agency was writing thought leadership articles for him.

So he told me everything he was doing to get the word out about his book:

  • He appeared on around 100 podcasts.
  • We did tons of guest posts for major publications which his PR company set up for…

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Nicolas Cole
Nicolas Cole

Written by Nicolas Cole

100M+ Views | 5x Author | Co-founder of Ship 30 for 30 | Want to start writing online? Get the Ultimate Guide: https://startwritingonline.com

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