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 him.
• And he called in every possible favor from his network—from connections he built over the last 5 to 8 years running an events company.

In his network, there were two kinds of people:

• Promo traders. He would ask them to promote his book the week of the launch and, in return, he would do something for them.
• Purchase traders. He’d do them a favor IF they purchased a certain number of books from him.

Guess which category I fell into?

He came to me and said:

“Cole, I love you and, you know I love your agency, so I have an introduction that I would like to give you, that would be really, really impactful for your business... but I would like something in return.”

And I was like, “OK, shoot.”

“I know the CMO of one of the largest technology companies in the world. This is a multi-billion dollar company. They employ more people than the population of most small countries.

I'll introduce you directly to him and I will put in such a good word that it's almost guaranteed that they will want to work with you…. But I want your company to buy 300 of my books.”

Ordering 300 books at $20 a piece was no small amount of money for my agency. It would cost us $6,000.

But I had a feeling this would pan out and I liked him.

He’d been a good client and I wanted to help him become a New York Times bestseller.

“Alright, I'm game.”

So I forked out $6k and ordered 300 copies of the book.

Then he makes the introduction.

This new client became one of our biggest deals in the history of my agency. The company is actually so big that they didn't do monthly deals at our rate. They wouldn’t stoop to our biggest package (which was $5k/month) so decided to prepay for an entire year (that was a $60,000 deal!).

Now, here’s the first lesson of this story:

Ghostwriting opens doors to people you’d never normally be able to meet.

As a ghostwriter, I’ve worked with 300+ industry leaders.

• Olympic athletes
• Crypto billionaires
• Grammy award-winning musicians

And through them I’ve worked with other intelligent and fascinating people—experts I would never have been able to meet otherwise.

As a ghostwriter, I got to ask THEM questions. Life-changing.

Now, I bet you’re wondering:

Did my client hit the best-seller list?

When the book launched, 300 copies of this guy's book show up at my front door.

Box after box after box piled up, all across my house. “What am I gonna do with all of these books?!” For a moment I was overwhelmed.

But then I started trying to get rid of them:

• I gave them away to everyone I knew.
• They became Christmas and birthday gifts (for those who didn’t already have one).
• And when people came over, I’d be like “Hey, I have some extra books, why don’t you take one?”

When I moved, I felt like I couldn’t just throw them away—I’d feel too bad.

I had 5 boxes left which I opened, put by the trash, and pulled a couple of books out, hoping people would take one as they came to get rid of their own garbage. Here’s hoping someone got something from them!

The week of the launch, every interview he’d done dropped, every article we’d written was published, and every influencer in his network dropped some sort of message. And the week after, the New York Times best-seller list was published.

(By the way, this isn’t THE list he was on, but gives you an idea of what the list looked like back in 2018):

And he did it—he became a best-seller.

He got the badge.

Then, one week later, the book completely fell off the charts. And it never climbed back up. He’d used his entire book advance on marketing for the book.

The book made him zero money. In fact, he’d be lucky if he broke even:

• He spent tons of money getting his team members and personal assistants to promote his book.
• He called in every favor possible (and had to return all those promises he made, costing him money).
• And he paid people like me to promote the book for him through our work together.

Getting the New York Times as a badge probably cost him $250,000+.

Unfortunately, the book wasn’t even that good. Nobody read it. It didn’t catch fire with word-of-mouth marketing. Nothing.

And I’m willing to bet he’s sold hardly any copies since.

I realized that becoming a New York Times best-selling author is not about who writes the best book.

It's about who's willing to do the most work on the marketing side and usually who's willing to spend the most amount of money. And as a writer, that was a really shocking conclusion to come to. Becoming a New York Times best-seller is 100% just a marketing game and a budget game.

The whole experience changed my perspective on whether I should aim to be a New York Times best-seller or not.

Obviously, there are situations where having that badge is valuable, but my sort of takeaway is like, who cares? If you get the badge, but nobody reads the book, does it even matter?

Which leads me to the final lesson here:

Ghostwriting teaches you a lot more, a lot faster than any other writing career.

The money is good in ghostwriting (and you can easily make $100k+/year).

But the non-financial ROI is insane, too:

• You’re exposed to more opportunities you’d never get anywhere else
• You know about trends in your industry early and before anyone else
• You get to sit in the rooms and ask questions of people way smarter than you

For example, I got hired as a ghostwriter for a music-tech project founded by a Grammy-winning producer.

I went to his cabin in the mountains to work, and ended up playing piano in his multimillion-dollar studio (I'm a classically trained pianist & played for 20+ years).

I hope this story (of many!) shows you why becoming a ghostwriter is the single best decision you can make in your career as a writer.