He Built a $10M Writing Empire. Here's Why He Says Traditional Publishing Is a 10x Worse Deal

Nicolas Cole built his first ghostwriting business by answering questions on Quora in 2014, and somehow that has compounded into a $10M+ portfolio of writing companies that he runs with his partner Dickie Bush—anchored by Premium Ghostwriting Academy, the 16-week program that's trained roughly 2,000 ghostwriters to charge premium rates.

Cole is a three-time guest on this show, which is a record nobody else holds, and there's a reason for it. We met at a party years ago and immediately started geeking out about books and publishing like two people who'd finally found each other at a conference for a very specific kind of weirdo. He's one of the few people I've watched scale, burn out, blow it up and rebuild without losing the part of him that actually loves writing.

The part I really wanted to get into was the 10x argument, which is the cleanest case against traditional publishing I've ever heard anyone make.

A traditional publisher pays you roughly 10% in royalties, meaning you keep 10% of the book and they keep 90%.

Self-publish and you keep 100%.

This means that to make the same money as a self-published author, your traditionally published book has to sell 10 times more copies. 

We also get into his Medium loophole that paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties before they emailed him to make him stop, the Christmas Eve in 2019 he tried to duct-tape together a paid newsletter six months before Substack existed and how he emailed the Substack founder to invest the moment he saw their first round.

Also discussed: his Write With AI newsletter that now does $400K a year in subscriptions and feeds a $1-2M business on top of that and his case for why the only book worth writing is one you’re willing to write about on social media day after day after day after day.

In this episode:

• Why a traditionally published book has to sell 10 times more copies than a self-published one just to break even
• The Medium loophole that paid Cole hundreds of thousands of dollars before they emailed him to stop
• Why Cole emailed the Substack founder the day they raised their first round and what happened when they said no
• The $400K-a-year Substack newsletter Cole built by following the money
• Why charging less than $3,000 a project means you have a faulty relationship with money, not a pricing problem 

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