This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
The secret author behind your favorite romance novel. Hey, what's your favorite romance novel? Okay, maybe you don't have one or maybe you have a bunch of them. It doesn't really matter for the purposes of today's story because this is Side Hustle School. We look at all kinds of ways people make money without quitting their job, doing something on the side that often goes on to earn a good amount of money.
So today's story specifically comes from the blurred lines between passion and profit and between public credit and quiet success. Because we're gonna hear from a ghostwriter. This is a woman who wrote fan fiction in her spare time. She didn't actually make money. She wasn't using her real name.
But as she kind of built a reputation in the romance fanfic community for compelling plots, spicy scenes, and serialized stories, she had people coming to her and asking for help. An indie author, in fact, that was her first client. She'll tell you about how that led to another and another. And now she's writing full-length romance books and some other stuff as well. Maybe you've even read it if you are a romance reader.
So last week in this segment, we heard how a former apartment manager turned their real estate experience into a profitable template shop for landlords. Today we'll go to Magnolia. Magnolia the fiction writer, gonna pass the mic. I'll be back at the end with a quick wrap up. [Music]
Hey, I'm Magnolia and I live in Minneapolis.
I used to think of myself as a fan fiction nerd with no plan. I'd write 10,000 word chapters and post them to an archive with no schedule, no outline, and really no expectations. But people actually liked my stuff. Some of my stories had tens of thousands of readers and I'd get comments like, "You should seriously write a real book." I never thought much of it, until I got a DM from someone who did. An indie romance author reached out, told me she'd been reading one of my stories and said, "I love your pacing and dialogue.
Would you ever consider ghostwriting a book?" I had no clue how that worked, but we got on Zoom and talked it through and she offered 5,000 to co-write a novella under her pen name. I wrote half the scenes, cleaned up the ending, and even helped revise the Amazon blurb. That was two years ago. Since then, I've ghostwritten eight full length romance novels, each around 60,000 to 75,000 words. I charge 10,000 per project, which includes character development and plot outlines, full drafts, and a few rounds of edits.
Most clients, they also give me 20% of net royalties once the book's live, usually from Kindle Unlimited or Direct Sales. I now work with three steady authors, all of whom use pen names and publish under different sub-genres, dark romance, billionaire romance, spicy cozy, you know, that kind of thing. I sign NDAs for all of them, so I can't name names, but their books chart regularly in their categories. Most of them just don't have time to keep up with their publishing schedules. They'll give me a prompt like, "Anced small town romance with a grumpy auto mechanic," and I'll run with it, always checking in with them for their outline approval before I actually write.
One of my books hit the top 100 in Kindle romance last year, under someone else's name, of course. I use Google Docs to write, Grammarly for editing, and Notion to track progress. I also offer a smaller $500 service to write blurbs and series synopses for authors who already have a manuscript but don't really know how to pitch it. Those are quick turnarounds and a fun change of pace. This was never supposed to be a business, but now I make more ghostwriting romance than I did at my last full-time job, and I don't have to do any marketing.
Just hit deadlines and write books that make people feel something. [Music]
Magnolia, thank you so much for sharing this story. Romance is such a huge genre now, especially on Kindle Unlimited, particularly with people who are just reading three or four books a week and authors that are just struggling to get new books out, like multiple books, multiple titles a year, sometimes one a month, which I just think is crazy, like there's no way you can get a good editorial process in that time, but hey, that's my bias. I don't write romance, I write other kinds of books. Listeners, let me know what you think, who you'd like to see featured from our archives of thousands of episodes, thousands, 3,204, to be precise, all those episodes, every single one, completely free, available for download or streaming on the website, sidehustleschool.com.
And of course, new episodes drop every day, every morning, in fact, seven days a week. Thanks for being out there. My name's Chris Guillebeau, this is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
