Meet the authors who boast of a big success story — but never write a book
Sean Dollwet is a new type of author — and he is rich. The 28-year-old claims to earn six figures a year, making him a millionaire.
“I’ve published over 100 books,” he said. “And every single one has been ghostwritten.”
Dollwet is part of an emerging group of internet entrepreneurs making money from books. They outsource the writing and cover design, publish under a pen name, upload the book onto the online marketplace — and then, apparently, watch the money rolling in.
The “writing” process is relatively simple. First they use free software to see what keywords customers are searching for on Amazon. They choose a niche with as little competition as possible but with high sales, which is then used as the topic of their book.
Non-fiction books are often how-to guides — training spaniel puppies, learning Bavarian crochet stitching. Fiction sellers are often fantasy — vampire romance novels or sci-fi. They can also sell books by reprinting classic works that have an expired copyright, such as Shakespeare and Little Women.
Then they find a writer on Fiverr or Upwork, online marketplaces for freelance services. On Fiverr, a romance novel can be written for as little as £87, an erotic fantasy novel for £34 and a “bestselling” self-help book for £35. It costs a further £20 to get a book cover designed.
Alternatively, both processes can be done by artificial intelligence (AI) — free and faster. The use of AI tools has flooded the market with potentially unchecked, unedited books, by “authors” with made-up names, some of whom are making thousands of pounds in the process.
It is impossible to tell what proportion of books on Amazon are written by ghosts or AI, because they are not marked. It is also impossible to tell how many sales these publishing entrepreneurs are making, or whether their claims of great wealth are true, because they do not reveal their pen names.
“It’s actually the least creative business I’ve ever had, it’s just a straight sausage machine of books,” said Sophie Howard, 43, in one of her online tutorials. Originally from Northumberland, she lives in Wanaka, New Zealand, and has published more than 500 books using ghostwriters and about 15 pen names. She says she makes six figures a year from book publishing alone. “You don’t have to write a single word to make a lot of money,” she said.
Howard said she pays about £800 for someone to write a 35,000-word book, completed in four to six weeks. She does not use AI for the writing, although she does teach people how to do so, and uses the same ghostwriters repeatedly, with whom she says she has a good relationship and pays fairly.
“There are lots of high-quality freelance writers out there who jump on every job we post,” said Howard. “They’ve all got fine arts degrees, PhDs, creative writing masters and it’s not applicable to the modern working world. I don’t think I’m taking advantage of them. I think they want to write about their favourite subject.”
Sophie Howard uses ghostwriters to pump out books that she sells on Amazon
The book document is uploaded to Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing site, where creating an account is free, allowing authors to self-publish books. It immediately becomes available to customers to buy as an ebook or a hardcopy (Amazon prints and distributes it on order). Authors receive a 35 per cent royalty, with the ability to increase that to 70 per cent if it is listed at certain prices.
“Amazon doesn’t apply any editing or quality control at all, they’re not pre-approving stuff on the front end,” said Howard. “So there’s an individual responsibility.” She said she checked some books herself and sent others to a proofreader. Her bestseller is a book about the philosophy of religion. “It’s very scalable, you can do a book a quarter or ten books a month, it’s totally up to you how fast you crank this thing.”
Howard said that the quality of a book was largely policed by Amazon’s ranking system, which favours the books with good customer reviews. “I never want to sell a poor-quality book,” she said.
Another “publishing chief executive”, Alex Kaplo, 31, claims to have made hundreds of books, none of which he wrote himself. “Most of my neighbours think I’m a drug dealer or from a wealthy family,” he writes. His website shows photos of him next to a Mercedes, going on “extravagant” holidays and living in a “luxury” apartment. “You’re hiring a writer to write the book for you and you will claim all the rights to the book, including all future royalties,” he said. “You own the licence, they own nothing.”
Shiloh Walker, a romance author, has been campaigning for a fairer online marketplace — where AI-written books would have to be labelled as such — for years. “Ethical ghostwriting isn’t a threat,” she said. “But people who try to con new writers or those in disadvantaged positions into writing stories for peanuts and then turn around and make thousands upon thousands are a problem.
Alex Kaplo is able to afford a luxurious lifestyle with the money he makes as a publisher
“The ‘get-rich-quick’ mindset no doubt paved the way to AI-written works, which cuts out even the cheapest ghostwriter — and diminishes the art of storytelling, destroys creativity and cheats both writers and readers. It’s sad.”
Miriam Johnson, senior lecturer in publishing at Oxford Brookes University, said that it also had an effect on quality. “When it comes to fact-checking and books that claim they are an authority, it is a worry,” she said.
However, she said the number of people making money from this sort of publishing would be few. “One person might make a lot of money, most people won’t. Many of them now sell courses online, as a get-rich-quick scheme.”
Howard sells her courses to learn how to make money using Kindle Direct Publishing for about £1,600. She denies her services are “get-rich-quick” schemes. Recently, Amazon limited the number of books authors can self-publish to three a day, after an influx of suspected AI-generated material. It also asks authors to declare whether their book was either “generated” or “assisted” by AI, but the consumer does not see the declaration.
The Society of Authors is calling on Amazon to mark AI texts clearly: “Human authors deserve a fair publishing and bookselling environment in which the scales aren’t inadvertently tipped in favour of poor-quality computer-made products.”
Amazon is a “terrible” place to sell books for real authors, said Thad McIlroy, a publishing analyst and consultant. “It’s a grifter’s paradise,” he said. “And it has always been appallingly poor at regulation.”
Dollwet, the books “millionaire”, is defensive of the method. “People say ghost-writing and AI is unethical,” he said. “But even if you write the book yourself, it can suck. That’s way worse than if you use AI or ghosting and actually have a good book.” Today, he is in a villa in northern Thailand, commissioning and selling books. Before that he was in Bali, island hopping, travelling around the world living on the profits from words written by other people but, crucially, sold by him.
Amazon guidelines do not allow sellers to “mislead” customers and, even if a pen-name is used, each account is linked to a named individual. “We invest significant time and resources to ensure our guidelines are followed, and remove books that do not adhere,” said a spokesman.
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