Just found out a year ago.

I’m a ghostwriter. 

There, I said it. 

Now you know my deep dark secret. 

But I never tried to become a ghostwriter, per se. In fact, I didn’t even know I was a ghostwriter until about a year ago. 

Why?

Because the definition of what a ghostwriter is has changed. Bigtime. 

You might be thinking: “Wait, YOU’RE the guy behind all those steamy Harlequin Romance novels written under mysterious pen names?”

I wish! 

But alas, no.

Even if I had that sweet, sweet gig writing for the Harlequin Romance Division of Harper Collins (or wherever), you would never know it because a ghostwriter never, never, reveals who their clients are. Unless the client says it’s okay. Or you’re just a jerk. 

My spooktacular ghostwriting origin story

WAYYY back in 2006, I consciously uncoupled from my low-paying job at a major US bank. I worked there as a fraud investigator. It sounds way cooler than it was. It was just a cubicle and a computer from 1985. 

So why did I up and quit this very mid job? Management decided to start charging for coffee.

The truth of the matter is that in 2006, KL Rockwell and I had a baby boy. Well, she did most of the work. I just stood around hyperventilating during the whole “birthing process.” 

A few months before Fineas was born, I had a horrible realization: 89% of my entire paycheck would go to daycare. I would be working 40 hours a week in a beige hellscape for the privilege of signing over my paycheck to “That’s A Lotta’ Tots Daycare.” 

No thanks.

I became a stay-at-home dad. 

Being a stay-at-home dad suited me well because I’m quite cheap and my career ambitions are very, very low.

I’m the exact opposite of my wife-partner, KL. Rockwell. Less than a month after giving birth to the mammoth-headed Fineas, she was back on the job—also known as work from work.

I found myself in our little bungalow in South Minneapolis with a baby and no money. Babies are, as we found, quite expensive. The formula alone almost bankrupted us. 

While being a stay-at-home father was trying in a metaphysical sense, it was also trying in a I have no money sense. So, I decided to try something that was new at the time:

I would work from home.

In 2006, working from home wasn’t exactly a thing. 

So, I scoured the internet looking for “Work From Home Scams.” Yeah, most of them were scams. 

And then, while searching an early version of Amazon like an over-caffeinated chimp trying to keep a baby happy, I came upon a book called: The Well-Fed Writer, by Peter Bowerman. 

This book claimed I could just sit at home, write articles for businesses, and they’d pay me. 

It sounded like a scam, but I was hooked. 

I wanted to be a well-fed writer too! But mostly I wanted to buy PS2 games. 

So there I went off on another get-rich-quick scheme. Or, as KL Rockwell likes to call them, one of my “schemes.” It just so happened, this scheme panned out.

I spent a couple months “researching” how to become a “well-fed writer.” I decided on a course of action:

I was going to become a copywriter.  

At the time, I barely understood what a copywriter was. Would I be copying other writers? No.  Would I have to go back to law school and become a copyright attorney? Also no. In fact, I wasn’t even going to be making copies FOR other writers!

Copywriting is actually quite simple. It’s sales writing. 

As in: ABC: Always Be Closing.

Direct response copywriting and sales is just a fancy way of saying: “After reading this thing, click here and buy now! BUY NOW I SAID!!

I read a book called “The Copywriter’s Handbook” by Bob Bly and learned really everything I really needed to know to become a copywriter. Thanks, Bob Bly, whoever you are! 

A few months later, I thought… let’s put up a website and get some cash in the door writing sales letters or whatever for whomever might want it.  

So I put up my website while the baby was crying. 

In the year 2000, I took a one-year program at Lake Superior College on becoming a “Web Designer.” This was very, very, in-demand at the time. Luckily I was able to finally use my knowledge of HTML to create the first iteration of Adam Rockwell, Copywriter to the Stars! 

A few days later, my website was born. I was so proud.

And then I waited for clients. 

And waited. 

And waited.

And waited.

But no customers magically arrived like the book said they would. (Just kidding, the book doesn’t say that. You actually have to advertise and stuff). 

I decided to use a new-fangled method of advertising: I used Google Ads to advertise my “business.” I use the term “business” lightly because my business was just me, a $300 laptop and a baby who was more demanding than a roofer with a copywriting retainer. 

Google Ads in 2006 was called Google Adwords. It’s just like it is now, the little ads that you see before the search results you ACTUALLY are looking for. 

I don’t remember exactly how I advertised my “services” such as they were, having never done any copywriting or advertising before, but I imagine my ad read something like:

“Need a copywriter? You’ve come to the right place! Click here to hire me!”

That’s what you call ad writing chops.

The nice thing about Google Adwords in 2006? It cost about one cent per click to get somebody to your website. For real. Even I could afford that.  Now, it’s something like three dollars per click for the same thing. 

Through my horrible early Adwords Ads, I got some of my first clients in the door. The first guy was hawking some six-pack abs exercise program. Nice guy. Paid on time, and I wrote all of his website copy. Side benefit? Now I KNOW how to get six-pack abs. Do I? A gentleman never tells.

In the early days, I had lots of different clients come through the doors. Everything from real estate agents to weight loss doctors to real estate agents. 

They all needed copywriters!

It only took me about a month to begin using the phrase “Sales Writer” instead of copywriter. Then, people would stop asking me to review their copyright issue with Amazon.

The one nice thing about becoming a “Sales Writer” was that most people are not great writers, so anything I gave them? Gold.

This is different from today when anybody can say: “Hey ChatGPT, write me a listing for this house on 55 Sycamore Lane.” BAM! Done. Everybody with a laptop is a copywriter these days.

But back then, I wrote the listing for 55 Sycamore Lane. And the listings didn’t sound like my brain was a liquified mess. 

I wrote a LOT of different stuff for a lot of different people.

I wrote sales letters for mortgage origination hawks. 

I wrote blog posts for a dating site (that got to be a massive website).

And a full website for an interior designer in Mexico.

And, on and on and on.

As a copywriter, people often asked me to write other things, such as their speeches to the Association for Bored Human Resource Pros. Or an email. Or a fundraising letter. Or their entire website. Or their social media posts. I loved this type of work, and soon it made up more than half of my work. 

Little did I know, this is considered ghostwriting. 

What?

Yup. If I’m writing your email for you, I’m your “ghostwriter.” 

I always thought that ghostwriting meant writing a book. Or a Harlequin Romance Novel. Or James Patterson needed another Alex Cross novel, and fast.

A traditional ghostwriter DOES write books. Memoirs. Whatever. 

But ghostwriting an email is also ghostwriting.

And speech writing. 

And mortgage origination sales letters with your name on it.

It turns out that from 2006 until now, I had been ghostwriting the entire time. 

I just didn’t know it. I also thought ghostwriting referred only to book writers.

Now, twenty years later, I have had over 1000 clients, worked for over 1000 publications, and ghostwritten god knows how many resumes, and sales letters, and emails. BTW, I have no idea how many people I’ve worked for or publications I’ve written for. Those are just rough estimates.

There, now you know my deep dark secret. 

The End

Find out more about Adam Rockwell!