Nicolas ColeCo-Founder Ship 30 for 30, Premium Ghostwriting Academy

We Monetized Our Newsletter Twice And Made Bank #writingbusiness #selfdublishing #makemoney

4 May 2026 · 1 min

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In this segment, Nicolas Cole explains the business model behind Category Pirates, a venture he launched five years ago that leverages a "mini‑book" strategy to multiply earnings from a paid Substack newsletter. The process involves writing long‑form newsletters (5,000‑10,000 words), designing simple covers, and publishing each piece as an ebook on Amazon, thereby achieving a first layer of double monetization. After accumulating 15‑20 such newsletters on a related theme, the team bundles them into a print book (and also releases an audiobook), creating a second and third revenue stream from the same content. This systematic repurposing transformed a multi‑six‑figure Substack newsletter into an additional six‑figure income stream, illustrating how changing the medium can unlock substantial new revenue without creating new content.

Chapters

Category Pirates. This was a business that I had started 5 years ago, and we did this mini book model where we took each newsletter and basically double and triple monetized it. So we would write long-form newsletters, then we would design these little covers, and we would publish the long-form newsletter, like 5,000 or 10,000-word newsletters. We would publish them as ebooks on Amazon, double monetized. Then when we had 15 or 20 of these newsletters or mini books on a topic, we would smash them together and we would create a print book just like this. And we would give the print book a title and we would put it on Amazon and it would be a print book and an ebook and an audiobook. And that is how Category Pirates grew to— it was a multi-six-figure paid newsletter on Substack. And then just by copy-pasting all of the content as self-published books on Amazon, we unlocked another six figures in revenue. It's the same content. All you're doing is you're just changing the medium.