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Ghostwriting with Critically Acclaimed Author Steve Eggleston

Have you ever considered ghostwriting? Then our podcast with author Steve Eggleston is essential listening! Steve talks about how he became a critically acclaimed ghostwriter. He currently lives in Somerset, with Glastonbury just on his doorstep, but was born in Miami and grew up spending most of his life in California.

Funnily enough, he didn’t start out his career ghostwriting. Steve went to law school in California, and studied to be a lawyer. When he got divorced he moved to San Francisco where he began his career as a Ghostwriter.

Today, Steve tells us how he became one of Amazons best selling authors, and what ghostwriting really is all about.

ghostwriting, writing a book, Steve Eggleston, The Next 100 Days Podcast

How to Become a Critically Acclaimed Author

To become critically acclaimed, you only really need one thing, Steve says. That one thing is to have an author with high stature review your book and give you a critically acclaimed review. Steve managed to get New York Times best selling legal thriller author John Lescroart to acclaim his work.

Anything as little as a 10-second clip would be enough to get the title of a critically acclaimed author, explains Steve. If one person gives you a good review of that stature and lets you put it on the cover of your book, then everybody else will then follow in line.

As a result, it will get the ball rolling. So as Steve said, along as you get a good review from a good well known author, then people will be more persuaded to buy it.

What is a Ghost Writer ?

A Ghostwriter is someone who writes a book for someone else or a company and gets no author credit for it.  A ghostwriter’s name won’t appear on the book and no one knows a ghostwriter or a particular person wrote it and that’s the way it goes.

Steve explains that nowadays a lot of “Ghostwriters” are really just collaborators.The contracts are still called a Ghostwriting contract but there’s a provision in it dealing with author recognition that says “yes” or “no” and so forth.

 

If they want you kept secret, you’ll sign a very strong NDA (Non-disclosure agreement) which over the years, has become extremely harsh, Steve warns.

 

Ghostwriters have a website where they would put their books on it and if somebody really wanted to find out who the author was they might find out. But today, there’s the potential of something possibly blowing up if someone finds something you’ve done in your past. 

 

Even though your name is not on the book, if people find out, you automatically become associated with that book. Therefore, it ends up being a financial loss. Steve advises that if you do become a ghost writer, you shouldn’t tell anybody to avoid these situations.   

 

How Can You Sell Yourself if Nobody Knows Who You Are? 

Steve was lucky because he has had a lot of stuff already published in his name at the time of becoming a Ghostwriter. The answer to that question would be to work through an agent and then the agent would handle it.

 

Steve warns that it would be tough with nothing published in your name, because how do you get the agent if you can’t technically share it with them either? If you’re good enough to get an agent, then you have good credentials anyways.

 

So to answer the question, the best way to become a Ghostwriter like Steve would be to release published work before hand and get it reviewed critically. 

How Many Books a Year Do You Write?

On average, Steve writes around 5-10 books a year. He’ll work on around 10 at a time which is very impressive as Steve’s books average at around 70 to 90 thousand words! He admits that he wouldn’t of been able to do this five years ago and couldn’t even come close ten years ago without todays technology.

Although he does still spend a lot of time on his books, Steve actually asked if we were familiar to a very well known site called Grammarly. He uses this app on every piece of work he does. In fact, Eggleston is in the top 1% of prolific users on the planet that use Grammarly.

He doesn’t necessarily use it for the Grammar but it does help him with spelling. But when he’s writing his books, he doesn’t really pay attention to it that much until it comes to editing and polishing things off.

 

The good thing about it, is the fact it picks up them little mistakes that you wouldn’t usually see. However, it is always good to have a set of third-party eyes to read through as well, Steve recommends. 

Steve’s 3 Key Steps to Being a Ghostwriter

 

No matter how cliche it is, the two main things you’d have to do to be a good Ghostwriter or even a writer of any stature are:

 

 1. First, you need to read anything you can get your hands on! Steve reads 10 books a week minimum! Sometimes he doesn’t read the whole book, just the first and last 50 pages and whatever else he needs from the middle for inspiration.

 

 2. Secondly, you’ve got to write! Steve says you should write a lot. Short things, long things, as long as you’re writing something to get your books going.

 

3. Thirdly, Steve strongly suggests that you get all the books that are in the same area and watch all the movies in the area and then your brain will be washed in all those ideas for you to start to produce your ghostwriting.

 

 

What a brilliant guest and what brilliant advice he’s given in this podcast on ghostwriting. 

We would like to link Steve’s website, here, so you can take a look at some of the books he’s written over the years for you to purchase.

Get to know more about Graham and what he does (marketing to the affluent), you can find his business here.

Ever wondered what Kevin does? you can find his details here. 

Enjoyed this podcast on Ghostwriting? Then you will love this one of Bry’Ana Gage where she talks about how she’s become a conversation copywriter at just 20 years old. Click here to listen to her podcast now!