Ghosting Perspectives: A Roundtable
Our first meeting: Getting Started
We love getting insights from those who’ve graduated our GDPD GhostwritingTraining.com program and gone on to successful ghosting careers. We hope you’ll check out the great in-depth profiles already published, but want to offer you insights from several in a series of roundtables for quick insights from a few of our grads.
Our first focus was with the most logical question: how did you get started? You’ll find everyone comes to ghostwriting from their own unique life circumstances. Check out what these grads were doing before they came to Wambtac, and what convinced them to explore ghostwriting.
Meet our participants:
Derek Lewis, a million-dollar business grad based in Baton Rouge, LA
Lorraine Ash, a leader in beautiful memoirs based in Northern NJ
Beth Brand, whose main focus is health and tech, based in Asheville, NC,
Kate Early, works in self-help, business, and fiction, based in the Boston area
Q: What were you doing before you took GhostwriterTraining.com?
Derek: I was originally a business copywriter.
Lorraine: I was a long-form journalism writer, narrative writer [and later] in the ‘90s, I started writing novels.
Beth: I worked for a couple of tourist magazines as well as for several ad agencies and design firms in Tennessee, doing mostly promotional writing, advertising, and PR.
Kate: I worked for an executive coach who needed help writing her client newsletters and things like that. She just reached out to me and said, “Would you be interested in proofreading my book?” I was a former English teacher, so… . The relationship evolved from there.
Q. What changed your focus?
Derek: I came across an online ad for somebody who wanted a business book written. And I said, “Oh, well that can’t be that much harder.” (He laughs.) Poor naïve little me.
Beth: One of my clients, who I’d had forever and ever and ever, wrote a book. She gave it to me—and this is like four weeks before Christmas one year—and she said, “Could you just read this? Because it’s going to print now.”
Kate: I worked on a book project with [the executive coach], and that’s how I sort of evolved into more of [her] ghostwriting.
Lorraine: I was always interested in books and [even] had aspirations in that area. When I was 40…my first child…was stillborn. I say I was ‘rebirthed’ on that day. I suddenly understood the power of telling a story from the inside out. [I wrote] Life Touches Life: A Mother’s Story of Stillbirth and Healing (New Sage Press.) I started understanding the power of narrative for people to heal their own lives.
Q: How did you find Claudia Suzanne’s ghostwriting class?
Beth: I think I was just Googling “ghostwriting.” Now there’s a lot more, but this was [about] five years ago and really, she was the only deal in town at that time.
Kate: I happened to see the course advertised [on a client’s newsletter] and there was [Claudia’s] webinar. I attended the webinar, and at that point I just sort of figured if I’m going to do more of this [ghostwriting] for the woman I work for, I should know more about it.
Derek: On Google [I] looked for ghostwriting coaches, ghostwriting teachers, ghostwriting courses. That’s how I came across Claudia’s website.
Lorraine: I found Claudia on the internet, heard a couple of the talks. She had given an interview to the Publicity Hound, Joan Stewart. That was an excellent talk. And then I enrolled.
Q. What’s your advice for potential ghostwriters?
Kate: Well, if you’re really going to do this well and write, that’s why you should take [the Ghostwriter Training] class.
Lorraine: Someone approached me to ghostwrite a book, and I sat down and I thought about how I’d go about doing that. And I said, “You know, I’m going to get training in this. But I want to get serious, intense training in this. I want somebody fabulous.” Because I saw a lot of weekend things or online quickies. That’s not what I wanted.
Beth: I would tell [them] to take [the] class [‘cause] there’s a lot to publishing. It’s not just writing a book.
Derek: I wish I would have known that people made money writing books for other people!
Check out these Wambtac ghostwriting grads’ websites:
Derek Lewis
And once you’re wowed, check out the 2021 schedule for the 6-week prerequisite “Intro to Ghostwriting” course offered in January, March, and May before the full Ghostwriting Professional Designation Program (GPDP) begins in August 2021. We look forward to showing you the book industry from the inside out and helping you learn a new online, lucrative, creative career!