Episode 55: Andrew Crofts

01/02/24 • 66 min

1 Listener

“I’m quite good at detaching and passing the tissues and just listening,” says Andrew Crofts, one of the world’s most prolific ghostwriters, on his ability to help his clients share their most intimate, most harrowing, most traumatic experiences in the pages of their memoirs.

As the author or co-author of more than eighty books, including a dozen Sunday Times best-sellers, Andrew is well-known in England for his work behind-the-scenes with top television personalities, footballers, politicians, and ordinary individuals caught in extraordinary circumstances.

He is also well-known among publishers for his willingness to take on any subject, and to collaborate with any celebrity, as long as the project comes with the promise of a good story. “Extremes of evil are as interesting as extremes of goodness,” he writes, of his ability to work with heroes and villains alike. In fact, he once told a reporter for The Guardian that he is grateful he was not born early enough to pursue this type of work during Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. “I have a horrible feeling that if I’d got the call from Germany in the 1930s,” he said, “I would have hopped on that plane like a Mitford.”

Learn more about Andrew Crofts:

Links to some of Crofts’ collaborations discussed in our interview:

The Boy Who Never Gave Up, with Dr. Emmanuel Taban:
A Boy Called Hyppo, with Hyppolite Ntigurirwa:
Sold, with Zana Muhsen

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Learn more about Andrew Crofts:

Links to some of Crofts’ collaborations discussed in our interview:

The Boy Who Never Gave Up, with Dr. Emmanuel Taban:
A Boy Called Hyppo, with Hyppolite Ntigurirwa:
Sold, with Zana Muhsen

Please support the sponsors who support our show:

Daniel Paisner's Balloon Dog
Daniel Paisner's SHOW: The Making and Unmaking of a Network Television Pilot
Unforgiving: Lessons from the Fall by Lindsey Jacobellis
Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount
Libro.fm (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership
Film Freaks Forever! podcast, hosted by Mark Jordan Legan and Phoef Sutton
A Mighty Blaze podcast
The Writer's Bone Podcast Network
Misfits Market (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order
Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount
Wizard Pins (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount

Previous Episode

Episode 54: Rebecca Shaw & Ben Kronengold

“Voices of their generation. Except for Greta Thunberg. And Malala. Amanda Gorman . . .you know what, I take it back.” — Jimmy Fallon

That’s high praise for the comedy writing duo of Rebecca Shaw and Ben Kronengold, from their former boss at NBC’s “The Tonight Show,” where our podcast guests became the two youngest writers in that program’s storied history and earned a shared spot on Variety’s “Power of Young Hollywood Impact List” in 2021.

Shaw and Kronengold began dating and writing together as freshmen at Yale University and capped their undergraduate career with a 2018 commencement address that went a little bit viral. (Okay, it went a whole lotta viral – their speech was seen by more than 5 million people, and landed them an agent...and, eventually, their “Tonight Show” gig.)

Together, they’ve just published a disarmingly funny collection of essays, stories, and humor pieces called Naked in the Rideshare: Stories of Gross Miscalculations, which was hailed by actor and comedian Will Ferrell as “incredibly original, bizarre, and funny” prior to publication by William Morrow in November.

Join us as we talk about what it means to find your voice in collaboration with your partner, and to take that voice to one of the most dynamic writing rooms in late night television – and beyond.

Learn more about Rebecca Shaw & Ben Kronengold:

Please support the sponsors who support our show.

Daniel Paisner's Balloon Dog
Daniel Paisner's SHOW: The Making and Unmaking of a Network Television Pilot
Unforgiving: Lessons from the Fall by Lindsey Jacobellis
Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount
Libro.fm (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership
Film Freaks Forever! podcast, hosted by Mark Jordan Legan and Phoef Sutton
A Mighty Blaze podcast
The Writer's Bone Podcast Network
Misfits Market (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order
Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount
Wizard Pins (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount

Next Episode

Episode 56: Kevin Anderson

Kevin Anderson is one of the publishing industry’s leading authorities on ghostwriting and editorial development. As the founder, CEO and editor-in-chief of Kevin Anderson & Associates, a Manhattan-based firm that specializes in developing collaborative projects, he is uniquely positioned to weigh in on what it takes to write a best-selling book. His firm represents over 200 widely-published writers, and relies on the editorial and publishing expertise of more than a dozen former Big 5 acquisitions editors.

“A client who hires a ghostwriter is still the author of their book,” Anderson once told The Washington Post. “With the exception of some research-based projects, the content, ideas and concepts for ghostwritten books come directly from the client... A ghostwriter is an interpreter and a translator, not an author, which is why our clients deserve full credit for authoring their books.”

Join us for an informative conversation on how many of our collaborative books are conceived, and how they fight their way through the publishing process and onto our bookshelves.

Learn more about Kevin Anderson: