Michael Graubart Levin (born August 8, 1958) is an American, New York Times best-selling author; he has written, co-written, or ghostwritten 550 books, 18 of which became national best sellers. Levin, founder of BusinessGhost, Inc., America's leading provider of ghostwritten business books, has helped create more successful books, as a writer, cowriter, ghost, or coach, than anyone in the U.S. publishing industry. His client list includes a member of the Forbes 400, five individuals with net worths of over half a billion dollars, and business leaders on four continents (North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia). He also edited Zig Ziglar's final book, Born To Win. On January 20, 2012, Michael appeared as a guest entrepreneur on the ABC Television show Shark Tank.
Education and Early Career
He graduated Amherst College with a B.A. in English and Ancient Greek in 1980, and received his J.D. from Columbia Law School in 1985, where he published an article in the Columbia Law School Journal of Law and Social Problems. At Amherst, he put on events including a complete reading of James Joyce's Ulysses (approximately 28 hours). After graduation from Amherst, he studied for one year at Yeshivat HaMivtar in Jerusalem, Israel.
Levin began to offer writing classes in a small yoga studio in Boston's Back Bay, offering two six-week classes at $150 per student. His classes quickly grew from two sessions to four, six and finally eight. In addition to his private classes, Levin also journeyed to Southern California three times a year to teach writing classes at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he taught for 11 years. He taught writing classes at New York University (NYU) for three years and offered seminars on fiction writing for attorneys around the country through Continuing Legal Education, Inc.
He has presented seminars on creativity for the NBC and WB Television Networks and to the largest law firm in Los Angeles, Loeb & Loeb. He taught writing for two years as a volunteer on the locked unit at the Thalians Mental Health Center in West Hollywood, California. Levin taught or coached thousands of writers; at least six of his students or coaching clients became national best selling authors themselves.
Levin created and led daylong conferences and other events for the Authors Guild in cities across the country including Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, and Austin, Texas. Among the authors who spoke at those events are Scott Turow, Judy Blume, and Erica Jong. Levin became one of the youngest members of the Authors Guild Council in that group's history and also served as Treasurer of the Authors Guild Foundation.
A New York Times opinion piece Levin published in 1980 led to a job at CBS News' Research Department in New York City, where Levin worked until he traveled to Israel to pursue religious studies. Levin's legal career, at the now-defunct Boston firms of Testa, Hurwitz and Thibeau and Goldstein & Manello, was brief, due to his admitted lack of interest in the law and his repeated failure to pass the Massachusetts bar examination. By the time he left the law, two and a half years after graduating from Columbia, he had already sold three books, including a book about his religious experiences and two novels with Simon & Schuster.
BusinessGhost
BusinessGhost, the nation's leading provider of ghostwritten business books, business fables, and memoirs, began as the Michael Levin Writing Company in 1994, became Writer2Author, Inc. in 1998, and reincorporated with its current name 2004 when ghostwriting became the primary function of the company.
BusinessGhost offers a variety of services, from ghostwriting business books, business fables, and memoirs, to coaching and editing other writers. BusinessGhost primarily creates, designs, and publishes books that its clients use as marketing tools for their businesses or their consulting, healthcare or financial services practices. The company offers a free weekly newsletter reprinted on its website. The newsletter offers insight on the rapidly changing world of book publishing. Michael has worked with many celebrities and top athletes including Pat Summerall, Chad Hennings, Howard Bragman, Dave Winfield, and Doug Christie. Many of Levin's books have been optioned and/or made by some of the top names in Hollywood. Disney optioned and made the ABC Disney Sunday Movie of the Week "Model Behavior" based on Levin's novel Janine and Alex, Alex and Janine. Additionally, director Frank Perry adopted Levin's first novel, The Socratic Method, and Steven Soderberg and Paramount adopted the book Levin coauthored with Joaquin Garcia, Making Jack Falcone.
Speaking and Publications
Levin has spoken for T. Harv Eker in Sydney, Australia; and for Jay Abraham in Los Angeles, California, where he shared the platform with Fran Tarkenton, Steven Covey, and Mark Victor Hansen
Levin's work has appeared in The New York Times,The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, Forbes.com, the Jerusalem Post, Legal Affairs Writers Digest, CBS News, Time Newsweek The Economist and many other top outlets. One of Levin's New York Times pieces was anthologized in a textbook on writing, Elements of Argument.
Levin's books have received outstanding reviews in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the New Yorker, People Magazine, the Washington Post, the The San Francisco Chronicle, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal,[29] the Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Esquire, Booklist and other leading publications.
Michael's recent books include the following:
2012
ROCK YOUR BUSINESS! Turning Your Idea Into Reality...Satisfaction...And A Whole Lot
Of Cold, Hard Cash, with David Fishof, founder of the Rock 'N Roll Fantasy Camp, to be
published in October, 2012 by BenBella Books.
THE REAL RULES OF LIFE with Ken Druck. (developmental editor) Ken is a nationally
recognized authority on recovering from grief and loss and has worked with the 9/11
firefighters' widows, the Flight 800 families, and countless families who underwent tragic
and sudden loss. Published by Hay House, Spring, 2012.
NASCAR NATION How Racing's Value's Mirror The Nation's, with Fox Sports Reporter
Chris Myers, to be published by Random House in October, 2012.
WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS, SELL!, with David Oliphant, a "business fable" about a Marine
who leaves the service and makes a career for himself in sales...without compromising his
integrity. Published in Spring, 2012 by Readers Digest Books.
2010
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT, with Chad Hennings, 3-time Super Bowl winner with the Dallas Cowboys and a fighter pilot in the first Gulf War, who flew 45 humanitarian missions to the Kurds, published in January, 2010 by FaithWorks. This book reached best seller status on amazon.com within days of its publication.
GIANTS, with Pat Summerall, to be published in September, 2010 by Wiley, detailing Summerall's experiences when he was coached by Tom Landry and Vince Lombardi in the same 1958 season with the New York Giants.
2009
WHERE'S MY FIFTEEN MINUTES? HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE IN THE MEDIA AGE, with famed Hollywood publicist Howard Bragman, published in 2009 by Penguin/Portfolio Books. Howard Bragman has represented everyone in Hollywood from Sinatra to Madonna and is a frequent guest on Larry King Live, CNN, and throughout the media. The book reached #10 on the national Barnes&Nobel.com best sellers list.
GHOSTWRITTEN NOVEL FOR PRIVATE CLIENT. This book, written by Michael, reached number two on the Barnes and Nobel.com best seller list (number one was a book by President Obama!) and was optioned as a series by HBO.
THE STICKING POINT, with Jay Abraham, America's leading marketing guru, published in 2009 by Vanguard Books; the book reached number 2 on amazon.com business best seller lists.
2008
MAKING JACK FALCONE with Joaquin Garcia, the true story of the FBI agent who infiltrated the Mafia and took down the top 32 members of the Gambino crime family, published by Simon and Schuster/Touchstone in 2008. This book was optioned in 2007 by Paramount for Steven Soderbergh, director of Traffic, Erin Brockovich and Ocean's 11. It was featured on 60 Minutes in October, 2008 and is a New York Times bestseller.
2007
DROPPING THE BALL with Hall-of-Fame baseball player Dave Winfield, published with Scribner in March, 2007, currently in its second printing, and reached number 2 on the Los Angeles Times nonfiction best seller list. The New York Times called it "unusually thoughtful;" the Boston Globe called it "eloquent," and it was noted as "recommended reading" in Esquire Magazine.
NO ORDINARY LOVE, with NBA star Doug Christie and his wife Jackie Christie.
Michael's books have received outstanding reviews in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the New Yorker, Esquire, Newsweek, People Magazine, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Examiner, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and Booklist, and other publications from coast to coast. He also consults to a broad variety of authors, ranging from international bestsellers to individuals seeking to become published authors.
Personal Information
Michael lives in Orange County with his wife, Suzanne, and their four children. Michael is a distance athlete and has competed in more than two dozen triathlons, marathons, and half-marathons since his 44th birthday. He has also completed three of the last seven Boston Marathons. In the 2010 New York City Marathon, Michael ran as a guide runner for a disabled runner. He has performed with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus of the Boston Symphony Orchestra[31] holds a second degree junior black belt in tae kwan do, which he earned in August 2011. He is also an "12-gallon man," having donated over 88 units of blood to the American Red Cross Association over the past 20 years.
Become a fan of Michael's business on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BusinessGhost
Connect with Michael on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=17700141&trk=tab_pro
Want to know Michael's thoughts? Follow his blog here: http://deathofpublishing.blogspot.com/
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