Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Brunella Costagliola. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Brunella, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Going back to the beginning – how did you come up with the idea in the first place?

My story begins in Naples, Southern Italy. As a little girl, I dreamed of becoming a storyteller because I loved the way reading books made me feel. However, writing for a living didn’t seem to be a solid enough plan in this modern world—more like something people could achieve during the Renaissance. So, I focused all my energy on my other passion: the English language. After graduating with my two master’s degrees from Leiden University, The Netherlands—a prestigious university that allows me to call Albert Einstein, Nelson Mandela, Winston Churchill, and many other brilliant minds my fellow alumni—I decided to move to England and gain a Certificate of English Language Teaching to Adults.
I began working as a teacher of English in Cambridge and my career took off quickly. At the same time, I had gotten married to my American airman, and we had our first baby. One day, the director of the college I was teaching at offered me an incredible promotion, one I did not expect to come so soon in my career. Thrilled, I called my husband to share the good news.
“I have news too,” he said, clearing his voice.
“You go first!” I couldn’t stop smiling.
There was a brief pause, one I noticed but didn’t want to acknowledge. “We have orders.”
My mouth went dry. We had been married for a little over a year, which means I had been a military spouse for a short amount of time. I didn’t know anything about the American military, but I knew that the mission always came first, so as a spouse I was expected to sacrifice my goals, ambitions, and even lifestyle in order to follow my servicemember wherever the military needed him to go. I was so aware of that part of what it meant to be a military spouse that I even made my husband wait to marry me.
He proposed a year after we began dating. “Yes,” I whispered, my eyes teary with joy. “But”—I raised my index finger—“I want to finish my collegiate career first. Can you wait?”
At the time, I was almost done with my bachelor’s degree (which I took in Italy) and had been accepted at Leiden University for my first master’s degree. I knew that, once I married him, I would have had to sacrifice and was afraid I might never get a chance to finish my studies if I married him before I did so.
He waited. Fast forward three years later, I had three degrees and was ready to walk down the aisle.
I wanted to fight against this sudden move but knew it was going to be pointless. I chose to marry a military member, and the mission had to come before my promotion, before my ambition, before my dreams. So, after politely—and heartbreakingly—declining the promotion, we packed and moved to a place where I could not teach English because one of the requirements of the many language schools in that country was to be proficient in their native language, which I was not. I was now an unemployed stay-at-home mother with a wall full of framed degrees I couldn’t put to use.
I felt as though I had lost my identity as a human being. Yes, I was blessed to be a wife and mother, but I knew I wanted to be so much more. One day, when my husband came back home and found me crying while our baby took his afternoon nap—I used his nap times to cry about my situation—he hugged me and said, “You know what I was thinking?” He dried my tears with his thumb. “You love to write, so why don’t you use his nap time to write about something that interests you?”
That was the moment my whole life changed forever. Something inside of me came alive, something that had been dormant for far too long. I did just as he suggested and started writing about American history and American literature—two of my most favorite subjects, and the focus of my master’s degrees. I published the articles online, thus creating a portfolio of sorts. One day, the right person comes across my articles, likes them, and hires me for my first ghostwriting job. Fast forward three weeks and you find me on a plane to Los Angeles to meet my client, whose memoir I had been hired to ghostwrite.
Through word of mouth, I got my second, my third, and my tenth ghostwriting job, creating a career as a storyteller that allowed me to fulfill my childhood dream and have a career that could follow me around while I followed my husband around.
By 2019, I had been working as a ghostwriter and editor (by then, I had earned a Certificate in Editing from Graham School at the University of Chicago) for many years. However, I noticed a major gap: the publishing industry is all about highlighting incredible stories; my military community had the most incredible stories to share. Yet, the two worlds I was part of didn’t seem to know about one another. I asked myself: What can I do to bring military stories to the forefront of the publishing industry?
That’s when I launched The Military Editor® Agency, a boutique writing and editing agency that caters exclusively to military authors and military-related manuscripts. Within two years, we made the Forbes NEXT1000 list and have helped hundreds of authors share their impactful and inspiring stories.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

When I launched my company, I thought that my military authors were going to be welcomed with open arms by publishers. This assumption could not have been more wrong. I quickly discovered that there was a big misunderstanding on the publishers’ part: they believed that since the military members represented the 1% of the American population, their books would have only appealed to the 1% of the population. This translates to low sales, which then translates to loss of profit. So many doors were slammed in my face when I tried to make them understand that we could write stories that transcend the military realm and can and will appeal to a civilian audience.
If there’s one thing you should know about me, is that I’m a go-getter, a doer. Had I stopped at the first “No, thank you” that I received in my life, I would have never even left Italy. So, I kept on knocking on doors, advocating for my authors. Though it took years, I was able to finally get through to one publisher, then another, and another. Now, I help publishers create their military-focused imprints within their company.
Aside from offering ghostwriting and editing services (developmental editing, line editing, and proofreading), I also educate my authors on how to navigate the publishing industry, help them choose the right publishing path for their book, and sometimes play matchmaker by introducing my authors to the right literary agent or publisher.
From idea to manuscript completion, my agency is a one-stop shop for authors who have a story to share with the world. Every story is different because every author is different, and this allows me to create a customized plan for every author we sign. I care deeply about each project we choose to take on, and since I focus on quality rather than quantity, I take great pride in how successful my authors have been. Once their books were published, they went on to become award winners, bestsellers, and critically acclaimed, proving to themselves and the industry as a whole that their stories matter and resonate with a much wider audience than previously thought.
Their success is my success. Afterall, the only way for me to prove that I am good at what I do is if my authors reach the level of success they can and deserve to reach.

How’d you meet your business partner?

To stay true to my company’s mission, I have chosen to only hire people who are part of the military community. When my husband retired after twenty years in the US Air Force, I decided to hire him as my project manager. I had been by his side for the majority of his military career, so I knew which skills he had gained and perfected during his time in service. I knew that, with his help, my company would go from good to great, which is exactly what it did—after one year of hiring him, we made the Forbes NEXT1000 list.
The success we reached in such a short amount of time was welcomed but unexpected. Soon, I had a waiting list of almost two years. I knew it was time to start hiring other industry professionals to meet the demand. I searched within our military community and am happy to say we now have several members (whether spouses, active duty, children, or veterans) working for us.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

I have always been hungry for knowledge and a firm believer that you should never stop learning. Even after 13 years of working in the publishing industry, I keep taking courses on creative writing and editing, attending conferences, reading books on the craft, and keeping my finger on the pulse of the publishing industry so to become even better at what I do. I believe that the secret to growing my clientele has been the quality of the work I produce, something that I have been to accomplish because I’ve never allowed myself to settle and become arrogant enough to think I know enough. Most of my clients come to me through word of mouth, not because I pay for ads or invest in any other type of outreach and publicity.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://themilitaryeditor.com/
• Facebook: @themilitaryeditoragency
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brunella-costagliola/ OR https://www.linkedin.com/company/themilitaryeditoragency

Image Credits

Brunella Costagliola