I assist authors, agents, publishers and organizations in turning ideas & manuscripts into books. My work includes manuscript evaluations, consultation and re-writing of book proposals, book editing from the conceptual and organizational to collaboration and ghost writing. I've had much experience with books in translation and maintain extensive contacts among agents, editors, and publishers. I work on an hourly or project fee basis or for a percentage of royalties, depending on the project. I also sometimes provide translation services from the German and French.

Background

In 35+ years in the book publishing business, I have served as Editor, Editorial Director, or Editor-in-Chief at such publishing companies as St. Martin's Press, E.P. Dutton and Kodansha America. I have extensive American, European and Asian trade publishing contacts and I am fluent in German, French and Italian.

From 1990 to 1995 I served as Editor-in-Chief and then Editorial Director of Kodansha America, and helped build Kodansha's New York-based publishing operation, which won the 1994 LMP Adult Trade Corporate Award; while there I personally oversaw the editorial, editorial production, design, manufacturing and foreign rights departments. During 12 years at E.P. Dutton I was involved in all aspects of a broad publishing program including quality fiction, literature, general nonfiction, translations, and the extensive Dutton consciousness/new age line (later incorporated into Penguin Arkana).

Since 1997 I have co-published a quarterly guide to the Rhinebeck-Red Hook-Hudson area entitled AboutTown. To celebrate our tenth anniversary we put together a short documentary (available streaming on our website, www.abouttown.us). Since 1996 I have served as the project manager and editorial consultant for the Bard Music Festival volume of essays about a specific composer published every year by Princeton University Press; in 2006 & 2007 I was co-winner of the Deems Taylor ASCAP award for work on the series.

Authors I have worked with include the Delany sisters, Mike Royko, Eric Kraft, Peter Guralnick, Barbara Pym, Jorge Luis Borges, Alexander Dubcek, Sarah Rossbach and Lin Yun, Wataru Ohashi, Bill Griffith, Tiziano Terzani, Leon Botstein.

Categories of special interest/expertise:

history • current affairs • music • biography • psychology • religion • literature • Eastern traditions • translations • humor • popular science

List of Recent Publications