Mel Parker Books, LLC is both a book packaging firm and a literary agency.

As a full-service book producer/packager, we specialize in major practical nonfiction, developing titles primarily in the categories of health/wellness and business/careers/personal finance for individuals, brands, and institutional entities. In our capacity as a book producer and book packager, we create original ideas for books, develop and finance publishing proposals, and deliver fully edited manuscripts or complete electronic files to publishers. Recent packaged books include The Structure House Weight Loss Plan for Fireside/Simon & Schuster, One Minute Manners for Doubleday/Broadway, and the American Medical Association Complete Guide to Prevention and Wellness for John Wiley & Sons.

As a literary agency, we also represent authors for projects they bring to us, focusing primarily on high-profile narrative nonfiction, current affairs, science, psychology, lifestyle, and biography. Recent titles published include newsmaking narrative nonfiction such as Children of Jihad: A Young American's Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East by Jared Cohen (Gotham/Penguin), The Lazy Environmentalist on a Budget by Josh Dorfman (Stewart, Tabori & Chang) and Vertical Farm: The Big Idea that Could Solve the World's Food, Water and Energy Crises by Dickson Despommier (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press).

We are always looking for media-savvy authors who are thought leaders in their fields of expertise, and who have a unique and marketable message or story that can be conveyed across multiple platforms--from speaking engagements to radio and television appearances to online media.

In both capacities, either as a book producer commissioning and developing our own original projects from start to finish, or as a literary agency representing clients on the sales of their own proposals and manuscripts, Mel Parker Books works with all our authors through every phase of the publishing process, including promotion, marketing and licensing.

BOOK AND AUTHOR NEWS

DICKSON DESPOMMIER, author of the forthcoming THE VERTICAL FARM: Feeding the World in the 21st Century, appeared on the New York Times Op-Ed page with "A Farm on Every Floor". He also appeared on The Colbert Report, spoke at the TED Conference and Pop!Tech, and was featured in the New York Times, Time, the Washington Post, Wired. His article on vertical farms appeared in Scientific American. STING, world-renowned musician and co-founder of the Rainforest Fund, along with his manager and producing partner Kathryn Schenker, recently acquired the film rights to THE VERTICAL FARM, and plan to produce a documentary about the building of the first vertical farm in a major American city.

JOSH DORFMAN, author of THE LAZY ENVIRONMENTALIST (Stewart, Tabori & Chang), began Season 2 of his show on the Sundance Channel. He is also a spokesperson for Brita's FilterForGood campaign and Clorox's GreenWorks products. Positive reviews for season 2 are rolling in. Here's a few: Washington Post: 'Lazy Environmentalist' suggests easy ways to be Earth-friendly; Wall Street Journal: 'The Lazy Environmentalist' Josh Dorfman on How to Be, Yes, Lazy and Environmental; Los Angeles Times: The Recyclist: Celebrate Earth Day from your recliner with 'The Lazy Environmentalist'. Josh also appeared on Morning Joe and Wake Up with Al. Josh recently appeared in Esquire magazine.

THE STRUCTURE HOUSE WEIGHT LOSS PLAN by Gerard J. Musante, Ph.D. (S&S/Fireside) was named #1 Healthiest Diet in America by HEALTH Magazine.

D.A HAYDEN and MICHAEL WILDER, authors of FROM B.A TO PAYDAY: LAUNCHING YOUR CAREER AFTER COLLEGE (Stewart, Tabori & Chang), were on NPR's Here and Now and interviewed by Financial Times, the Boston Globe and Business Week. They appeared on NECN-TV, which reaches all the New England states, FOX-TV in Boston, and at Manhattanville College. They spoke at the Young Presidents Organization Meeting, and the book was featured in the nationally syndicated Content that Works. D.A. Hayden also appeared in a video interview by Lindsay Gerdes of Business Week.com. Audio rights were sold to Audible.com.

JARED COHEN, author of CHILDREN OF JIHAD: A YOUNG AMERICAN'S TRAVELS AMONG THE YOUTH OF THE MIDDLE EAST (Gotham Books/Penguin), was featured in Steven Levy's "Booting Up Baghdad" in WIRED, and was also interviewed by Scott Simon on NPR. Jared's work with Twitter during the Iran protests was named one of the Top Ten Internet Moments of the Decade by CNN. Jared was featured in a story on Digital Diplomacy in the Sunday, July 25th issue of the New York Times Magazine.

AMA COMPLETE GUIDE TO PREVENTION AND WELLNESS (John Wiley & Sons) is a Featured Alternate Selection of the Literary Guild, Book-of-the-Month Club, One Spirit Book Club and Doubleday Book Club. The spokesperson for the book, James Rohack, M.D., the President of the AMA, was interviewed by WBBM in Chicago The book was also featured on Yahoo!Health. Newsweek.com named the book a "Good-For-You Read" in its feature, "Ten Healthy Gifts."

THE HUNTED, a suspense novel by Wayne Barcomb (St. Martin's/Minotaur, April 2009), has been sold to Random House/Goldmann in Germany, Hayakawa in Japan, and Books on Tape.

Mel Parker has worked in virtually every aspect of trade book publishing, from mass
market and trade paperback to hardcover and book clubs.

Before launching Mel Parker Books, Mel was Senior Vice President and Editorial Director of Bookspan, the book club partnership between Time Warner and Bertelsmann AG, where he directed the editorial acquisitions programs for all of Bookspan's general interest, lifestyle and specialty book clubs, including Book-of-the-Month Club, Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club, Mystery Guild, Quality Paperback Book Club, History Book Club, Black Expressions and One Spirit. At Bookspan, Mel also played a key role in consolidating the book club businesses of Book-of-the-Month Club and Doubleday Direct into Bookspan; launching a number of successful new book clubs such as Mosaico, the Latino book club; and leading Bookspan's highly profitable original publishing program for book club members.

Mel came to the book clubs from Time Warner Trade Publishing, where he was Senior Vice President of Warner Books and Publisher of its paperback division. During his more than eleven years at Warner, Mel acquired and edited his own hardcover list of bestselling fiction by Dean Koontz, David Morrell and Larry Bond, as well as hardcover bestsellers in a variety of nonfiction categories, from narrative nonfiction and biography to business books, health, inspiration and pop culture. Mel was also responsible for Warner's mass market paperback publishing program, including major bestselling authors such as Nelson DeMille, David Baldacci, Michael Connelly, Scott Turow, Elmore Leonard, James Patterson, P.D. James, Carl Hiaasen, Sidney Sheldon, Brad Meltzer and Sandra Brown. And he developed a trade paperback list featuring critically acclaimed books such as The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides, The Ice Storm by Rick Moody, Geek Love by Katherine Dunn, Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman, L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore, Blue River by Ethan Canin, Remembering Denny by Calvin Trillin, Naturalist by E.O. Wilson, and Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie.

Prior to joining Warner, Mel was Editor-in-Chief of the Berkley Publishing Group, where he played an instrumental role in helping build the company into a major paperback publisher featuring 10 continuing New York Times bestselling authors. He also acquired a number of major bestsellers, most notably THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER by Tom Clancy, which set the stage for his bestselling career at Putnam and Berkley.

Mel was chairman of the Executive Trade Committee of the Association of American Publishers, where he launched the industry group's national Get Caught Reading Campaign, which secured millions of dollars of free print advertising to promote books and reading. Mel also lectured on publishing at the Stanford Publishing Course, and his essay on paperback publishing appears in EDITORS ON EDITING (Grove Atlantic).

He is presently a member of the American Book Producers Association and is on the Advisory Council of the New York Center for Independent Publishing.

Foreign and audio rights are represented by Trident Media Group.
Foreign rights: Claire Roberts (croberts@tridentmediagroup.com)
Audio rights: Elizabeth Kellogg (ekellogg@tridentmediagroup.com)

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Send a query letter and brief synopsis within the body of an email (no attachments) to submit@melparkerbooks.com. Please understand that given the number of queries we receive, we can respond only to those that interest us.

Mel Parker, President
David Parker, Editor-at-Large