ABOUT MEL PARKER BOOKS

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 Journey 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 VERTICAL FARM: The Big Idea that Could Solve the World's Food, Water and Energy Crises, recently 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 will appear in Scientific American in November.

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.

JOSH DORFMAN, author of THE LAZY ENVIRONMENTALIST (Stewart, Tabori & Chang), the host of "The Lazy Environmentalist", televised on the Sundance Channel in Spring 09, was just renewed for Season 2. He is also a spokesperson for Brita's FilterForGood campaign and Clorox's GreenWorks products. Josh was the keynote speaker at the Opportunity Green Business Conference in Los Angeles. Josh's upcoming speaking engagements and appearances include Mendoza School of Business at Notre Dame, the Decatur GA Book Festival, and the Brita Climate Ride.

JARED COHEN, author of CHILDREN OF JIHAD: A YOUNG AMERICAN'S TRAVELS AMONG THE YOUTH OF THE MIDDLE EAST (Gotham Books/Penguin), was recently featured in Steven Levy's "Booting Up Baghdad" in WIRED.

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.