The author and editor of more than 150 books, DAVID ALAN knows what it takes to get a book published.
“Excellence is his habit,” publisher Les Krantz wrote, and it’s reflected in the numbers: David’s Goodreads.com rating of 4.39 (800-plus ratings) places him in the top 1 percentile of authors/editors.
Civil rights icon Myrlie Evers-Williams, who delivered the invocation to President Barack Obama’s second inauguration, told NPR about Civil Rights Chronicle, which David edited and cowrote: “Honestly, this book is one of the best that I have seen, if not the best. . . . It’s absolutely magnificent. For those like me who say, ‘I’m tired, I can’t do any more,’ you pick up this book and you go through it and you know why you were dedicated and you know why you can’t stop and that you will continue to fight for justice and equality.”
David has authored, cowritten, and edited books for 20 publishers, including Random House, HarperCollins, St. Martin’s Press, Barnes & Noble, Scholastic, and Total/Sports Illustrated.
He has worked with such foreword writers as Walter Cronkite, John Eisenhower, Margaret Truman, Bill Cosby, Maureen O’Hara, Gordie Howe, Ernie Banks, Ozzie Smith, U.S. congressman John Lewis, and U.S. senators Daniel Inouye and Ben Nighthorse Campbell.
The Murder of Emmett Till, which David authored, was assigned reading for journalism students at New York University because of its exemplary journalistic prose. Memory & Legacy, which he edited, was officially presented to President Bill Clinton during the grand opening of the Illinois Holocaust Museum. JFK Day by Day, which David edited and cowrote, was featured on Today with Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira. It was converted into a video-enhanced book that was narrated by Meet the Press host David Gregory.
David has written documentary scripts narrated by Reggie Jackson, Jim Lampley, Joe Garagiola, and Carlton Fisk. He has penned biographies on such individuals as Harvey Milk, Magic Johnson, Malala Yousafzai, Mitt Romney, Eminem, Malcolm X, Alex Rodriguez, and Amy Winehouse.
CARLY CANTOR is a twice-published author of history books, an agent, and a publishing industry veteran who was an acquisitions editor at a New York publishing house for several years. She is currently a meticulous, hands-on independent editor who “becomes one” with every project, paying close attention to both the big picture and the small details. Her extensive experience includes critiquing, development editing, and line-editing.
She currently represents authors as an agent with a well-established NYC agency (Joëlle Delbourgo & Assoc.), which provides her with a foot in the New York publishing world (and access to the current thinking about what is hot and what is not!).
Carly often works with academics on high-caliber material in the social sciences, helping to make their writing more accessible to a trade audience. One happy client, a medical doctor, said of her, “She is a consummate wordsmith, with the facility of not only understanding and integrating scientific and technical material but also illuminating arcane and otherwise opaque descriptions.”
Carly has authored two books: Francisco Vásquez de Coronado and The Mexican War (The Child’s World, 2003).
History books she has edited include:
- Brother Against Brother: The Lost Civil War Diary of Lt. Edmund Halsey
- The Legal 100: A Ranking of the Individuals Who Have Most Influenced the Law
- The Moses Mystery: The African Origins of the Jewish People
- Senseless Secrets: The Failures of U.S. Military Intelligence From George Washington to the Present
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The Hispanic Library series (Child’s World) — 8 history books
Developmental content editing, copyediting, manuscript critiques
KATHRYN CLAPPER is passionate about partnering with authors to bring their ideas and stories alive. With 14 years of experience editing more than 350 titles and textbooks for major publishers such as National Geographic, Candlewick Press, Scholastic, Prentice Hall, Pearson Longman, and Blackwell-Wiley, Kathryn knows what it takes to convert an idea into a bound book. With every manuscript, she acts as an advocate of the reader while holding true to the author’s style.
Her talents do not stop at developmental editing, however. When performing book critiques and evaluations, Kathryn provides constructive feedback on big-picture issues in both fiction and nonfiction works, including structure, organization, repetition, language use, plot, characterization, narrative pacing, style, voice, tone, and length. Her evaluations encompass both strengths and areas for improvement. As an eagle-eyed copyeditor and proofreader, she relentlessly perfects details while keeping the big picture in mind.
Kathryn is a certified English teacher with a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University (anthropology) and a master’s degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education (teaching and curriculum). Her areas of expertise include history, literary nonfiction, children’s and young adult nonfiction and historical fiction, memoirs, biography, general interest nonfiction, scholarly works, and instructional content in the humanities and social sciences.
- Boundaries: How the Maxon-Dixon Line Settled a Family Feud and Divided a Nation by Sally M. Walker (2014)
- Founding Fathers: The Fight for Freedom and the Birth of American Liberty by K. M. Kostyal & Jack N. Rakove (2014)
- The Story of Buildings: From the Pyramids to the Sydney Opera House and Beyond by Patrick Dillon and Stephen Biesty (2014)
- Courage Has No Color: The True Story of the Triple Nickles, America’s First Black Paratroopers by Tanya Lee Stone (2013)
- Superman versus the Ku Klux Klan: The True Story of How the Iconic Superhero Battled the Men of Hate by Richard Bowers (2012)
- Marching to the Mountaintop by Ann Bausum (2012)
- The Holocaust: Escape from Auschwitz by Lila Perl (2012)
- Lost Gold of the Dark Ages: War, Treasure, and the Mystery of the Saxons by Caroline Alexander (2011)
- 1862: Fredericksburg: A New Look at a Bitter Civil War Battle by Karen Kostyal (2011)
- Vampire Forensics: Uncovering the Origins of an Enduring Legend by Mark Collins Jenkins (2010)
- Spies of Mississippi: The True Story of the Spy Network That Tried to Destroy the Civil Rights Movement by Rick Bowers (2010)
- Uncovering America: Digging the Vikings by Lois Miner Huey (2010)
- Secret Subway: The Fascinating Tale of an Amazing Feat of Engineering by Martin Sandler (2009)
- Hispanic America: 1990s to 2010 by Steven Otfinoski (2009)
ESTH
ER DAVID-ROLAND
Developmental Editing: Comprehensive analysis of how well your document fulfills its purpose, including recommendations for improvement of content, organization, and style.
Copyediting and Proofreading: Expert editing of scientific and technical articles, books, résumés, white papers, articles, proposals, software manuals, website content, online help, and other documents.
English Localization: Copyediting of text that has already been translated into English. Careful and thoughtful editing ensures that your translated documents are appropriate for English-speaking readers.
“I was ecstatic at the quality and attention to detail performed in this edit. There are hundreds of small details and inconsistencies that are so easy to miss for an author who is too familiar with their own story, and Esther was able to skillfully address each one.” Justin Mitchell
Copyediting services for website content, scientific or technical articles, books, proposals, marketing materials, résumés, white papers, software manuals, online help, business reports, and other business and technical documents. Esther David-Roland is a writer and editor whose experience includes writing and editing in technical and non-technical subject areas. She has worked as a journalist, writer, and editor for more than 25 years and brings her many years of experience to each project. As a freelance copyeditor, Esther has worked with major publishers, businesses, and individuals, and has worked extensively with authors whose native language is not English.
HISTORY and CULTURE
The Making of a Yoga Master: A Seeker’s Transformation – Yoga-Sūtra Sequence Decoded (Suhas Tambe), forthcoming 2010.
Tracing the Economic Transformation of Turkey from the 1920s to EU Accession (Tevfik F. Nas), 2007.
American Education, Democracy, and the Second World War (Dorn), 2007.
Elsevier Ltd. Copyedited articles for the Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd Edition), 2006.
POLITICS and GOVERNMENT
The Black-Print: Black America’s Blueprint for Achieving Wealth, Prosperity and Respect (Malik Green), 2009.
Federal Agents (Bumgarner), 2006.
HENRY DENARD is a writer, ghost writer, and editor of commercial mainstream nonfiction and fiction.
Denard co-founded and was editor in chief at a publishing company (distributed by Random House) where he oversaw (and often helped to write) dozens of books.
Denard’s bestselling nonfiction and fiction authors include Chris Wallace, Catherine Crier, Matthew Modine, Brett Favre, Joe Namath, and Steven Pressfield. Denard’s titles have been featured in “The New York Times” (including front page) and on “Sixty Minutes,” “Oprah,” “The Today Show,” and “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”
Two of Denard’s published books sold to film studios for over $1 million.
Denard recently helped to write, edit and publish The Fiscal Cliff by Ayse and Selahattin Imrohorogolu (2012, Ending Spending) on behalf of Joe Ricketts (founder of T.D. Ameritrade).
Denard has also written for The New York Times Magazine and American Express’ Departures magazine.
On the film side, Denard produced The Conspirator, starring James McAvoy, Kevin Kline, and Robin Wright; directed by Robert Redford; Gone in 60 Seconds (Touchstone) starring Nicolas Cage; The Negotiator (Warner) starring Samuel Jackson and Kevin Spacey; and Citizen X (HBO). He is a member of the Writers Guild of America (WGA, the screenwriters’ union) and uses Final Draft when working with writers of screenplays.
Denard has experience with contract negotiations, film and book production, sales, distribution, marketing, publicity, and subsidiary rights.
He can assist with literary agent and publisher selection as well as the fiction or nonfiction submission package, including query letters and book proposals.
