John M. Boswell

John M. Boswell is President of John Boswell Associates, a literary agency formed in 1979, and of John Boswell Management, Inc., a book-packaging firm incorporated in New York in 1981.

Boswell began his publishing career in 1972 as an Editor for Dell Publishing. In 1975 he became the Director of International Literary Management, the publishing division of International Management Group, a sports celebrity management firm, where he packaged books for such clients as Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Rod Laver, Bjorn Borg, Jean-Claude Killy and Vidal Sassoon.

John Boswell Management has conceived, sold and delivered over 600 titles to all the major book publishers. Boswell has also written or co-written 16 books, including What They Don’t Teach You At Harvard Business School (with Mark McCormack, Bantam Books, 1984) -- a #1 New York Times bestseller; How to Dad (Dell Publishing, 1989); The Annotated Mona Lisa (Andrews & McMeel, 1993); and An Insider’s Guide to Getting Published (Doubleday, 1998). Most recently he co-wrote The Education of an Accidental CEO (Crown Books, October 2007) with David Novak, CEO of Yum Brands, the largest restaurant company in the world, and Never Make the First Offer (2009) with sports entrepreneur Donald Dell.

John Boswell Associates, the literary agency, has agented several hundred books for clients as diverse as Jim Bouton (Ball Four), The San Diego Zoo, Sotheby’s, and the Junior League. One of JBM, Inc.'s specialties as a packager is cookbooks, including the popular "365 Series." Created for HarperCollins, the first volume, 365 Ways to Cook Chicken, has sold over 2,000,000 copies and twenty subsequent titles have made it one of the bestselling cookbook series of all time. In 2000, Boswell wrote his own cookbook, A Man and His Pan (Andrews & McMeel) and appeared on several national television shows demonstrating his recipes.

In partnership with Henry Beard, co-founder of The National Lampoon, Boswell has packaged or co-authored a number of immensely popular humor books including Latin For All Occasions, The Official Exceptions to the Rules of Golf, French for Cats (a #2 New York Times bestseller), O.J.'S Legal Pad (a #3 New York Times bestseller), and Where’s Saddam?, a lift-the-flap parody of Where’s Spot.

As an entrepreneur and in partnership with the comic actor Leslie Nielsen, Boswell and Beard conceived, wrote, and produced three wildly successful comedy videos: Bad Golf Made Easier, which was the #1 "Sports and Fitness" video (Billboard Magazine) for 118 consecutive weeks; Bad Golf My Way; and Leslie Nielsen’s Stupid Little Golf Video, in which Boswell makes both his acting debut and his final appearance. Beard and Boswell also collaborated with Nielson on the three successful golf books including the New York Times best-seller, Leslie Nielson’s Stupid Little Golf Book, and several popular calendars.

Boswell continues to package and write books at the rate of approximately 15-20 new titles per year. Most recently, he has created the first eight volumes of “Illustrated Timelines” (The Illustrated Timeline of Art History, The Illustrated Timeline of the Universe, The Illustrated Timeline of Science, and so on) and a series of “impulse buys” (The Official Rules of Bad Golf, 37 Houseplants Even You Can’t Kill, Murphy’s Laws of Golf/Fishing…) for Barnes & Noble-owned Sterling Publishers.

Boswell lives and works in New York City.