INDEPENDENT EDITOR

Professional Experience

Over several decades 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 had extensive American, European and Asian trade publishing contacts and I am fluent in German, French, and Italian. 

For nearly thirty years I have worked as an independent editor on a wide range of commercially- and independently-published books, and as the literary agent for the writer/artist Leonora Carrington (since 2011 for her estate). 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.

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. For two decades I have written and supported community journalism, first as Editorial Director and Co-publisher of the mid-Hudson Valley area quarterly AboutTown, and as board member and President of the Cornwall Chronicle, the monthly publication (and website) dedicated to Cornwall, Connecticut.

Authors I have worked with include the Delany sisters, Mike Royko, Eric Kraft, Peter Guralnick, Barbara Pym, Jorge Luis Borges, Leonora Carrington, 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 • religion • literature • translations

Testimonials

“Thank you, Paul, for being an awesome mentor in the writing process.”
—Susan Shumsky, author of Maharishi and Me: Seeking Enlightenment with the Beatles’ Guru

“Thank you again. I cannot adequately express my gratitude for your help. . . . Regarding your invoice, I would have paid twice that amount and considered it a bargain.”
—N. S. Palmer, author of Why Sane People Believe Crazy Things: How Belief Can Help or Hurt Social Peace, by N. 

“Paul De Angelis . . . took a work of journalism and turned it into a biography.” 
— Peter Elliot, author of Sirio: The Story of My Life and Le Cirque

“I just wanted you to know that my book has been published, thanks to your wonderful editorial job!"
—Marva Griffin Carter, author, Swing Along: The Musical Life of Will Marion Cook.

“Paul De Angelis worked with me to shape both sentences and story into a readable whole. . . and he was a delight to work with!”
— Peter Vallone, author of Learning To Govern

“Your help with the proposal was invaluable in helping me present the work. The first publisher I contacted after revising the book published it.”
— Siri Kirpal Kaur Khalsa, author of Sikh Spiritual Practice.

“When the science of cloning has been perfected to include book editors, Paul De Angelis would be a good place to begin.”
— Christopher Hailey, editor, Alban Berg and His World.