Jim Donovan is the founder and president of Jim Donovan Literary. Since starting the agency in 1993, he has sold hundreds of books, negotiating publishing contracts with the Big Five NYC publishers and many others. Previously, he was a book editor and bookstore-chain buyer.
The agency handles both fiction (chiefly mystery/thriller, mainstream, and literary) and nonfiction (American history, biography, military, popular culture, and general narrative nonfiction). We also sell film, foreign, and all subsidiary rights. Many of the books Jim has represented have been optioned or sold for film/TV. The Junction Boys, by Jim Dent, was made into an HBO movie, and the same author's Twelve Mighty Orphans was released in theaters in August 2021. Jeff Guinn's The Road to Jonestown was adapted by the Sundance Channel for a highly lauded two-night documentary special, Jonestown: Terror in the Jungle, which first aired in November 2018, and it was recently optioned by MGM for a feature film to star Leonardo DiCaprio. American Brutus, by Michael Kauffman, was optioned by David Simon, the producer of the award-winning series The Wire. The New York Times bestseller Manson by Jeff Guinn was optioned by Sony Entertainment for a limited TV series, as was Shot All to Hell by Mark Lee Gardner. The Apache Wars by Paul Andrew Hutton has been optioned for a feature film by Tomorrow Studios. Other books optioned for film/TV include The Last Gunfight and Go Down Together by Jeff Guinn, Going Long by Jeff Miller, When She Was Bad by Ron Faust, The Last Outlaws by Thom Hatch, One Man’s War by Tommy LaMore and Dan Baker, Touched By Fire by Louise Barnett, and many others.
Jim is also the author of several books, including Custer and the Little Bighorn (Voyageur Press, 2001); the New York Times bestseller A Terrible Glory (Little, Brown, 2008); The Blood of Heroes (Little, Brown, 2012); and Shoot for the Moon (Little, Brown, 2019), which was optioned for a limited TV series. His next book, Nothing but Courage, will be published by Dutton in May 2025. Jim regularly speaks on these subjects, and he has guest-lectured and taught seminars on the craft of writing and the business of publishing (and getting published) at universities and writers’ conferences.
Melissa T. Shultz is a writer and editor whose work has been published by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Dallas Morning News, AARP’s The Ethel, Ladies’ Home Journal, Parade, Newsweek, Reader’s Digest, Today.com, and many other publications.
She is Editor-at-Large for Jim Donovan Literary, and the author of From Mom to Me Again, a memoir/self-help book that was named one of “Three Inspiring Reads” by Parade.com. Her first children’s book is forthcoming from Familius in 2025.
Melissa has edited nonfiction manuscripts and book proposals for more than 40 Big Five-published books, some of them New York Times bestsellers.