Welcome to Fresh Books

Fresh Books represents new and established authors of non-fiction. Our current areas of interest include: computers and technology, popular science, natural history, current events, health and fitness, photography and design, business and personal finance, travel, cooking, and books of western regional interest.

If you’d like to submit a book proposal, please visit our submissions page for more information.

Why “Fresh Books?”

Fresh Books is probably the only literary agency located on either slope of the Sierra Nevada, and we’re proud of it. We’re smack dab in the middle of a semi-rural area outside of Placerville, California, and we chose the name because it represents our sense of growing a vital new business from the ground up and working with our clients toward their long-term goals. We’re a boutique agency but we do more than just books. We also represent some of our clients for corporate writing gigs, white papers, online training and dvds. We try to keep you up to date with client news and links to news of note from the publishing industry at large. For regular updates, or to see what catches our eye, you can visit the Fresh Books Blog.

Who is Fresh Books?

Matt Wagner, president, founder, and literary agent, founded Fresh Books in January of 2005, after working with his previous agency for almost 16 years. Amy Wagner is our treasurer, assistant agent, proofreader, and chief of inspiration.

What sorts of books do you represent?

Recently published and/or sold books include –

Google Advertising Tools: Cashing in with AdSense, AdWords and the Google API's, by Harold Davis (O'Reilly)
PCs: The Missing Manual, by Andy Rathbone (O'Reilly/Pogue Press)
Marketing for the Small Business Made Easy, by Kevin Epstein (Entrepreneur Press)
The eBay Entrepreneur: The Definitive Guide to Starting Your Own eBay Trading Assistant Business, by Christopher Matthew Spencer (Kaplan)
Casino Gambling for Dummies, by Kevin Blackwood (Wiley)
Macs for Dummies, by Ed Baig (Wiley)
Skin: The Complete Guide to Digitally Lighting, Photographing, and Retouching Faces and Bodies, by Lee Varis (Sybex)
Diary of a Real Estate Rookie, by Alison Rogers (Kaplan, 2007)
African American History for Dummies, by Ronda Racha Penrice (Wiley, 2007)
The Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite and the High Sierra, by Harold Davis (Countryman Press, 2007)
How to Make Love in a Tent, by Michelle Waitzman (Wilderness Press, 2007)
Skiing Utah, by Mike Fine (Countryman Press, 2007)
STEREOTYPED: Hip Hop’s Unsung Graphic Design Heroes, by Darius Wilmore (HOW Design Books, 2008)

About Matt Wagner

Prior to founding Fresh Books in January of 2005, Matt Wagner was a literary agent with Waterside Productions, Inc., where he sold well in excess of 1000 books and represented such bestselling technical and computer book authors as Andy Rathbone, Windows for Dummies; Dan Gookin, PC's for Dummies; Wally Wang, Steal This Computer Book; Katrin Eismann, Photoshop Restoration and Retouching; and Gordon McComb, Robot Builder's Bonanza.

On the trade and reference side he represented such authors as Patrick Pfieffer, Bass Guitar for Dummies; Phil Reed and Dr. Tom Amberry, Free Throw; Sue Spector and Stanford Wong, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Gambling Like A Pro; and many others.

Before joining Waterside in 1989, Matt worked as a coffee jerk, cab driver, and book clerk and buyer at the famed Boulder Bookstore in Boulder, Colorado.

Matt holds a B.A. in Creative Writing and Literature from U.C. Santa Cruz (1985), and studied playwriting and dramaturgy in the Professional Theatre Training Program at U.C. San Diego.

Last updated: 12-07-06  

 

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