About Us
About Us
ABOUT US . . .
We love what we do, and together we’ve produced hundreds of books that range from children’s historical fiction to psychiatric nonfiction, from inspirational gift books to art books. We create accurate and engaging text, complemented by page design that communicates and inspires.
Marion Harvey, Design Director
Malinda Miller, Managing Editor, Educ. Books
Bill Palmer , Publishing Services Director
Sheila Nelson, Senior Editor, Fiction
Justin Miller, Web Master
Camden Flath, Marketing Manager
Lori Karas, Office Manager
OUR MISSION
Our mission is to work with publishers, authors, and companies in a supportive and creative collaboration, meshing our editorial and design skills with each customer's vision.
Ellyn Sanna: Executive Editor
Ellyn is our intrepid leader. Harding House was originally her baby, but she shares it now with the rest of us—and in the process, she inspires us to great heights. All of us feel happier just having her in the office. Bill once said that she seems to be just hanging around chatting but somehow manages to do great quantities of work at the same time. She's very fast and very good at her job. Ellyn’s done a lot of things in her life (she’s been a social worker, a special education teacher, and a freelance author and editor), but she says that running Harding House is her all-time favorite job ever.
Marion Harvey, Design Director
Sometimes we call Marion the Queen of Design and sometimes we call her the Queen of the Universe. Either way, she's pretty impressive. She’s fast, creative, and always professional. Every day, we hand her a bunch of Word and image files, she fiddles around a little—and presto! we have pages that look wonderful.
She’s one of our company’s bedrocks, a stable force we depend on through ups and downs, thick and thin. Maybe she growls at us sometimes, but we know she really loves us!
Malinda Miller, Managing Editor
We don't know what we would do without Malinda. Really. She went away for a week and we spent the entire first day trying to figure out how to get along without her. “How do you retrieve messages from the answering machine?” we asked each other. No one knew. “What’s the schedule for the student workers?” Office-wide mystification. “Has any one seen the key to the mailbox?” Nope.
If Harding House were a body, Malinda would be the brain. She’s the one who keeps us organized, who knows where everything is, and makes sure everything we do is put together into a coherent whole. Luckily, she doesn’t go away very often!
Bill Palmer, Director of Publishing Services
Bill thinks we pick on him because he’s one of the few men in the office, but really it's because we love him. We also make him answer the phone a lot, since he has a really great phone voice. In fact, he has the best voice in the office, this warm rumble that makes you want to curl up and have him read you a story. Bill is one our people-persons, a connection between us and the outside world. He's good at setting our boundaries: keeping our feet on the ground, our eye on the clock, and our business in the black. On top of that, he's been working in the publishing business for twenty-some years. He knows his stuff.
Wendy Baker, Graphic Artist
Wendy is a talented, artistic person who creates some of the best book covers we’ve ever seen. We love hearing about her menagerie—and we also love the kindness and responsibility that pretty much exude from her pores. She makes great soap and mango hand cream too!
Sheila Nelson, Senior Editor
Sheila sits in the corner and quietly edits, day after day. She has two young children at home, and we know they keep her busy; they’re why she comes in late and leaves early. She does a lot of editorial work at home, too, though, and we rely on her steady stream of careful work to keep our editorial processes flowing. She loves words and is completely addicted to stories. Besides that, she’s great at tracking down the facts we need. We suspect that in a former life she was a detective.
Justin Miller, Web Master
Justin not only keeps our website up and running, he also designs sites for our customers. He’s multitalented: he knows the mysterious ins-and-outs of Web code AND he’s an archaeologist, a designer, and an artist (he illustrated the Crime Scene Club series we did for Mason Crest Publishers).
Camden Flath, Marketing Manager
Camden Flath loves books as much as the rest of the staff at Harding House, but he also loves the Internet—and he understands the many ways that the Internet has changed the publishing industry, so that every book must now be part of the dynamic web of connections that links our modern global community. Camden's role is to connect Harding House to our customers via the Web—and to advise our customers as to how to best use our products in our Internet-linked world.
Micaela Sanna, Tech Assistant
Micaela is the youngest person on staff (we only get her for a couple of hours every day after school), but that doesn’t mean she’s the least useful. She works hard, she’s fast, and she does whatever work we ask her to do. Over the past couple of years, we’ve learned to depend on her—so we’re kind of glad she’s so young and we’ll get to keep her around for a couple more years before she heads off to college. Besides, she’s fun to pick on.
Tanya Miller, Editorial Assistant
We're happy whenever Tanya's here. She's that kind of person. And she's good at helping out with all the many little jobs that seem to multiply around here. She talks to herself while she works, but we usually don't mind.
Lori Karas, Office Manager
Lori brings a breath of calm organization to the office. She's very good at turning chaos into order. We can count on her to take care of all the little, boring jobs that have to be done (whether it’s filing our paperwork, watering the plants, cleaning the coffeepot, or making those pesky phone calls we all hate). When Ellyn hired her, we all breathed a sigh of relief.
Paul Sanna, IT
Paul is Ellyn’s husband and luckily for us, he has the know-how to keep our computers running smoothly (most of the time). He’s also our archivist, who keeps our back-up files safe and organized. When it’s time for reprints, he’s our man.
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