I first met Janice when she and her husband, Demitri Papolos, M.D., came into Broadway Books to talk about their book, The Bipolar Child. Because the proposal Janice wrote was so concise and compelling, and Demitri was such a pioneer in his field, we made a preemptive bid on the book the following morning. I asked the Papoloses to turn in the completed manuscript within eleven months.
Looking back now I realize that was a very demanding deadline for a close-to-four- hundred-page book of this kind, but Janice delivered the manuscript—on time—and beautifully executed. Not only does she have an encouraging and compassionate tone, but she has a unique ability to unpack scientific and technical information and make it easily accessible to the layperson. Her research skills are second to none and she is a consummate professional.
I very much enjoyed working with Janice. In addition, I’m proud to have helped create a book that has helped hundreds of thousands of children and their families.
Tracy Behar
Vice President and Executive Editor, Little, Brown
I had the keen pleasure of publishing Janice’s book, The Virgin Homeowner at Norton. What an excellent and helpful book that was. As it happened, my wife and I were just moving into our first real home at the time I was editing and publishing it for Norton, and the advice and reassurance on offer in the book rang totally true to our experience and helped us get over a rough patch or three. We sold paperback rights to Penguin and Janice subsequently appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show as the home-owning expert.
Janice and I reconnected some years later when I became the editor in chief of Broadway Books and one of the mainstays on our list -- that rare and delightful thing, a backlist hardcover – was The Bipolar Child, which she wrote with her physician husband, Demitri. (Tracy Behar acquired and edited the first edition, and I was the editor of the second and third editions.) Janice and Demitri had previously collaborated on Overcoming Depression for HarperCollins and that was a very successful book; but The Bipolar Child outdid it and became the pioneering book about childhood manic-depression and brought solid information and solace and hope to hundreds of thousands of parents dealing with this most difficult disorder. Both books are models of how a skilled writer can digest technical information and recast it in clear, understandable terms for the benefit of readers who might otherwise have never learned the things they badly needed to know. She has the touch--and the sales and the impact of these books prove it. The Bipolar Child was known as the category killer in its field.
Janice Papolos is both a total professional and a wonderful human being, period.
Gerald Howard
Executive Editor and Vice President, Doubleday
Finally, in The Bipolar Child, Dr. Papolos had the ultimate collaborator in the form of his wife, Janice. Dr. Papolos may have been the one with the M.D., but it was Janice who possessed perfect pitch for connecting with concerned parents. Most experts, even with ghostwriters, fail miserably on this count. Janice delivered a manuscript that literally hit readers in the gut.
In retrospect, the only surprise to this surprise best-seller was that no one saw it coming.
John McManamy
Publisher of McManamy’s Newsletter
"Janice Papolos is a gifted and insightful writer. She was the first to explore and untangle the inner workings of the classical music business, and her groundbreaking book has assisted countless opera singers and instrumentalists on their road to becoming fully realized professional musicians."
Richard Elder Adams
Vice President Emeritus, Manhattan School of Music