John J. Monteleone is the editorial director and managing executive of Mountain Lion, Inc., a book development and production company and literary agency specializing in sports, topical reference, health, how-to, fitness, business, commemorative, professional and children’s subjects. His duties include consulting, writing, editing, sales, product development, project management and general administration.


Mr. Monteleone is well known in the book business as a writer/editor and agent/producer of quality books. His works have attained best-selling status and received national recognition, including the prestigious PBS-TV Rainbow Room award for best children’s books and multiple New York Public Library book-of-the-year awards.


He edited Branch Rickey's Little Blue Book: The Wit and Strategy of Baseball’s Last Wise Man, wrote What Makes a Boomerang Come Back: How Things in Sports Work, Coaching the Little League Hitter and A Day in the Life of a Major League Baseball Player, a children’s book and authored Luke, a novel of baseball and the Mafia.

He wrote The Louisville Slugger Ultimate Book of Hitting and The Louisville Slugger Complete Book of Hitting Faults and Fixes, and collaborated on The Little Book of Putting with T.J. Tomasi, PGA, Saving Par: How to Hit the 40 Toughest Shots in Golf, with Todd Sones, PGA, and Lowdown from the Lesson Tee with David Glenz, PGA.

Among his credits as a book developer and producer:

Mr. Monteleone’s earlier career spans assignments as a special consultant, writer and scriptwriter for the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports (PCPF&S), ghostwriter, reporter, author, editor, public relations practitioner and marketing manager. He worked for the late author/TV sportscaster Dick Schaap researching, reporting, ghostwriting and contributing to several books produced with Joe Namath, Dave DeBusschere, Frank Beard, Jerry Kramer, Bill Freehan, and the New York Mets. He reported for the New Jersey section of The New York Times; and edited the Windsor Heights Herald a newspaper in the The Princeton Packet chain of weeklies, and copyedited for the sports desk of The Times (Trenton, NJ).He is a former board member and past president of the American Book Producers Association (ABPA), a trade association of independent book producers in the United States and Canada. He served for three years as co-chairman of the ABPA’s contracts committee, which developed a model contract, and chairman for six years of the Exhibit/Trade Show Committee.


Mr. Monteleone is a 1964 graduate of Seton Hall University (B.A. Psychology) and an honors graduate of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism (1969). He is the only Seton Hall University athlete to earn All-America recognition in two sports, having earned The Sporting News first team All-America baseball honors at third base and NCAA honorable mention All-America soccer honors as a goaltender. He played professional baseball for three and one-half years (1964-1967) in the New York Yankees and Washington Senator organizations.