Writing Expertise

Overview Books

Photography Galleries and Selected Museums, was the first book that my wife, Tina Lent, compiled and published.  We compiled this book because we needed a directory of U.S. photography galleries for ourselves.  We were practicing fine art photographers at the time and needed places to exhibit our work.  This was my first exposure to using computers for practical purposes.  We compiled lists of photography galleries and museums that exhibited photography by going through the arts sections of newspapers from every major U.S. city.  Once we compiled the lists, we transcribed them onto computer readable cards which then became a sortable database.  We used that database to send the galleries questionnaires.  The questionnaires asked the kinds of questions that fine art photographers needed to decide whether to contact the gallery.  The book was an immediate success and quickly sold out.  The data was later marketed to photographers as mailing labels that they could use to query galleries and museums directly.

Government Online was conceptualized and published just before the end of the age of the dial-up electronic bulletin board era and the just before the advent of the Web.  The concept of the book was born out of curiosity.  Before the Web, people used their phone lines to dial into electronic bulletin boards (BBSs) to share information.  The U.S., state, and local governments were quickly adopting this technology to disseminate public information.  What I observed was that there was no single directory to all of these information resources.  I pitched the book to two publishers and both wanted to publish the book.  I selected Harper Collins.  The book sold out of the first printing and nearly overnight became obsolete as the Web superseded electronic bulletin boards.  Since the introduction of the Web, nearly everything that I publish is published to the Web. 

Overview articles

Information technology, science, photography, and travel are just a few of the subjects that I have written articles about.  My filing cabinet contains no unpublished manuscripts.  If I write an article it is very likely to be published.  Editors have told me that they enjoy my friendly direct style and my short declarative sentences.   Writer's block has never been as issue for me.  Given almost any topic, I can begin outlining it immediately and quickly research and write an article.  This skill has been particularly valuable when I have worked in public relations.  Publications list.

©1995- 2011 Max Lent
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