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BIOGRAPHY OF BILL HAMMONS (PAGE 2)
CANDIDATE FOR US CONGRESS IN COLORADO'S 2ND DISTRICT
My employers seemed to have no qualms about continuing to pay me as an assistant while employing me as a director with no
assistance, I came across a help wanted ad in the New York Times, and the year after graduating college I became the Rights and
Permissions Manager at Newsweek, complete with an office looking north over Central Park. At Newsweek, not only did I
oversee assistants performing my old job of granting permission for the use of content in everything from
college course packets and textbooks to Web sites, I also handled sales of Newsweek article reprints which reached well into the six
figures on an annual basis, and worked with the Legal Department to negotiate multiple long-term contracts for the use of Newsweek
content. This very corporate gig was often leavened with some cool responsibilities, like permitting the portrayal of Newsweek in
the film Harrison's Flowers (yes, unfortunately I had
little control over the box office receipts), and denying the portrayal of Newsweek in
Zoolander (I loved the movie, but I know when to say "no").
My writing career wasn't entirely forgotten during my tenure in the publishing industry; in fact, I began writing my first full-length
novel the day after graduating from NYU and have written at least one sentence of fiction nearly every day for the past decade.
Farewell, Manhattan wasn't a bad novel for a first-time novelist just out of college squeezing writing time between his two jobs and
his runs in Riverside Park, but
the agents at William Morris and International Creative Management passed after reading the manuscript and I was left continuing on with my
day job (much like the rest of America). That first novel was followed by a bigger and better novel, which I recently self-published.
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