Welcoming our new CEO

We are delighted to welcome Robert S. Friedman as our new CEO. Bob is based in Virginia, USA. Bob's appointment is one of many changes to the Bombadil management team and global structure, changes that have been implemented due to the company's very fast growth. We are delighted to see how the overall plans are coming together, and even more delighted that we now have more than 100 000 young people in our network. The Bombadil world is increasing and youth authors are becoming an important part of the future.

Here is a brief bio of Bob. We have kept i short, though there is so much more to write. Bob is an amazing, wise and talented man who will help bring Bombadil on its journey to truly reveolutionsing the world of publishing. Welcome Bob!

Robert S. Friedman was born on February 15, 1942 in Baltimore, Maryland. He grew up in Portsmouth, Virginia, attended Woodrow Wilson High School and the University of Virginia, where he earned a B.A. in English in 1963. He has an M.F.A. in Writing (1966) from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and two years graduate study at the University College of Swansea of the University of Wales (1968-70).

He taught English at East Carolina University from 1966 to 1968. He worked as a free-lance photographer in Atlanta from 1970 to 1972, then moved to Virginia Beach, VA in 1972. He was managing editor of Metro Hampton Roads Magazine from 1972 to 1974, when he left to found The Donning Company/ Publishers. He was president and publisher of Donning from 1974 to 1989. The company published a variety of books, including over 400 pictorial histories of counties, cities, and states. He started the first trade paperback line of science fiction and fantasy in 1978 (Starblaze Editions) with ten-time Hugo award winner, Kelly Freas. He created and marketed the first four-color graphic novel, the bestselling Elfquest series, and pioneered the first chain store distribution of the genre, followed by several other graphic novel publications which led to the thriving genre on the shelves today. And he initiated a series of metaphysical titles, many of which are still in print.

He and Frank DeMarco founded Hampton Roads in 1989, and the company's book publishing program has focused on cutting-edge books with a self-help or non-traditional spiritual orientation, publishing over 800 books in eighteen years. Among early bestsellers were books by author Mary Summer Rain. Later successes included the trilogy of Conversations with God books by Neale Donald Walsch, all of which became New York Times bestselling books. Book 1 was on the list for 132 weeks. And he acquired bestselling books such as Lynn Grabhorn's Excuse Me, Your Life is Waiting, which has sold over 600,000 copies; Barbel Mohr’s The Cosmic Ordering Service series; Richard Bach’s Messiah’s Handbook and Hypnotizing Maria; George Beahm’s Muggles and Magic; and many others.

He is the co-author, with Eckhart Tolle, of a children’s book entitled Milton’s Secret: An Adventure of Discovery Through Then, When, and The Power of Now.
Recently retired from Hampton Roads, he is co-producing a documentary with Neale Donald Walsch entitled iGOD, and now lives in Faber, Virginia.